From business owner to retiree : understanding life satisfaction's impact on entrepreneurial exit

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ From business owner to retiree : understanding life satisfaction's impact on entrepreneurial exit © 2024 the Authors Published version Rönkkö, Mikko; von Bonsdorff, Monika E.; Mansikkamäki, Susanna Rönkkö, M., von Bonsdorff, M. E., & Mansikkamäki, S. (2024). From business owner to retiree : understanding life satisfaction's impact on entrepreneurial exit. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 30(11), 261-278. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijebr-12- 2023-1243 2024 From business owner to retiree: understanding life satisfaction’s impact on entrepreneurial exit Mikko R€ onkk€ o, Monika E. von Bonsdorff and Susanna Mansikkam€ aki School of Business and Economics, University of Jyv€ askyl€ a, Jyv€ askyl€ a, Finland Abstract Purpose –Entrepreneurial exit research has overlooked the unique context of exits at retirement age when an exit marks the end of an entrepreneurial career (i.e. retirement). To better understand retirement exit decisions and transitions, this study introduces the concept of work ability (i.e. an individual’s ability to meet work demands) into the entrepreneurial exit literature and, based on role theory, hypothesises its effect and interaction with general life satisfaction in explaining the entrepreneurial exits to retirement. The study clarifies the dynamics between the voluntary and non-voluntary aspects behind exit to retirement. Design/methodology/approach –The authors use mixed-effects ordinal logistic regression with four-wave panel data on 198 Finnish small business entrepreneurs who intend to retire to test hypotheses on the relationship between work ability, general life satisfaction and entrepreneurial exit to retirement. Findings –The study provides partial support for the hypothesis that work ability negatively impacts entrepreneurial exit to retirement and strong support for the idea that this effect is affected by general life satisfaction. Entrepreneurs who experience higher life satisfaction are likely to retire on their own terms, whereas those less satisfied continue working until declining work ability forces them to retire. Originality/value –The study contributes to the entrepreneurial exit literature by showing how the exit dynamics unfold in the unique context of entrepreneurial exit to retirement. The theoretical discussion opens up the potential psychological mechanisms behind such dynamics. Keywords Entrepreneurial exit, Retirement, Role theory, Role identity, Satisfaction with life Paper type Research paper Various personal, firm-related, and environmental factors influence entrepreneurs’decisions to exit or continue business (Caliendo et al., 2020;DeTienne et al., 2008;Lin et al., 2022). The exit research has addressed why founders leave their companies, but the exit choices of ageing entrepreneurs are still underexplored (Backman et al., 2019,p.9;Morris et al., 2020). Likewise, research on entrepreneurial careers has covered transitions to and from entrepreneurship (Burton et al., 2016) but has overlooked the end of entrepreneurial careers, often marked by retirement. As more entrepreneurs approach retirement age, understanding the late-career dynamics and the role of ageing in entrepreneurial exits is crucial (von Bonsdorff et al., 2019;Kautonen et al., 2017;Ma^ alaoui and Razgallah, 2019). The authors draw on retirement and entrepreneurship literature to understand the understudied (Morris et al., 2020) topic of entrepreneurial exit to retirement. Ageing brings physical, psychological, and social changes, which may lead to a decline in the ability to meet job demands (work ability; Ilmarinen and Ilmarinen, 2015) in individuals 50 years and older (Ilmarinen, 2009). This can lead to workforce withdrawal among individuals at or approaching retirement age (Harada, 2007;Winter et al., 2004). However, physiological International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research 261 © Mikko R€ onkk€ o, Monika E. von Bonsdorff and Susanna Mansikkam€ aki. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ legalcode The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1355-2554.htm Received 1 December 2023 Revised 22 April 2024 18 June 2024 18 July 2024 Accepted 18 July 2024 International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research Vol. 30 No. 11, 2024 pp. 261-278 Emerald Publishing Limited 1355-2554 DOI 10.1108/IJEBR-12-2023-1243 changes are not the only factors driving retirement. Using the role theory (Ashforth, 2001), a well-established social-psychological framework in the ageing in work-life research (Wang and Shi, 2014;Wang and Shultz, 2010), the authors propose that overall life satisfaction, a vital psychological resource, plays a central part in entrepreneurial exits to retirement. The authors use four-wave survey data of Finnish entrepreneurs who intend to retire within the next two years, between 2017 and 2021, to test a set of hypotheses. The results show that declining work ability is associated with exits only for