دانلود رایگان مقاله اختلالات روانی و کارآفرینی و چگونگی مهار ADHD

abstract

Amidst predominant focus on positive traits for entrepreneurship, this paper explores how disorders such as ADHD influence the decision to engage in entrepreneurial action and the success of entrepreneurial action. Based on a multiple case study of fourteen entrepreneurs previously diagnosed with ADHD, our inductive model highlights impulsivity as a major driver of entrepreneurial action and hyperfocus as a major catalyst for its consequences, both positive and negative. By drawing attention to the positive implications of symptoms commonly seen as negative, the paper opens several major avenues for future theoretical development and empirical research.

4. Discussion

Thousands if not tens of thousands of academic papers have documented the negative implications of having ADHD and there seem to be many. Very few papers have examined or found support for any positive effects of the disorder but some anecdotal evidence suggests that ADHD could have positive implications in entrepreneurship. The present study is a first step towards understanding how ADHD impacts entrepreneurship. The model we develop in this paper suggests that hitherto unexplored concepts directly related to ADHD are of great importance for understanding the propellers of entrepreneurial action and its consequences. Although entrepreneurship is essentially about action under uncertainty (McMullen and Shepherd, 2006), implications for individual decision making have not been fully drawn. First, fundamental uncertainty implies that relevant information about future states cannot be known. Second, because entrepreneurial outcomes depend on the actions of others (which in turn depend on the actions of yet others), the coupling between entrepreneurial inputs and outputs is very loose at best. These two premises represent an insurmountable challenge to decision making rationality based on the logic of consequences (Cyert and March, 1963). Under this logic, acting under uncertainty can never be a rational choice. Our results suggest that ADHD symptoms – despite their otherwise negative connotation – convey a different logic, which seems better attuned to entrepreneurial action. In particular, impulsivity represents a behavioral logic, one of appropriateness rather than consequences (Cyert and March, 1963). Its key feature is that it involves little or no consideration of what will or might happen; it is driven by an internal sense of what is appropriate to do. For people with ADHD, what is appropriate is to act, not think or wait; to seek novelty. This insight represents a significant opportunity for theoretical development in entrepreneurship because it sheds light on a current dead end in the field. On the one hand, we may deplore impulsivity because it does not seem ‘rational’. On the other hand, it is not clear how one can act ‘rationally’ under uncertainty. The broader question here is about the need to define what constitutes appropriate action without reference to its ultimate consequences. For people with ADHD this comes intuitively. Although they may regret their actions once the outcomes are known, they have an intuitive sense that such actions are appropriate. Interestingly, recent research by Lerner (2016) indicates that stakeholders tend to have a different view than entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs’ disinhibition undermined stakeholders’ interest in joining them.