Project Failure, Need for Competence, and Negative Emotions
A project importance to a person partially depends on the degree to which the project contributes to fulfilling his or her need for competence. Once the project is stopped, this need is unmet (i.e., thwarted). The psychological need for competence is met when a person received feedback indicating that he or she is performing well at a task , and this need is thwarted when feedback indicates poor performance (Deci and Ryan 2000). The motivation literature provides a large body of evidence linking tasks that fulfill needs for competence and individuals’ motivation to complete those tasks (Vallerand and Reid 1984).
Projects help meet employees’ need for competence. To start with, projects often allow for the improvement of individuals’ learning (Dweck 1986) and generate mastery over feelings (Butler 1992). In turn, these feelings demonstrate the generation of competence (Rawsthorne and Elliot 1999). Further, the culture of a particular project team may contribute to fulfilling competence needs as a productive competitive environment within or across project teams can confirm employees’ competence (Tjosvold et al. 2003). In addition, group membership can address competence needs. Namely, a group can itself form confidence in its competence (Gist 1987; Lindsley et al. 1995). Group members will not only value this competence but it can also contribute to their self-identity (Tajfel and Turner 1979, 1986).
Thus, employees’ psychological well-being is likely to decrease when they (1) lose a project which they believe is an important source of learning for valued skills and/or for which they perceive to possess high levels of task-related competence, (2) lose a culture within the team that sustains productive competition but is substituted by a culture of caustic competitiveness with individuals who do not support their endeavors and behaviors, or (3) lose the membership in a competent group and are allocated to a group that is less capable. In addition, individuals often view group membership turnovers as losing a central aspect of their identity , thus decreasing his or her feelings of competence and self-worth (Steele 1988). Losing these important elements through the failure of a project and are not completely substituted by, for example, the next project thwarts the individual’s competence need, causing negative emotions. Because projects are likely to differ in the degree they fulfill people’s need for competence, they are also likely to differ in the degree to which this need is thwarted in the case of failure.
Project Failure, Need for Autonomy, and Negative Emotions
A project’s importance is also affected by how much the project fulfills a person’s psychological need for autonomy. Autonomy at work is a form of personal control that offers employees the opportunity to choose when, where, and how they do their work (Thompson and Prottas 2006). As with the need for competence, projects differ in how much autonomy they offer to those involved. Generally, people tend to value situations they have personal control over more than situations controlled by external forces. Leaders can provide employees autonomy through empowerment (Logan and Ganster 2007; Lok et al. 2005), structures with low levels of formality (O’driscoll et al. 2006), participation in important decisions , and opportunities for extensive self-management (Liden and Tewksbury 1995). Autonomy can also be supported through organizational processes and structures that encourage the sharing of information, independent activities, and decision making within a team setting (Blanchard et al. 1995). Researchers have shown that environments that offer people more autonomy improve well-being (Deci et al. 1989), increase one’s satisfaction with the job (Purasuraman and Alutto 1984), and diminish the levels of stress people experience (Purasuraman and Alutto 1984; Thompson and Prottas 2006). However, autonomy can be undercut by incentives and evaluations , which have been shown to reduce creative outcomes (Amabile 1997), finding solutions for problems that are complex in nature (McGraw and McCullers 1979), and processing of information deeply and conceptually (Deci and Ryan 2000).
The processes, structures, and management systems that help fulfill project team members’ autonomy needs can become different in the case of project failure. For instance, when management terminates a project, employees may see that project termination as a threat to their sense of control (Dirks et al. 1996). This threat perception is particularly problematic when individuals have felt psychological ownership over or have identified themselves with the project at hand (Pierce et al. 2001); the individuals may feel a sense of loss, frustration, and stress (Pierce et al. 2001). Thus, project failure can thwart the fulfillment of autonomy needs, thereby causing negative emotional reactions among project members. Because projects differ in the degree to which they fulfill the need for autonomy, there will also be differences in the degree to which this need is thwarted after project failure.
