Strategies That Make Entrepreneurs Sucessful On A Second Business Launch

Strategies That Make Entrepreneurs Sucessful

On A Second Business Launch

Section 1: Foundation of the Study

The Small Business Administration (2014) reported that 50% of new

small business launch attempts survive 5 years or more and 33.3% continue

operating for 10 years or longer. In 2014, 470,736 businesses closed as

opposed to 409,040 starting in the same year (Administration, 2014). The

statistics indicate the high rate of entrepreneurial failure and highlight the

need to prepare entrepreneurs to press on to attempt a second launch

(Hayward, Forster, Sarasvathy, & Fredrickson, 2010). The statistics give an

accounting for small business failure; they do not explain the uncertainty and

understanding of strategies used by successful second-time small business

owners.

Background of the Problem

The uncertainty of what contributes to entrepreneurs’ success on a

second business launch attempt is an important issue in U.S. society

(Administration, 2014). Determining the strategies, processes, and practices

used by successful second-time business owners may show repetitive

behaviors (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011). Hambrick and Meinz (2011) reported

that successful second-time business owners develop the necessary

characteristics by working on their businesses more than others. Similar to

medical students who transition from novice to expert through deliberate

practice and experience, entrepreneurs move from novice to expert through

trial and error (Bate, Hommes, Duvivier, & Taylor, 2013). My study

revealed that some entrepreneurs achieved business success after their first

launch because of the experience gained from their first failed business

attempt.

Hayward et al. (2010) observed that the information gap concerning

highly confident entrepreneurs who rebound to start another venture is

limited. Previous business owners’ lived experiences and second launch

successes lack documentation, particularly in the context of entrepreneurial

theory. Gompers, Kovner, Lerner, and Scharfstein (2010) examined the

perspective of performance persistence of first-time entrepreneurs’ success,

noting that entrepreneurs who previously failed had a higher chance of

succeeding. Kirschenhofer and Lechner (2012) argued that second-time

entrepreneurial experience provided positive effects on the entrepreneur’s

performance. I explored what successful second-time business owners had

learned by eliciting information about their lived experiences relative to their

skills, proficiencies, and knowledge gained through self-sustaining business

operations.

Problem Statement

The problem of business failure is clear as 470,736 businesses closed

in 2011 (Administration, 2014). Business owners who attempt a subsequent

business venture exhibit a lower failure rate (74.7%) than first-time owners

(79.1%) (Gompers et al., 2010). Successful second-time entrepreneurs who

failed in a previous attempt try to implement new practices learned from

their errors (Parker, 2013; Sarasvathy, Menon, & Kuechle, 2013). The

general business problem is that many small businesses fail within 5 years of

start-up. The specific business problem is that some small business owners

lack strategies to succeed in a small business after a first failed launch.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of the qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the

strategies used by successful second-time business owners after the first

failed business launch. The phenomenological study provided relevant

information from the lived experiences of 12 successful second-time

business owners who had maintained selfsustaining business operations for

least 5 years in Fairfax County, Virginia (Morris, Kuratko, Schindehutte, &

Spivack, 2012). Polkinghorne (1989) argued that five to 25 participants is

sufficient to achieve data saturation. The sample size was appropriate for my

study because a small number of second-time businesses survived beyond 5

years. Dworkin (2012) defined saturation as a standard point of reference in

gauging where the data collection process ceases to offer any different, new,

or relevant data. The qualitative phenomenological study was an attempt to

understand the learning experiences of successful second-time business

owners. I focused on the phenomenon from the successful second-time

business owners’ point of view. The study provided applicable ideas,

strategies, and actions that may promote the worth, dignity, well-being, and

development of individuals, communities, organizations, institutions, and

cultures.

Nature of the Study

The phenomenological research design aligned well with the purpose

of this study because a qualitative approach can be used to explore

successful strategies of business owners (Moustakas, 1994; Sefiani, 2013).

The qualitative method seemed the most appropriate for the study because it

allowed for analysis and interpretation of nonverbal communication with

structural information that led to thicker descriptions, thereby increasing the

ability to reach saturation (Onwuegbuzie & Byers, 2014). Qualitative

research by definition is exploratory (Bluhm, Harman, Lee, & Mitchell,

2011). This method is used when the researcher does not know what to

expect; rather, the researcher needs to explore why choices were made

(Chenail, 2011b). This qualitative study addressed the successful second-

time business owners’ lived experiences without focusing on outcomes

(Cope, 2011). The qualitative approach is used to bring research closer to the

practitioners who can use it to improve their own practice (Major & Savin-

Baden, 2011).