entrepreneurs who are dissatisfied with their lives. This supports the theorising that satisfied entrepreneurs view retirement as the closure of a successful career. Thus, the retirement and exit processes are mutually supportive, leading to a timely retirement. In contrast, dissatisfied entrepreneurs persist with their ventures until forced out by declining health. The central contribution is shedding light on the lifespan-specific characteristics of entrepreneurial exit. The study adds to the understanding of how delaying the exit to retirement due to an emotional connection to the company plays out. Furthermore, by incorporating well-being into role identity and transition, it complements the discussion on work and non-work identities in retirement transition. The paper continues with the theoretical background and hypotheses, followed by methods, results, and discussion. 1. Theoretical foundations 1.1 Retirement as entrepreneurial exit and the drivers of exit Entrepreneurial exit to retirement combines two distinct exits: the entrepreneur’s exit from the firm (DeTienne, 2010) and the individual’s exit from work life to retirement. Entrepreneurial exits are either voluntary or forced (Coad, 2014;Justo et al., 2015). Alternative opportunities, economic motivation, and future prospects of the business, among others, may drive voluntary exits. An exit can be forced by financial failure or other firm stakeholders (DeTienne, 2010). While financial reasons often drive exits, entrepreneurs also exit financially viable firms and persist with struggling ones (DeTienne et al., 2008; Wennberg et al., 2010). Indeed, various personal or person-related, firm-related, and environment-related reasons (e.g. Caliendo et al., 2020;DeTienne et al., 2008;Lin et al., 2022) can affect the decision to exit or continue. Entrepreneurial exits are often delayed. Entrepreneurs may continue with failing firms due to overconfidence, believing they can still reverse their fortunes (Lin et al., 2022). However, this explanation may be oversimplified (Chen et al., 2018). Jenkins and Byrne (2021) reviewed psychological theories of exit and failure and identified two reasons entrepreneurs might stay with an inevitably failing firm. First, escalation of commitment (e.g. Yamakawa and Cardon, 2017) refers to persisting with a decision or action despite worsening prospects. Escalation of commitment can arise from sunk-cost fallacy, over-optimism, preference for risk-taking to avoid losses, and many other sources (Sleesman et al., 2018). Second, delaying exiting a failing business can make the entrepreneur more emotionally prepared for the failure (anticipatory grief; Shepherd et al., 2009). Even harvest exits, where entrepreneurs cash in on their success, may get delayed or declined because of the entrepreneur’s emotional attachment to the firm (Jenkins and Byrne, 2021;Rouse, 2016). The occupational health literature recognises health as crucial for an individual’s capacity to work. Specifically, work ability (i.e. an individual’s functional capacity to respond to workrelated demands) has been identified as a critical predictor of various work outcomes, including retirement (Cadiz et al.,2019) and career sustainability (Stuer et al., 2019). Whereas prior entrepreneurship literature has recognised that health problems may force exits (Morris et al., 2020, p. 4), the effects of health and work ability on exits before one is forced have received little attention. Instead, studies have focused on topics such as how entrepreneurship affects health (see Stephan et al.,2020, for a recent summary) or how health affects different entrepreneurial IJEBR 30,11 262 outcomes (e.g. Hatak and Zhou, 2021).Only a few studies use health to explain exits:Descriptive studies by Harada (2007) and Winter et al. (2004) have shown that declining health drives entrepreneurial exits more often when approaching retirement age than within younger groups. Hessels et al.(2018)and Shahid and Kundi (2022) link the entrepreneur’smentalhealth to an increased likelihood of exit. However, the link between health and entrepreneurial exit remains understudied (Hessels et al., 2018;Shepherd and Patzelt, 2015). 1.2 A role theory perspective on retirement transition Retirement is currently understood as a gradual process of four phases: planning, decisionmaking, transitioning, and adjustment to retirement (Shultz and Wang, 2011). Within the retirement literature, role theory is one of the main theories used to understand the retirement transition (see, e.g. Wang and Wanberg, 2017). Role theorists view retirement as a transition process that involves weakening or losing work roles and strengthening family and community roles (Wang et al., 2011;Wang and Shultz, 2010). This transition can be daunting and complex (Beehr, 2014), and its consequences can be either beneficial or detrimental, depending on how aligned the role transition is with an individual’s values and objectives (Wang and Shi, 2014). Roles are patterns of behaviour and expectations that accompany a specific position or situation. Role theory assumes that individuals possess multiple roles, such as gender, profession, and family roles, that shape their behaviour, self-perception, and how others perceive their actions (Anglin et al., 2022;Ashforth, 2001, pp. 3–4). Role identity theory builds on role theory and argues that individuals build their self-concept based on the roles they occupy (Ashforth, 2001, chap. 2; Sluss et al., 2011). Roles differ from identities, a difference often lost in entrepreneurship research (Wagenschwanz, 2021). “Role is external; it is linked to social positions within the social structure. Identity is internal, consisting of internalized meanings and expectations associated with a role.”