Growing pains in scale-ups: How scaling affects new venture employee burnout and job satisfaction

Mohamed Genedy; Karin Hellerstedt; Lucia Naldi; Johan Wiklund

doi:10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106367

Growing pains in scale-ups: How scaling affects new venture employee burnout and job satisfaction

Mohamed Genedy, Karin Hellerstedt, Lucia Naldi, Johan Wiklund

Management

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

10 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Although academic interest in organizational scaling is growing, extant research has focused primarily on the antecedents and processes, neglecting how employees experience scaling. Drawing on the scale-up, firm growth, and well-being literature, we take an employee perspective to examine the impact of scaling on employee burnout and job satisfaction. Using a sample of 10,908 new venture employees in Sweden, we show that scaling is positively associated with employee burnout, and negatively with job satisfaction. We also show that the link between scaling, burnout, and job satisfaction depends on whether the employee is in a managerial position or has prior new venture experience.

Original language	English
Article number	106367
Journal	Journal of Business Venturing
Volume	39
Issue number	2
Early online date	22 Nov 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106367
Publication status	Published - 1 Mar 2024

Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank JBV guest editor Professor Holger Patzelt and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Their comments significantly contributed to improving the quality of this article. We also extend our thanks to the “Entrepreneurial Scaling” special issue editorial team and the workshop participants for their insightful comments and feedback.

Funding

We also acknowledge the financial support of Kamprad Stiftelse and Hakon Swenson Stiftelsen.

Keywords

Employee burnout
Employee job satisfaction
New venture scaling
Scale-up

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Business and International Management
Management of Technology and Innovation

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10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106367Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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Growing pains in scale-ups: How scaling affects new venture employee burnout and job satisfaction

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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