The quantitative research method is used to measure projectable

results or expectations. Anyab (2013) argued that quantitative researchers

focus on numerical expressions of data. Williams (2011) noted that

quantitative research starts with a hypothesis and is used to explain a

particular problem or situation with specific outcomes of specific numbers

and objective data. Given this emphasis, the quantitative method was

inappropriate for my study because quantitative analysis would not have

allowed for the exploration of the lived experiences of successful second-

time business owners. When using a quantitative method, the researcher is

not a participant, but rather an observer. A mixed-methods approach was not

appropriate for the study because it also includes a quantitative component

(Wisdom, Cavaleri, Onwuegbuzie, & Green, 2012).

Specifically, I used a transcendental phenomenological design

including semistructured interviews and the modified Van Kaam method to

identify themes (Higgs, Cherry, Macklin, & Ajjawi, 2010; Moustakas,

1994). The inferences and implications obtained from successful second-

time business owners will contribute to an understanding of the phenomenon

being addressed in this study. I examined the problem from all sides,

describing the phenomenon according to the lived experiences of the owners

(Moustakas, 1994). I considered other designs such as ethnography,

grounded theory, case studies, and narrative search (Petty, Thomson, &

Stew, 2012). I chose the transcendental phenomenological design because it

is human centered rather than method centered, focusing on the essence of

experiences, practices, and strategies used by successful second-time

business owners (Van Kaam, 1966).

Research Question

The overarching research question was the following: What strategies

do business owners use to help them succeed in a second launch attempt?

Ibrahim (2011) stated that a research question should lead the researcher in

finding or discovering a solution to a problem. Cope (2011) argued that

semistructured interviews should begin with a broadbased question such as

please tell me about your experience of having a successful venture.

Interview Questions

I asked the following open-ended questions to answer the research

question:

•Please explain your life experiences, attitudes, and circumstances

that relate to business and financial strategies o in your first business

attempt; o in your second business attempt.

•Please provide an account of the business and human barriers you

encountered o in your first business attempt; o in your second

business attempt. o How did you overcome these barriers?

•Please describe any significant changes in the business environment

that affected your business success o in your first business attempt;

o in your second business attempt.

•Please describe any strategies that you believe may have contributed

to your business success in your second business attempt.

•Is there anything else you can tell me that you think is important

about why you succeeded in your second business attempt?

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework offered a critical lens through which I

explored second-time business owners’ success strategies. The framework

for constructing the strategies was based on Cantillon’s theory of

entrepreneurship (Cantillon, 1755/2010). The theory addressed the

independent actors who bear the risk of losing the cost of the product bought

at a certain price, expecting to sell it at a profit sometime in the future

(Cantillon, 1755/2010). Brown and Thornton (2013) noted that Cantillon’s

theory of entrepreneurship focuses on human actions and functions, not the

personality of the entrepreneur, because it includes production, distribution,

creation of new ventures, and supply and demand. (Cantillon, 1755/2010).

described the key propositions underlying the theory of entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneurs (a) function by bearing risk, (b) understand uncertainty of

change and risk, (c) bear the intrinsic value of the opportunity cost of

making goods and products, and (d) understand the basic economic concepts

of supply and demand to deal with changing situations.

I applied the key propositions of this theory to the exploration of

successful second-time business owners’ perceptions and experiences. The

framework allowed me to use theoretically and conceptually defensible

positions in exploring second-time business owners’ lived experiences. The

framework offered a lens for viewing the phenomenon, developing the

research question, reviewing the literature, and analyzing the experiences of

second-time business owners with credibility and transferability.

Operational Definitions

Business owner: A person with prior minority or majority business

ownership experience who currently owns equity in an independent business

(Westhead, Ucbasaran, & Wright, 2009).

Company age: The number of years since the business began

operation (Simiyu & Huo, 2013).

Entrepreneur: An individual who starts, manages, and organizes a

business for the purpose of profit and growth (Storey, 2011).

