The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship: A Comprehensive Review and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

Abstract Entrepreneurship research has traditionally emphasized the economic and societal benefits of entrepreneurial activity, portraying entrepreneurs as engines of innovation, growth, and value creation. More recently, however, scholars have increasingly acknowledged that entrepreneurial engagement is also accompanied by significant psychological, emotional, and physical health challenges. Despite this growing interest in the “dark side of entrepreneurship”, the literature remains fragmented across disciplines, levels of analysis, and conceptual definitions. In particular, individual-level suffering has often been examined in isolated streams without an integrative synthesis that clarifies patterns, mechanisms, and research gaps. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review of research published in leading entrepreneurship, management, psychology, and ethics journals. Drawing on a rigorous multi-stage review process across Web of Science and Scopus, we identify, evaluate, and synthesize 84 high-quality studies examining the psychological, emotional, and health-related consequences of entrepreneurial engagement. We focus explicitly on individual-level outcomes and adopt a phase-based perspective that structures findings across three stages of the entrepreneurial journey: initiation and ideation, growth and expansion, and exit or failure. Our review makes several contributions. First, we provide conceptual clarity by distinguishing the dark side from related constructs such as financial downside and societal destructive effects, thereby delineating the micro-level focus of individual suffering. Second, we develop an integrative framework that maps three dimensions of entrepreneurial suffering, psychological, emotional, and physical health challenges, across the entrepreneurial lifecycle. This phase-based synthesis reveals both stage-specific stressors and recurring patterns that persist throughout the entrepreneurial process. Third, we identify and categorize coping mechanisms into cognitive and behavioral, social, and practical and contextual strategies, highlighting their dynamic and context-dependent nature. Beyond synthesizing existing findings, we systematically outline conceptual, methodological, and contextual gaps in the literature and propose a structured future research agenda that calls for longitudinal designs, deeper integration of physical health outcomes, greater attention to contextual and structural influences, and more comprehensive models of coping and recovery. By consolidating fragmented insights into a coherent framework, this review advances theory development in entrepreneurial psychology and provides guidance for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to better understand and address the darker aspects of entrepreneurial engagement.