Survival of the Fittest: Entrepreneurial Longevity and Venture Performance The role of sleep on decision-making and performance of entrepreneurs: Investigation of sleep- and performance-promoting interventions

Entrepreneurship typically has been linked to tremendous amount of working hours, hugely demanding
responsibilities for organizing business structure/environment, decision-making under
a high-level of ambiguity and uncertainty that results in a feeling of stress and ultimately leads
to problems in sleep and health, as well as a decrease in work performance. The general aim of
the current project is to particularly investigate the contribution of sleep status on decision-making
and entrepreneurial performance and test whether sleep-promoting interventions would lead
to differential impacts in these outcomes. We suggest that impairments in sleep severely affect
risk perception in decision-making and thus the performance of entrepreneurs. Building on the
self-regulatory resource and the effort recovery models, we also contribute to the literature by
evaluating the outcomes of interventions that address sleep through pre- and post-tests (withinsubject
design) across different groups (between subject design). In addition, by integrating
sleep and cognitive literature in the context of entrepreneurship, we investigate how cognitive
errors, particularly “overconfidence”, mediate the effect of sleep on entrepreneurial decisionmaking
and performance.
Within the scope of the project, two studies will be carried out, one of which is an observationalstudy
and the other is a longitudinal intervention study, both carried out in the field. Specifically
in Study 1, we seek to determine if entrepreneurs' sleep habits significantly affect their
decision-making processes and, consequently, their performance. Furthermore, we will establish
whether overconfidence mitigates this effect and how this relates to changes in related biological
and physiological mechanisms. In Study 2, we will determine how the implementation of 16
weeks of a sleep promoting intervention affects entrepreneurs' decision-making processes and
performance as well as changes in related biomarkers and physiological data.
3
Considering the interdisciplinary integration of organizational psychology, entrepreneurship,
decision-making, and sleep, this project will contribute to different and important streams of
research. By including a longitudinal study, combining data from different sources – self-reports,
biomarkers and physiological data -, we will be able to draw causal inferences about the
effect of sleep in an entrepreneurial context. Completing the project successfully will provide
beneficial intervention techniques for entrepreneurs to break the vicious circle of sleep problems
and entrepreneurial performance. In addition to these, it is planned that the results obtained from
the project will be published in high-ranked journals and the project outputs will be presented
at national and international conferences abroad.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, sleep, self-regulatory resource model, effort recovery model, decision-
making