Powered By Compassion
Research Paper Title:
“Powered by compassion: The effect of loving-kindness meditation on entrepreneurs’ sustainable decision-making”
Authors:
Yuval Engel (University of Amsterdam)
Anusha Ramesh (Willamette University)
Nick Steiner (University of Amsterdam)
Background:
Asking entrepreneurs to address grand environmental challenges is not particularly useful unless we better understand why and how entrepreneurs make environmentally sustainable decisions. Whereas prior research has emphasized cognitive predictors like values or self-efficacy, it has lagged behind in recognizing the central role of affective factors – emotions, moods, and feelings – in shaping how entrepreneurs make sustainability-related decisions.
Methodology:
Sample: Study 1) Entrepreneurs at three startup hubs in The Netherlands; Study 2) participants over 18 years of age who were fluent in English and currently running their own business in the United States
Sample Size: Study 1) 69 entrepreneurs; Study 2) 114 entrepreneurs
Analytical Approach: In study 1, the authors use random assignment of entrepreneurs who either listened to a brief guided LKM (treatment group) or to a recorded lecture about meditation (active control group) before responding to a realistic decision scenario involving a tradeoff between business and environmental concerns. This approach enabled them to test whether a brief guided LKM positively affects entrepreneurs' sustainable decision making. In study 2 , the researchers sought to improve our experimental protocol with a more robust study design, provide further support for the basic hypothesis tested in study 1, and expand their investigation to test whether compassion mediates the relationship between LKM and entrepreneurs' sustainable decision-making.
Hypotheses:
Loving-kindness meditation positively affects entrepreneurs' sustainable decision making.
Compassion mediates the positive relationship between loving-kindness meditation and sustainable decision making.
Results:
Consistent with the researchers’ theoretical predictions, they found converging evidence that LKM positively affects entrepreneurs' sustainable decision-making through elevated compassion.
Conclusion:
Both theoretically and practically, this study helps to understand why and how entrepreneurs make environmentally sustainably decisions. As a theoretical contribution, this study complements work on the psychological basis of sustainable decision making in entrepreneurship by pointing to the shared affective foundation underlying social and sustainable entrepreneurship. This is important because it suggests that other affective constructs exclusively studied as predictors of social entrepreneurship may also predict sustainability-related decisions and vice versa. The researchers further show how entrepreneurs can become more compassionate by practicing meditation, which, beyond the impact of sustainable entrepreneurship, is also relevant to adjunct research streams related to pro-social motivation, compassion organizing, and social entrepreneurship. This enhanced understanding of LKM as a facilitator of entrepreneurs' compassion and sustainable decisions should serve to stimulate novel research about meditation in entrepreneurship more broadly. In practical terms, this study demonstrates the speed and efficacy with which a single guided meditation session can produce favorable effects for entrepreneurs. Given the potential of prolonged meditation practice to solidify short term effects and turn them into habitual patterns of responding, there is much promise in exposing entrepreneurs to meditation.
