Mediating effect of entrepreneurial career resilience between entrepreneurial career commitment and entrepreneurial career success

Abstract

It has been argued that career success is the most frequently researched outcome in organizational behavior. However, as most researches relate it to organizational or employee level, career success of the selfemployed is often neglected in the literature. The purpose of this paper was to gain a deeper understanding of career success of entrepreneurs and how it was influenced by their career commitment and resilience. It therefore addressed the research question, "does entrepreneurial career commitment (ECC) predicts entrepreneurial career success (ECS) through entrepreneurial career resilience (ECR)?", The study is crosssectional and data were collected from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) owners/managers in Nigeria. The study distributed 576 questionnaires to the respondents but 390 (68%) were retrieved and therefore used for analysis. The respondents were selected using two-stage cluster sampling method. To assess the measurement as well as the structural model, the data were analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) statistical software (Smart-PLS version 3.2.4). The findings suggest that ECC influenced the two facets of ECS, i.e. career satisfaction (CS) and perceived career achievement (PCA), but it did not influence the perceived financial attainment (PFA). In addition, there was also substantive support for the effect of ECC on ECR as well as ECC on ECS. More so, ECR has significantly intervened in the relationships. The findings also emphasized the importance of the ECC, ECS and ECR for entrepreneurs. The paper provided a novel understanding on topics (career success, career commitment and career resilience) that are of increasingly critical importance to the present-day entrepreneurs.