Entrepreneurs’ ability to pivot—to reorientate their venture’s strategic direction in response to feedback—is often crucial to the survival of new ventures, especially when facing external crises. However, not all entrepreneurs pivot in response to adversity and the factors enabling such adaptive behavior are unclear. We identify eudaimonic well-being (EWB) as a psychological resource that can facilitate such behaviour and investigate its influence on entrepreneurial pivoting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on two studies, one using a multi-country panel dataset and the other a field survey, we show that during the pandemic EWB had an inverted U-shaped relationship with pivoting; higher EWB increased the likelihood of pivoting to a point, beyond which greater levels of EWB reduced the likelihood of pivoting. Our findings also show that external financial resources (i.e., bank loans and government subsidies) reduced the negative effect of high levels of EWB on pivoting. We discuss implications of our findings for research on pivoting, entrepreneurial wellbeing, and entrepreneurial resources.