(Stryker and Burke, 2000, p. 289). Role salience and role centrality refer to the importance of a role for an individual (Anglin et al., 2022, pp. 1474–1475). For entrepreneurs, the entrepreneur role often plays a central part in their identities (e.g. Shepherd and Patzelt, 2018, chap. 5). For example, Murnieks et al. (2014) demonstrated that entrepreneur role centrality strongly affected entrepreneurial passion, affecting both entrepreneurial self-efficacy and behaviour. Role identities can also affect who becomes an entrepreneur. Focusing on individuals who are currently not entrepreneurs, Seibert et al. (2021) demonstrated that entrepreneurial identity aspirations affected entrepreneurial activities. Strong entrepreneurial roles may lead to adverse outcomes during the role identity change during retirement, such as crisis and continuity outcomes (Ashforth, 2001). Retirement involves a role transition away from the work role to occupy other roles (e.g. the family role) to a greater extent (Wang et al., 2011, p. 2). The role theory suggests that with high investments in a dominant current role (e.g. the work role), one’s perception of selfworth may be strongly associated with that role (Ashforth, 2001). Thus, for individuals highly invested in their jobs, a drift away from the pre-retirement role can lead to an absence of role identity (Quick and Moen, 1998,pp.44–45), and retirement may be experienced as disruptive and stressful (Burke, 1991). This may be particularly salient for entrepreneurs who identify strongly with the entrepreneur role (Kleine and Schmitt, 2021; Murnieks et al., 2014;Radu-Lefebvre et al., 2021). Indeed, entrepreneurs often perceive retiring as undesirable, unwilling to relinquish their identities as entrepreneurs (Cesaroni et al., 2021;Morris et al.,2020). Similar behaviour has been observed with wage-earners who can extend their work role by part-time working, consulting, or other bridge work (von Bonsdorff et al., 2017;Bordia et al., 2020). Retirement transition can be particularly problematic for individuals with weak non-role identities, causing a crisis and disruption (Bordia et al., 2020). In contrast, individuals with International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research 263 developed non-work role identities could experience smooth retirement role transitions. Moreover, strong work role identities can act as resources for building non-work role identities, which Bordia et al. (2020) demonstrated with an example of a project manager who developed a non-work role identity around managing church projects. In a family firm context, such retainment of an entrepreneurial role could arise from maintaining an advisory role after retirement (Cesaroni et al., 2021). Liu and Allan (2023) supported this idea by pointing out that individuals can reflect and reminisce about their work roles after retirement. As such, the work role identity can persist, albeit in a different form, and ease the role transition through a less disruptive role change. These arguments align with the role enhancement hypothesis, which suggests that individuals with multiple roles experience greater psychological well-being (e.g. Adelmann, 1994). In summary, role theory examines how individuals behave based on the roles they have. How work and non-work role identities are constructed affects retirement adjustment in both employees (Bordia et al., 2020) and entrepreneurs (Morris et al., 2020). Because entrepreneurs often build strong work identities (Murnieks et al., 2014), role theory seems particularly useful for understanding retirement transition in the entrepreneurial context. However, while we know that strong work identities and weak non-work identities can complicate retirement adjustment, how they affect entrepreneurial exit to retirement is still unclear. 2. Hypothesis development The theoretical argument builds on the idea of retirement as a process: when an entrepreneur’s work ability starts to decline, their propensity to exit voluntarily increases. When work ability decreases sufficiently, an exit is forced. The authors also argue that when entrepreneurs are satisfied with their life, the exit process plays out smoothly before work ability starts to decline substantially. In contrast, dissatisfied entrepreneurs resist retirement for psychological reasons, delaying exit that may ultimately become forced by declining work ability. 