Abstract
Entrepreneurial activity generates series of events which may impact both the equilibrium of the business and the one of its owner-manager. While the health of this latter represents a key intangible asset for a small organisation, the features of the experienced events and the psychological reaction of the small business owner remain little explored. The aim of this doctoral work is to make up for these common lacks to occupational health and entrepreneurship, two fields scarcely crossed. Based on a multidisciplinary approach and an epistemological positioning of the pragmatic type, we led a mixed methods research on a panel of 357 small business owners. First, a qualitative longitudinal survey was conducted to place the most notable events experienced by the owners into semantic categories. Second, a quantitative cross-sectional questionnaire intended to weight the coded events through two mediating constructs: stress (negative response to an event) and satisfaction (positive response). Third, the influence of the events experienced on physical and mental health variance was tested through multiple linear regressions. Conceptually speaking, the results of this thesis extend the affective events theory to the field of entrepreneurship. Methodologically speaking, two checklists of events are proposed: they capture the stress and the satisfaction generated by the entrepreneurial activity. Practically speaking, some preventive actions from medical professionals can build upon the predictive qualities regarding health of these checklists. Introduced as a “stressometer” and a “satisfactometer”, they are also benchmarking tools available for the self-employed.