Habitual entrepreneurs: Those who have returned to entrepreneurship

after exiting a first successful business and having had an interlude with

another employment or a nonemployment opportunity (Amaral, Baptista, &

Lima, 2011).

Lived experience: The cumulative series of interdependent actions,

which takes on properties rooted in affect and emotion of the entrepreneur’s

cognitive state that holds significant implications (Morris et al., 2012).

Owner experience: Events that include lived efforts and practices

devoted to the traits and characteristics of owners, and how owners have

been affected by business outcomes (Sarasvathy et al., 2013).

Prior business ownership: Owners’ lived experiences including the

development of skills and knowledge obtained from operating other

entrepreneurial endeavors (Coad, Frankish, Roberts, & Storey, 2012).

Serial entrepreneur: A person who starts multiple successful

businesses after leaving the first successful launch attempt (Hayward et al.,

2010).

Successful business owner: A person with prior or significant business

ownership experience who makes an average profit consecutively for 5 years

(Kreft & Sobel, 2005).

Assumptions, Limitations, and Delimitations

Assumptions

Hancock and Algozzine (2006) defined assumptions as preliminary

beliefs made about the study in general. Qualitative research includes several

assumptions including bracketing of the researcher’s biases. I focused on

bracketing fundamental attribution error, anchoring bias, and progression

bias. Fundamental attribution error is a tendency for people to overvalue

personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others and

undervalue situational factors when assessing the same factors in themselves

(Fiore, 2012). Progression imaging bias involves sharing one’s current

emotional states, thoughts, and values (Moreira, 2013). Anchoring bias

refers to heavy reliance on one trait or piece of information when making

decisions (Silva (2015).

I also assumed that business owners learned from failure and from

their lived experiences (Tripathi & Sethi, 2014) Next, I assumed that 25

successful second-time business owners would be willing to participate in

my study . In addition, I assumed successful second-time business owners

would provide information regarding their perceptions and experiences.

Finally, I assumed successful second-time business owners would provide

reliable and honest feedback during the interviews.

Limitations

Hancock and Algozzine (2006) defined limitations as factors that

may affect the results of the study and that are beyond the control of the

researcher. Limitations common to transcendental phenomenological studies

include access to, recruitment of, and connections with gatekeepers

(Namageyo-Funa et al., 2014). The 12 participants possessed their own

biases about the strategies used to succeed after the first failed launch

attempt. The owners’ biases may have caused them to overstate or

misrepresent their perceptions and experiences of the strategies needed to

succeed. Markova, Perry, and Farmer (2011) reported that data can satisfy

some conditions, but may not satisfy other conditions for making inferences

or implications for a larger population. Human behavior might have caused

participants to provide answers to questions based on inference rather than

real experience. Goldblatt, Karnieli-Miller, and Neumann (2011) highlighted

a case in which the participant seemed to try to please the researcher. My

study’s trustworthiness depended on identifying and understanding recurring

credible lived experiences of successful second-time business owners via

aggregated themes.

Delimitations

Hancock and Algozzine (2006) defined delimitations as the

boundaries of research that include the questions explored and a brief

description of its characteristics. I focused only on the successful second-

time business owners’ lived experiences and their practices used in obtaining

success. The study included 12 successful second-time business owners,

which might not have provided a broad enough view of the specific problem.

Additionally, the geographical area might not be sufficient to provide

generalizable insight.

Significance of the Study

Small businesses perform a crucial role in economic growth, social

investment, and job creation when entrepreneurs explore new opportunities

and exploit gaps provided by new regulatory changes (Welter, 2011). Small

businesses participate at the local, state, and federal level by contributing to

employment opportunities necessary for regional growth and community

development. These opportunities generate income and ultimately reduce

poverty (Jasra, Khan, Hunjra, Rehman, & Azam, 2011). This study provided

a possible solution to reverse the current attrition trends of business

ownership and may influence the success of the small business community.

Providing an understanding of how successful second-time business owners

succeeded in next ventures may benefit the business community through

scholarly research, literature, information on business practices, and new

ways to enhance policy governing small businesses.

