Conceptualizing firm failure as the loss of something important to the entrepreneur, the literature on emotional responses to firm failure has focused on the negative emotions experienced in response to this loss. We shift emphasis to introduce the positively valanced emotions relief and exploration as emotional responses to firm failure. These emotions reflect the inherently stressful nature of firm failure enabling an exploration into the timing of when stress is experienced during the failure process. Empirically we test our hypotheses, using a combination of a telephone and mail survey, on a sample of 114 entrepreneurs who had recently experienced the bankruptcy of their firm. We extend the literature on responses to firm failure by establishing relief and exploration as common emotional responses to firm failure and provide initial empirical support for the importance of considering pre-failure experiences in the process of entrepreneurial failure. Our findings also lend empirical support to the anticipatory grief argument put forward by Shepherd and colleagues (2009).

将公司失败概念化为对企业家重要的损失，有关对公司失败的情绪反应的文献集中在应对这种损失的负面情绪上。我们将重点转移为引入积极平衡的情绪缓解和探索，作为对公司失败的情绪反应。这些情绪反映了企业失败的内在压力性质，使人们能够探索在失败过程中何时承受压力的时机。根据经验，我们结合电话和邮件调查，对114名最近经历了公司破产的企业家进行了检验，以检验我们的假设。我们通过建立救济和探索作为对企业失败的常见情感反应，扩展了对企业失败的反应的文献，并为考虑企业家失败过程中的失败前经验的重要性提供了初步的经验支持。我们的发现也为Shepherd及其同事（2009年）提出的预期悲痛论点提供了经验支持。