2.1 Work ability and entrepreneurial exit to retirement Health is an important driver of the retirement decision (see, e.g. Wang and Shi, 2014) and an important indicator of career sustainability (De Vos et al., 2020). Job demands, such as physical workload or time pressure that exhaust individuals’mental and physical resources, may cause health problems (Demerouti et al., 2001). The work ability concept implements this idea by focusing on the balance between an individual’s physical and mental resources and job demands (Cadiz et al., 2019;Ilmarinen, 2009;Ilmarinen and Ilmarinen, 2015). Work ability starts to decline in old age (Cadiz et al., 2019;Ilmarinen, 2009), and this influences many workrelated outcomes, such as retirement behaviour (von Bonsdorff et al., 2010;Brady et al., 2020; McGonagle et al., 2015). Employees’work ability is negatively related to withdrawal from the workforce (e.g. Salonen, 2003). Compared to employees, entrepreneurs often face greater job demands and workloads (Stephan and Roesler, 2010) because of longer work days and greater responsibility (Patzelt and Shepherd, 2011, p. 229). Considering the high job demands and the heightened risk of health problems that may challenge the balance between job demands and available resources when approaching retirement age, work ability is expected to be associated with entrepreneurs’retirement: H1. Work ability is negatively related to entrepreneurial exit to retirement among retirement-age entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs tend to retire older and be more attached to their firms than employees (Morris et al., 2020). This suggests that entrepreneurs may persist with their firms even when their IJEBR 30,11 264 work ability declines. Indeed, often, “the exit process will become inevitable only when they are faced with, e.g. severe illnesses”(von Bonsdorff et al., 2019, p. 71). However, entrepreneurs likely vary in their level of persistence. Next, the authors use role theory to argue that entrepreneurs most satisfied with their lives are least likely to wait until poor health forces them out. 2.2 Work ability, general life satisfaction, and exit to retirement General life satisfaction refers to an individual’s overall subjective evaluation of their life. It is a broad assessment of one’s happiness, contentment, and fulfilment in various domains of life, such as relationships, health, work, personal achievements, and leisure activities. The experiences in the entrepreneur role and non-work role affect the overall level of an individual’s life satisfaction (Erdogan et al., 2012;Kleine and Schmitt, 2021). Generally, satisfying roles improve overall well-being (Kulik et al., 2015). Satisfaction with the entrepreneur and non-work roles are not separate as the two roles interact: A role conflict occurs when the roles one occupies have conflicting requirements. However, the roles may also be mutually enriching, such as using the work role as a retirement resource through reminiscence (Liu and Allan, 2023). When dissatisfaction stems from the non-work role, increasing the salience of that role through retirement may seem like an undesirable option (role exit vs role entry; Jolles et al., 2023). While adopting more satisfying non-work role identities might help (Bordia et al., 2020), the outcomes of these efforts may be uncertain. Drawing on prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), Wennberg et al. (2010) have shown that entrepreneurs tend to delay exits when framed as a loss. Sustainable careers research suggests that the same logic likely applies to exits to retirement by showing that executives with a “retirement script”are more ready to retire (Hallpike et al., 2024). Thus, if entrepreneurs perceive retirement into nonsatisfactory non-work role(s) as a failure (i.e. loss), they might choose to stay out of retirement even if this risks a forced retirement later on. Just like dissatisfaction with the non-work role, dissatisfaction with the entrepreneurial role can also contribute to a delayed retirement. Exits to retirement can be successful not only financially (Morris et al., 2020) but also in non-financial terms, such as personal reputation and firm mission persistence after exit (Strese et al., 2018). Indeed, entrepreneurs can retire as respected community members (Bordia et al., 2020), having built companies that outlive their founders. An entrepreneur may see exiting an underperforming firm (financially or otherwise) as a failure, thus framing it as a loss (Hsu et al., 2017, p. 20). Both prior research on delayed exits (e.g. Jenkins and Byrne, 2021;Lin et al., 2022) and prospect theory indicate that entrepreneurs may prefer to delay retirement despite the potentially greater risk of a forced retirement further in the future. These considerations suggest that dissatisfied entrepreneurs are less inclined to retire. This seems counterintuitive, as one might expect those satisfied with their lives to resist change (Erdogan et al., 2012). However, for ageing entrepreneurs, two factors suggest otherwise. First, their diminishing perceived time in the workplace and life more generally (Fung and Isaacowitz, 2016;Zacher and Frese, 2009) makes maintaining the status quo unsustainable. Second, those with higher life satisfaction are better prepared for the retirement transition: A satisfying work-role identity aids the transition (Bordia et al., 2020), and a satisfying entrepreneurial role reduces the likelihood of delays due to escalation of commitment or anticipatory grief (Jenkins and Byrne, 2021) and may also be a resource for the transition, e.g. through reminiscence (Liu and Allan, 2023). Therefore, the authors hypothesise: H2. Satisfaction with life is positively related to entrepreneurial exit to retirement among retirement-age entrepreneurs. