Entrepreneurial success. A theoretical contribution linking affect and cognition

A comprehensive understanding of how affect influences cognition and the outcomes of decision-making is still lacking in the literature. Accordingly, this study explores the process that links affect and cognition with entrepreneurial decision-making effectiveness. Designed as a conceptual paper, the model developed attempts to link three main pillars of entrepreneurial decision-making: the affect side (input), the cognitive processes underlying decisions (processes), and the entrepreneurial decision-making effectiveness (outcome). Five propositions are developed which suggest that affect can be considered information and input in the decision-making process and that the effectiveness of entrepreneurs’ decisions depends on a combination of intuition and rationality, thus pointing to entrepreneurs as truly “quasirational” decision-makers. Moreover, the paper explains that the relation between affect and cognitive mechanisms is positively moderated by emotional intelligence, defined as the ability to understand the effects that emotions may have on decisions. The conceptual model attempts to contribute to the entrepreneurial cognition literature by offering a model that brings out a set of elements composing the “affect side” of the entrepreneurial decision-making process. Furthermore, consistent with the idea that feelings and thoughts are interdependent, the study sheds light on the complexity of the entrepreneurial decision-making process, as well as its nonlinearity, multi-criteria features, and recursiveness.