The key objective of this study was to achieve beneficial results

through the exploration of successful second-time business owners’ lived

experiences. I reviewed the literature on this phenomenon to provide an

understanding of the participants’ viewpoints and social realities in the form

of facts about successful second-time business ownership. I elicited

information that would expand the literature on how successful second-time

business owners acquired skills and knowledge through deliberate

investment in strategies that helped them succeed. Addressing this gap in the

body of knowledge may improve business practices of venture capitalists,

innovators, scholarly practitioners, and small business owners. I took

significant steps to understand the undocumented processes and effective

practices of successful second-time business owners who experienced

success after an experience of failure (Campitelli & Gobet, 2011). The

knowledge obtained from gathering data from the business owners and

exploring successful practices may aid in reducing opportunity costs

(Cantillon, 2010). Consequently, this study addressed the gap in the body of

knowledge, which may allow for improvements in small business policy and

may effect positive social change to enhance the small business community.

The study’s findings may have implication for positive social change

by promoting the success of communities, organizations, institutions,

cultures, and societies. Positive social change results in the improvement of

human and social conditions to (a) change the number of successes and

failures of small businesses, (b) increase the research on what strategies

helped successful second-time business owners after the first failed launch

attempt, and (c) expand the payrolls of existing business owners (Stolarick,

Lobo, & Strumsky, 2011).

Successful business owners often promote social change by driving

the economy and remaking communities (Desai & Reighard, 2012).

Successful second-time business owners enhance urban life by decreasing

poverty and providing workable solutions for the poor (Miller, Wesley, &

Williams, 2012). Successful business owners contribute to an increase in net

employment, with the increase in jobs resulting in an overall positive effect

on the community (Stolarick et al., 2011).

A Review of the Professional and Academic Literature

The literature review focuses on professional and academic research

aligned with the theories in the transcendental phenomenological conceptual

framework and the research question. The research question guided me in

eliciting information on what strategies successful second-time business

owners used to succeed after their first failed launch attempt. The scholarly

literature review included researching and analyzing studies, scholarly

articles, books, dissertations, and other publications pertaining to the

strategies contributing to business owners’ success.

The literature in this section includes peer-reviewed articles and

information found in databases and applications such as ProQuest,

Academic Search Complete, Business and Management, and Google

Scholar. Business databases and applications provided the seminal work and

empirical data for this literature review. I used the following key words for

locating the scholarly data for the literature review: history, successful

business operations, successful second-time business owners, subsequent

ventures, second launch attempt, and prior business owners. I examined 160

peerreviewed journals articles and seminal literature and included 63 peer-

reviewed sources in the literature review. I included 137 (85%) peer-

reviewed articles and seminal references published within 5 years of the

chief academic offer’s approval of my study.

I organized the data in the following categories: (a) history, (b) prior

business experiences, (c) learning, (d) ideology and theory, (e) culture of

owners, (f) leadership, (g) successes, and (h) failure. The existing literature

for the study focused on successful owners’ enterprise operation, classifying

the owners in either novice or habitual (serial or portfolio) categories (Plehn-

Dujowich, 2010). Novice business owners are individuals who have

attempted and launched a business for the first time (Chen, 2013). Habitual

owners have experienced sequential or second business launch attempts

(PlehnDujowich, 2010). Portfolio owners operate multiple business ventures

concurrently and try to form alliances with other businesses (Robson, 2012).

The conceptual basis for the study relied on the premise that failure

informs success, and the longevity of successful businesses emerges from

making an average profit consecutively for 5 years (Kreft & Sobel, 2005).

The importance of the notion that failure informs success relates to

successful second-time business owners’ lived experiences given the

minimum of 5 years of experience after first and second launch attempts.

Westhead et al. (2009) found that owners with prior business ownership

experience accumulate knowledge and skills gained through their business

experiences.

Business experience and entrepreneurs’ learning from prior launch

attempts coincide with social learning theory, which addresses how people

learn by doing (Wang & Chugh, 2014). While the current scholarly literature

addressed the contributing factors associated with business owners, it also

failed to address information on lived experiences of successful second-time

business owners.