Project Failure, Need for Relatedness, and Negative Emotions
A project’s importance is also likely to be affected by how much the project fulfills the psychological need for relatedness. Relatedness entails feeling connected to and understood by others (Patrick et al. 2007). For instance, there is evidence that people’s motivation increases when their environment shows a sense of secure relatedness (Ryan and La Guardia 2000; Ryan et al. 1994). Indeed, studies have also found that people have a need to feel related to other people and behave in ways to fulfill that need. Further, people tend to experience positive emotions from increased relatedness to other members of their group (McAdams and Bryant 1987; McAdams 1985) and more negative emotions with decreasing relatedness (Leary 1990). These negative emotions can include anxiety (Tice and Baumeister 1990; Craighead et al. 1979) and loneliness (Russell et al. 1984). Low feelings of relatedness within one’s group can also have negative consequences for their physical and psychological health (De Longis et al. 1988).
Entrepreneurial projects often offer organizational members the chance to fulfill their need for relatedness. This need can be satisfied, for instance, through supervisor and/or coworker support (Caverley et al. 2007; Thompson and Prottas 2006), identification with an organizational group (Richter et al. 2006), and/or identification with the organization itself (Ashforth 2001; Barker and Tompkins 1994). As with the other needs, the need for relatedness can be thwarted by project failure since, for example, it can be associated with losing a specific valued coworker relationship (cf Vince and Broussine 1996). Indeed, this loss and other changes stemming from project failure can harm employees’ attachment to other people, which in the past provided the employees a foundation for experiencing relatedness at work (Vince and Broussine 1996) and thus boosted their psychological well-being. Consistently, employees with less-supportive team members and managers have been found to typically have lower psychological well-being (Gilbreath and Benson 2004).
Psychological well-being can also be decreased when an individual’s identity is jeopardized by an entrepreneurial project failure that breaks apart the team , leading to the redeployment of prior teammates within the firm. This identity threat is especially extensive for employees who perceive that their team is an extension of the self (Belk 1988). After project failure, the threat to the individual’s social identity thwarts his or her relatedness need and causes a negative emotional reaction (Aquino and Douglas 2003; De Longis et al. 1988). Like the other needs, projects likely differ in how much they fulfill the need for relatedness and thus differ in how much they thwart this need if they fail.
Negative Emotions and Learning from Project Failure
Research has found that negative emotions hinder people’s information processing (Mogg et al. 1990; Wells and Matthews 1994), which is required for learning. We acknowledge that negative emotions can benefit learning. Negative emotions, for instance, indicate that something important is at risk or has been lost (Luce et al. 1997). As a result, people may direct their attention to the cause of the loss (Clore 1992; Pieters and Raaij 1987). This attention allocation is a prerequisite for learning based on enhanced scanning and information processing related to the cause of the loss (Cacioppo et al. 1999; Weick 1979) and for the motivati
on to initiate change (Lazarus 1993). Yet, in other situations, negative emotions can also limit individuals’ information scanning (Gladstein and Reilly 1985; Staw et al. 1981; Sutton and D’Aunno 1989) and disrupt their processing of information that is obtained (Mathews et al. 1990), thus diminishing learning . Furthermore, negative emotions can also redirect individuals’ scarce information-processing capacity from the event itself to the emotional reactions to the event (Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow 1991). Overall, any learning advantages that come from negative emotions are usually overshadowed by its disadvantages, and, in particular, for tasks that are highly complex (Huber 1985).