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research 265 Life satisfaction not only directly affects the decision to retire for entrepreneurs but also moderates this process. The firm often represents their life’s work. Building on the role theory, the authors argue that when an entrepreneur is satisfied with their life’s work, retirement presents a closure of a successful career. In contrast, when entrepreneurs are unsatisfied with their life’s work, they do not view exit to retirement as a closure but as a failure. In this case, entrepreneurs face an escalation of commitment and thus persist with the venture longer than they should and may ultimately be forced to exit to retirement by their declining work ability. H3. Satisfaction with life moderates the negative relationship between work ability and entrepreneurial exit to retirement among retirement-age entrepreneurs, such that the negative relationship is weaker when satisfaction with life is higher. 3. Methods and data The hypotheses were tested using a four-wave panel collected during a broader study of entrepreneurs’retirement. The population consists of Finnish small business entrepreneurs who intend to retire within two years from an entrepreneurial career and employ at least one person in addition to themselves. The participants were recruited with the help of the Federation of Finnish Entrepreneurs (FFE). FFE first advertised the study in their weekly newspaper and other communications, providing the first 79 participants. The remaining participants were recruited with the help of FFE’s local agencies to identify 123 more participants. Four participants were dropped because their companies employed more than 250 people and thus fell outside the scope of the study. The final sample size for the initial wave was 198. Baseline data were collected between 05/2017 and 06/2018 (T1) using telephone interviews that lasted about 1–1.5 h. The participants were asked about their work, health, company, retirement plans, family, and exit plans from the business. Two follow-ups were done by postal mail, with the first follow-up between 05/2019–01/2020 (T2, N5153) and the second between 06–11/2020 (T3, N5151). The third follow-up took place during the COVID pandemic between 9–10/2021 (T4, N5171) using telephone interviews. T-tests of the demographic variables indicated no differences between respondents and nonrespondents, suggesting that attrition does not affect the results. 3.1 Measures Exit status was measured using a multiple-choice question where the authors asked if there had been any changes to the firm’s ownership structure. In line with the view of retirement as a gradual process (Shultz and Wang, 2011), this variable was operationalised as a three-level ordered category consisting of 1) no plans to exit, 2) started exit, and 3) exited. The full scale, shown in the Appendix, includes one item showing no current exit plans, three items indicating the initiation of various exit types, and four items marking the completion of different exits. Perceived work ability. Entrepreneurs’self-reported work ability was assessed by the first item of the Work Ability Index (WAI; Tuomi et al., 1998). The respondents were asked to evaluate their current work ability against their lifetime best on a scale of 0–10. The complete WAI instrument consists of 7 parts with different scale formats. However, because of its complexity, the single-item version is often favoured. The single item is highly correlated with the full scale and has comparable predictive validity (Ahlstrom et al., 2010). The full WAI was collected in the baseline wave and subsets in the follow-up waves. The single-item version was used for its simplicity and availability in all waves. IJEBR 30,11 266 General life satisfaction was measured with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), which assesses a person’s overall judgement of their life (Diener et al., 1985). The scale has five items, including “I am satisfied with my life”and “In most ways my life is close to my ideal”, each rated on a seven-point Likert scale (1 5strongly disagree, 7 5strongly agree). ( ω H 50.82, 0.79, 0.85, 0.84, ω T 50.91, 0.91, 0.89, 0.88 for T1-T4). Several control variables were used. The first firm-level control variable is firm performance because it is likely to affect general life satisfaction, and successful companies are easier to exit from than less successful ones. Performance was measured using the tenitem perceived relative performance measure developed by Delaney and Huselid (1996) because a relative measure allowed us to compare