Four Types of Well-being among Entrepreneurs and Their Relationships with Business Performance

Four types of affective well-being were investigated in a sample of 135 Dutch entrepreneurs: work engagement, job satisfaction, exhaustion and workaholism. Compared to employees, entrepreneurs score extremely high on work engagement. Scores on job satisfaction, exhaustion and working compulsively (CW) are also higher. Scores on working excessively (EW) are lower. When investigating the overlap between the four types of well-being, results were found to vary with the approach chosen. When analysing correlations, overlap appears especially high between workaholism and exhaustion. When analysing cases identified as high scorers, overlap is especially evident between entrepreneurs high on both work engagement and job satisfaction. A final issue studied concerned the relation between well-being and performance. Entrepreneurs scoring high on EW reported the highest turnover, profits and number of employees. Satisfied entrepreneurs also reported relatively high profits and number of employees. Implications of these findings for trainers and researchers interested in well-being and performance in entrepreneurs are discussed.