Effective learning from entrepreneurial project failure starts to materialize when the employee compares the project’s actual performance with the initial plan for particular project tasks to improve his or her understanding of the performance gap and failure cause (McGrath 1999: 23). Learning frequently entails the repetition of strategies, routines, and/or practices that previously have been used successfully in one’s own or other organizations (e.g., vicarious learning (Kim and Miner 2007)). However, learning can also occur from the study of failures because failures drive people to seek out new models, activities, and/or routines (Kim and Miner 2007). When individuals are able to effectively learn after an entrepreneurial project failure, it gives the organization information about its assumptions (e.g., about product favorability, strategic direction, etc.) that can improve its decision making going forward (McGrath 1999). Therefore, learning from project failure entails understanding the reasons for the failure, evaluating the core assumptions that drove the failed project to determine whether they are worth keeping, and creating capabilities to alter the strategies, processes, and procedures that resulted in the failure. While entrepreneurial project failure can create useful opportunities for organizational learning (Corbett et al. 2007; McGrath 1999; Sitkin 1992), when such failures are associated with emotional challenges, organizational members are unlikely to discuss them, thus compromising learning (McGrath 1999; Shepherd 2003; Shepherd et al. 2009a, b; Shepherd et al. 2013).
Just like we anticipate heterogeneity in the negative emotions a person experiences across project failures and heterogeneity in emotion levels across team members for a specific project failure, we also expect individuals’ responses to negative emotional experiences to vary. The question that arises is why some individuals are better than others at overcoming the negative emotional interference to learning that can occur after a failure experience. We argue that self-regulation (specifically self-compassion ) moderates the association between the negative emotions in response to a project failure and the learning benefits for the individual. Based on the social psychology and failure literatures, we explore how different aspects of self-compassion can help employees learn from the failure of their project.
Negative emotions can weaken people’s recalling of information about the past and can cause perceptions of disconnection from and avoidance of close relationships with other people in the social environments inside and outside work (Hogan et al. 2001). In particular, negative emotions stemming from entrepreneurial project failure will impact individuals’ affective organizational commitment. Affective commitment, or a person’s identification with and involvement in an organization (O’Reilly and Chatman 1986), represents their motivation to “give energy and loyalty to the organization” (Kanter 1968: 499). Research has shown that employees’ affective commitment can lead to better performance at the level of the individual (Sinclair et al. 2005; Vandenberghe et al. 2004) and the organization (Gong et al. 2009). Thus, employees often see project failure as a type of negative feedback regarding their work efforts. The experience of such negative emotions is a mediator in the association between the negative feedback individuals receive and how they regulate their personal goals (Ilies and Judge 2005), indicating that after project failure, goals congruence between the level of the individual and the organization diminishes as compared to their congruence before the failure event. However, after time, an individual’s emotional attachment to a failed project gradually breaks, and his or her thinking about the project or events associated with the failure event cause fewer negative emotions. New projects and social relationships become more central and start to fulfill the individual’s previously thwarted psychological needs, thus helping regain his or her affective commitment to the organization.
Intelligent-Failure Management Through Normalization
In environments where failure consequences are especially detrimental, dividing complex tasks into smaller subtasks enables individuals to generate a series of small wins; these small wins in turn drive constructive behavior (Weick 1984). Such wins are likely to generate task-related self-efficacy and thus positively impact task performance for ensuing forms of the task that are more difficult (Bandura 1991). A potential drawback of “small wins” is that due to their “smallness,” people may not pay as much attention to the task at hand, leading them to search for less information (Sitkin 1992). As a different strategy, “intelligent failure” recognizes the advantages of failure if “(1) they [the projects undertaken] result from thoughtfully planned actions , (2) have uncertain outcomes, (3) are of modest scale, (4) are executed and responded to with alacrity, and (5) take place in domains that are familiar enough to permit effective learning ” (Sitkin 1992: 243). For alacrity to arise, individuals must fail without the experience of negative emotions, which can occur when the organizational environment normalizes failure for employees.