companies with different goals and business characteristics. The authors also controlled for firm size, measured as a category (1, 2–4, 5–10, 11–20, 21–50, and 51–250 personnel) because larger companies might be easier to exit from than smaller ones. The final firm-level control was family business, measured with a question asking whether the entrepreneur identified the company as a family business. Three entrepreneur-related characteristics were controlled. Age was controlled because it can be expected to influence both exit intentions and work ability. Gender is an important role, and prior research has shown that men and women develop different work and non-work role identities. College education was controlled because college-educated and non-college- educated entrepreneurs likely face different work demands and resources, influencing work ability. The demographic controls (age, gender, and college education of the entrepreneur; personnel and family business status of the firm) were collected during the first wave. All other variables were collected longitudinally. 3.2 Analytical strategy The data were analysed with mixed-effects ordinal logistic regression because the authors expect work ability to have a nonlinear effect such that there are little differences between high levels of work ability (work ability is sufficient and little changes make no difference) and between low levels of work ability (exit becomes a dominant outcome well before reaching complete inability to work). Further, while exit status is a continuum from not considering an exit to starting an exit to completing an exit, considering these as equally spaced is unrealistic. Starting an exit requires a mental commitment and is thus closer to being exited than not considering an exit. All independent variables were lagged by one year to consider the possible reverse causality. Cluster robust standard errors were used to account for the possibility that the error term might be autocorrelated over time and year fixed-effects to control for the effects of the COVID pandemic and other global trends. Testing the third hypothesis requires a model where perceived work ability and general life satisfaction interact. However, the authors suspected that the effects of negative ends of satisfaction would be stronger than positive ends. Because theory provides little explicit guidance on choosing a functional form, it was discovered empirically (R€ onkk€ oet al., 2022). To do so, the authors rounded the life satisfaction variable to whole numbers and estimated a categorical interaction model providing a separate effect of work ability for each life satisfaction level. This analysis revealed little differences between the high valuesof life satisfaction, but the effect started to change more radically in the lower values of life satisfaction. Thus, the life satisfaction variable was log-transformed to model large effects for smaller values. 4. Results Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics and correlations. The mean age was about 64.5 years, which means that, on average, the informants are past the standard retirement age in Finland, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research 267 Mean SD Min Max 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. Exit status (tþ1) 1.10 0.67 0 2 1 2. Life satisfaction 5.35 0.97 1 7 0.09 1 3. Work ability 7.53 1.32 1 10 0.09 0.27** 1 4. Firm performance 3.57 0.54 1.5 5 0.03 0.39** 0.17** 1 5. Firm size 2.68 0.92 1 5 0.22** 0.04 0.07 0.13** 1 6. Family business 0.78 0.41 0 1 0.17** 0.05 0.03 0.00 0.06 1 7. Age 64.52 3.47 54 77 0.08 0.06 0.06 0.10 0.11* 0.18** 1 8. Gender 1.82 0.39 1 2 0.04 0.15** 0.12* 0.14** 0.16** 0.06 0.01 1 9. College education 0.27 0.45 0 1 0.02 0.02 0.12* 0.09 0.04 0.15** 0.08 0.08 1 Note(s): Gender: 1 5female, 2 5male. 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(2022), “Preretirement resources and postretirement life satisfaction change trajectory: examining the mediating role of retiree experience during retirement transition phase”,Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 108 No. 5, pp. 871-888, doi: 10.1037/apl0001043. Appendix The exit status measures Have you recently implemented changes to the ownership structure of your firm? Choose the option that best matches the current situation: (1) No, and there are no plans for them in the coming years (2) Not yet, but I am planning to terminate the company’s operations and/or liquidate the company’s assets (3) Not yet, but succession arrangements are currently underway (4) Not yet, but owner change arrangements are currently underway (5) Yes, a generational change has been implemented in the company (6) Yes, I have sold all or most of the company’s operations (7) Yes, I have sold all or most of the company’s share capital (8) I have terminated the company’s operations and/or realized the company’s assets Corresponding author Mikko R€ onkk€ o can be contacted at: [email protected] For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website: www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm Or contact us for further details: [email protected] IJEBR 30,11 278