Understanding entrepreneurial disengagement: exploring the role of team vision and emotional support

Entrepreneurs often encounter challenges during their entrepreneurial journeys that may lead to disengagement from their business ventures. While the concept of disengagement has been extensively studied in the human resource management literature, there remains a relative lack of understanding regarding entrepreneurial disengagement. This study, grounded in the psychological theory of engagement and the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, focuses on physical disengagement and investigates whether emotional disengagement precedes it. Moreover, recognizing the significance of entrepreneurs' comprehension of their team vision, we hypothesize that team vision serves as an antecedent to both emotional and physical disengagement. Specifically, we investigate whether emotional disengagement mediates the relationship between team vision and physical disengagement. Building on JD-R theory, we examine the moderating roles of family emotional support and social networks' emotional support in this mediation relationship. Our findings, utilizing data obtained from 184 entrepreneurs in the UK, indicate that emotional disengagement fully mediates the relationship between team vision and physical disengagement. Interestingly, our results suggest that while social networks' emotional support moderates this mediation relationship, family emotional support does not. These insights carry significant theoretical and managerial implications for understanding and addressing entrepreneurial disengagement.