History

In 1755, Cantillon (as cited in Bula, 2012) identified the key economic

strategies associated with the theory of entrepreneurship. Brown and

Thornton (2013) addressed the pivotal roles of Cantillon’s theory: (a) plans

economic geography based on the size and location of a village to make

production decisions; (b) actions intrinsic value based on opportunity costs

and market prices, which yields either a profit or loss; and (c) constraints

labor markets that possess skilled labor represent an opportunity in time cost

to training and risk of learning. The constructs of this theory of

entrepreneurship provided a lens for assessing small businesses owners’

skills, strategies, and business characteristics to run successful businesses

(Unger, Rauch, Frese, & Rosenbusch, 2011). For example, Yallapragada

(2011) argued that many small business owners lack the management and

business skills and competencies to prevent their businesses from failing.

Dyer and Ross (2008) explained that many owners are upbeat by the idea of

starting a business and establishing the business without fully considering

entrepreneurial theories and frameworks.

Herbert and Link (2011) argued that Cantillon is worth

acknowledging for his efforts in inventing the term entrepreneur. Brown and

Thornton (2013) argued that Cantillon’s broad experience as an entrepreneur

guided him to a theory of the entrepreneur that influenced the constructs of

economic theory. Cantillon’s premise defined risk as an entrepreneur’s

willingness to buy at certain prices today and sell at uncertain prices

tomorrow (Herbert & Link, 2011). Brown and Thornton (2013) discussed

Cantillion’s theory of the entrepreneur from the point of view that this was

one aspect among many, but with significance placed on a foundation that

Cantillion understood economic phenomena.

Herbert and Link (2011) described Knight’s entrepreneurship

concepts as the riskbearing theory focusing on risk and uncertainty, which

allows entrepreneurs to predict future successes. Wu and Huarng (2015)

argued that entrepreneurship plays a critical role in creating value,

generating wealth, and maintaining job security. Andrade, Ben, and Sanna

(2015) described entrepreneurship as the business or development of

something generating benefits to individuals and society. Castaño, Méndez,

and Galindo (2015) argued that entrepreneurship is slowly changing to an

engine for job creation and economic growth.

Fiet, Norton, and Clouse (2012) studied entrepreneurship alertness to

learned expertise for wealth-making opportunities from repeatedly

successful entrepreneurs. Knaup (2005) examined repeated success in the

form of entrepreneurs’ ability or inability to replicate their success or launch

a single venture that could survive 5 years. Through interviewing second-

time business owners whose business had survived five years, I attempted to

characterize how failure informs success and how expertise drives business

opportunities and ideas. The information gained from business owners’ prior

experiences may help in training and educating other business owners (Jones

& Matlay, 2011).

Prior Business Experience

The prior business experiences of entrepreneurs represent a temporal,

chronological, time-based, sequential, progressively historical, activist,

worldly, earthly, secular, and lay experience (Morris et al., 2012). Likewise,

the volume, velocity, and volatility of recovering from and emerging from

failure represent a distinctive learning process fostering a high order of

cognitive learning skills and positive outcomes (Cope, 2011). The

characteristics of previous owners’ business experiences differ through

interacting events varying in volume, velocity, and volatility (Morris et al.,

2012). As a result, someone might ask if business owners understanding of

their learning from prior experiences can be explored by listening to their

lived experiences, facts, and ideas translated, interpreted, and described from

the main ideas of this study.

Gabrielsson and Politis (2012) argued that prior start-up experience

matters for entrepreneurs’ learning and may benefit the development of

successful second-time entrepreneurs’ wealth making. The definitions of

experience in accordance with the following researchers are (a) owners’

ability to acquire knowledge and skills to move back and forth between the

general and the particular and to adapt an understanding of general business

practices (Floyd, 2014), (b) owners’ previous practices that culminated in the

owners’ activities over their business career (Shane, 2012), (c) owners’ skills

in implementing successful business models based on opportunities for

sustainable entrepreneurship (Kuckertz & Wagner, 2010), (d) direct

reflection and participation in business activities associated with business

(Kempster & Cope, 2010), and (e) a livedthrough event in which the owners

actively participated in the phenomenon (Morris et al., 2012).

Prior business experience and observations of business activities might

provide a context for studying successful second-time business owners

(Morris et al., 2012). Ucbasaran, Westhead, and Wright (2009) argued that

habitual owners who cited prior business experience seemed to identify more

opportunities than novices because they learned from their prior business

experiences, developing motivation for subsequent ventures. Alstete (2008)

interviewed 149 small businesses owners about entrepreneurial success and

found the entrepreneurs enjoyed the financial benefits, autonomy, liberty,

career fulfillment, and control; however, owners believed hard work and

long hours, stress, risk, and lack of company benefits have decreased the

numbers of successful entrepreneurs. Parker (2013) found that serial

entrepreneurs run better-performing businesses after experiencing failure.