Normalization denotes institutionalized processes whereby the extraordinary (in our case, failure) is made more commonplace. More specifically, stimuli that are threatening, uncommon, consequential, or have personal meaning may stimulate deep emotions. A normalization process makes these stimuli less important and less arousing, thus making them more ordinary (Ashforth and Kreiner 2002: 217). Generally, normalization stems from habituation or desensitization processes. Habituation—which can be triggered by interactions with others and is a social process (Ashforth and Kreiner 2002)—involves recurring exposure to the same stimulus that ultimately leads to increasingly weaker responses. Desensitization involves exposure to stimuli of growing unpleasantness. Through desensitization, the discrepancy between anticipated and actually experienced stimuli is diminished, thus decreasing the emotions experienced (St-Onge 1995). For instance, in several entrepreneurial failures of escalating significance, the discrepancy between anticipated and experienced failures becomes smaller, so the most recent failure causes fewer negative emotions as compared to failures without predecessors.
Normalization can also improve a person’s persistence with what he or she initially perceives as a task that is aversive. For instance, when recounting how he learned to deal with disgust at handling corpses to continue the task , a hospital orderly stated, “After a while, I got used to it. Each time it got a little easier. It’s just not that big a deal anymore” (Reed 1989: 48). When the failure of projects is normalized, organizational members are more likely to persist with entrepreneurial efforts. That is, because failure does not lead to negative emotions anymore, employees are less likely demotivated to try again in future projects. Farson and Keyes (2002) applied intelligent-failure principles to innovation management and came up with the concept of the “failure-tolerant leader,” a manager who “through their words and actions , help people overcome their fear of failure, and, in the process, create a culture of intelligent risk taking that leads to sustained innovation” (Farson and Keyes 2002: 4). Normalizing failure leads to reduced fear of failure. For instance, a failure-tolerant leader handles “steps in the innovation process—those that work and those that don’t—with less evaluation and more interpretation. They don’t praise or penalize; they analyze” (Farson and Keyes 2002: 5). Similarly, “the best coaches take victory or defeat in stride. ‘I didn’t get consumed by losses,’ said the legendary NFL coach Don Shula, ‘and I didn’t get overwhelmed by successes’” (Farson and Keyes 2002: 5).
> Regardless of whether the normalizing failure just happens over time or is intentionally coordinated by the firm, the intelligent-failure method hinges on getting rid of obstacles to generating new knowledge from failures. However, doing so may be challenging. According to Farson and Keyes (2002: 4), “While companies are beginning to accept the value of failure in the abstract—at the level of the corporate policies, processes, and practices—it’s an entirely different matter at the personal level. Everyone hates to fail.” In the next section, we discuss the challenges associated with normalizing failure in line with an intelligent-failure approach.
The above discussion on normalizing the failure of entrepreneurial projects to eliminate grief does not take into account two important implications. First, although normalization is beneficial in lessening negative emotional reactions that can obstruct learning and negatively affect performance after the emotional event, it also lessens the learning -related advantages that such negative emotions can bring about. By changing the failure-related emotions from being strongly negative to neutral (or even somewhat positive), the intelligent-failure strategy may have the same limitations Sitkin (1992) pointed out about Weick’s (1984) approach of “small wins.” More specifically, emotional neutrality can lead to low attention levels and decreased information search since events with more emotionality are higher priority in individuals’ information processing compared to events that are emotionally neutral (Ellis et al. 1971). Furthermore, negative emotional events tend to generate higher levels of attention and information processing than those events that are emotionally positive (Wood et al. 1990). Negative emotions highlight an event’s significance and thus guide individuals’ attention to actions , beliefs, and events precipitating the negative event to scan for important information (Weick 1979) and encourage adaptation (Lazarus 1993). Similarly, as mentioned, grief occurs when an individual believes he or she has lost something important (Luce et al. 1997). Thus, signals indicating that a failure has happened can encourage change and enhance coping by guiding the individual’s attention (Schwarz and Clore 1988) to the circumstances of the event (Pieters and Raaij 1987) and to the achievement of learning outcomes from the failure (Cacioppo et al. 1999).
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