Psychological Determinants of the Performance of Newly Created Companies: The Mediating Effect of the Success of the Entrepreneur Support Relationship

Introduction

Given the current failure rates of newly created businesses, it would be appropriate to initiate studies on the determinants of the success of the coaching relationship (Mohamed & Zouaoui, 2021a). In order to reveal unmet or poorly met support needs among novice entrepreneurs (DE FREYMAN et al., 2019; Minot, 2016; Schmitt & Grégoire, 2019). Thus, in order for the entrepreneur and his or her coach to ensure the performance of the newly created business, they must co-construct their coaching relationship through their exchanges, and implement and evaluate the actions necessary to achieve this goal (Dupouy, 2008). To better meet the needs of novice entrepreneurs and be effective, the coaching relationship must be co-constructed by both parties: the entrepreneur and the coach. It follows that each party finds its “place” and its interest in the coaching relationship. In this context, the coaching relationship is a real key to the performance of the start-up company. However, despite the fact that effective coaching has an effect on the success of the novice entrepreneur and consequently on the performance of his or her business, and that the nature of the coaching relationship plays a role in the performance of the newly created business, there is a total absence of empirical studies on this subject. In fact, since the contribution of (Bruyat, 1993) on the importance of the relational dimension in coaching, the work carried out in this field is embryonic.

The main theoretical and empirical contribution of this paper is to investigate the nature of the effect of the psychological determinants of success of the entrepreneur-coach relationship on the performance of newly created businesses.

According to (Mohamed & Zouaoui, 2021a; Brédart et al., 2019), the coach and the coachee must have a number of characteristics for the coaching relationship to be successful. In order to be able to succeed in the coaching relationship, the behaviour of both parties, the mentee and the coach, must be ideal. Hence, the commitment of the entrepreneur and the trust towards the coach are essential (Couteret & Audet, 2006; St-Jean, 2009).

According to (Mohamed & Zouaoui, 2021a; Schmitt & Grégoire, 2019), it is important and necessary that the entrepreneur is receptive to the advice of the coach, committed to the relationship and open to change. Similarly, (Sarri, 2011) states that the entrepreneur must be willing to receive advice from an outsider, have some desire for change and be open to new experiences. Although there are many theoretical developments that assume positive links between the entrepreneur's trusts in the coach, the existence of the psychological contract and the entrepreneur's commitment with the success of the coaching relationship, but to our knowledge the first and only empirical study on this topic is that of (Mohamed & Zouaoui, 2021a). Therefore, in logic of continuation of the work on this theme not yet too explored, we are interested in answering the following two questions: first, do the psychological determinants of the entrepreneurial coaching relationship influence the performance of newly created firms? Second, does the entrepreneurial coaching relationship mediate the effect of psychological determinants on the performance of start-ups?