The End of Resilience? Managing Vulnerability Through Temporal Resourcing and Resisting

Abstract

We induce a first-person conceptualization of entrepreneurial resilience. Our seven-year, two-study ethnography shows that entrepreneurs enact resilience as a four-step process of managing vulnerability: they richly experience episodes of adversity, self-monitor across episodes, reassess personal thresholds and reconcile challenges with coping skills. Entrepreneurs manage vulnerability by (1) modifying (stretching and shrinking) objective time and (2) changing their subjective experience of time as working with or against the clock through temporal resourcing or temporal resisting. We extend the theory and practice of entrepreneurial resilience by elaborating the interplay of objective and subjective time in managing vulnerability in recurrent and unprecedented crises. © The Author(s) 2021.