Parker argued that serial entrepreneurs benefit more from unsuccessful prior

failures.

Most entrepreneurs’ venture creating experiences are created over

time. Entrepreneurs’ ongoing experiences build on previous practices and

successful ventures (Morris et al., 2012). Cope (2011) constructed a

metacognitive interplay of cognitiveaffective and physiological elements in

an entrepreneur’s successful venture as a journey transcending the

entrepreneur’s critical thinking concerns when beginning the venture. Morris

et al. (2012) concluded the entrepreneurs’ venture creation experience

possessed a number of characteristics, as shown in Table 1. Entrepreneurs

adapt, assimilate, and accommodate based on each and from each

performance based on their prior venture creations.

Table 1

Venture Creation Experiences

Characteristic Description

Temporal

dynamics

Over time, prior entrepreneurs experienced events

advocating learned proficiencies or conditioning

provided business gains through previous venture

practices (Morris et al., 2012)

Learning about

learning

Successful second-time business owners’ metacognition

and confidence from prior ventures might help in

determining how to recover from failure and learn

strategies, processes, and other knowledge required for a

successful business venture (Hayward et al., 2010;

Morris et al., 2012)

Event

interpretation

Entrepreneurs adapt to each performance based on their

prior venture creations, and critical thought processing

offers an effective response based on previous

interpretations of failed or

successful attempts (Morris et al., 2012)

Volatility

Entrepreneurs find the experience of interacting with

each event presenting a new dimension into the

experience brought on by the highs and lows in each

new event (Morris et al., 2012)

Decision-making

bias

Bias occurs under circumstances such as acts of

overconfidence, familiarity, and comfort, which hinders

owners’ ability to identify new opportunities (Ucbasaran

et al., 2009)

Opportunity

recognition

Entrepreneurs encounter considerable ambiguity

surrounding what and how to develop, accomplish, and

improve the understanding of opportunity identification.

Prior business ownership experience helps to translate

knowledge into tangible innovations and practical

solutions contributing to economic and social

development (Ucbasaran et al., 2009)

Volume

The entrepreneur must play multiple

roles involving different skills including creating,

negotiating, mentoring, allocation, and selling (Morris et

al., 2012)

Velocity Rate of experience processing impacts who the

entrepreneur becomes and what he or she creates

(Morris et al., 2012)

Ideology and Theory

The theory of entrepreneurship focuses on the relationships among

different inputs, processes, and outputs of entrepreneurial activities

characterizing the factors surrounding entrepreneurial discovery and

exploitation (Plummer & Acs, 2012). Success is defined as outcomes tied to

the ideology and theory, which affect successful secondtime business

owners’ ability to learn (Parker, 2013). Success might be measured in an

entrepreneur’s ability to make the inputs and outputs easier to understand by

others, the quality of being correct while understanding other views, and

quality of being specific, definite, and detailed in making decisions while

minimizing biases. Theories provide lenses for viewing work, developing

literature, and providing the significance for studying successful second-time

business owners.

Simón-Moya, Revuelto-Taboada, and Ribeiro-Soriano (2012)

analyzed the entrepreneur’s education, experience, and motivation as key

success factors for survival. Osman, Rashid, Ahmad, and Hussain (2011)

examined Schumpeter’s concepts of creative destruction and

entrepreneurship theory that stressed organizational roles. The intent of my

study was to advance the concepts found in the theory of entrepreneurship

by exploring successful second-time business owners’ lived experiences to

add clarity to the phenomenon. The constructs from the theory will provide

lenses to explore each participant’s strategies and the factors associated with

successful second-time business owners’ values and principles (Cope, 2011).

The lens or propositions of the entrepreneur theory are understandable

when one considers risk. Economic theorists stressed studying commercial

activities such as buying at certain prices and selling at an uncertain price is

an example of Cantillion first proposition (Long, 1983). Cantillon (as cited

in (Link & Scott, 2010) believed in uncertainty and monetary theories,

which led to his writing in establishing the entrepreneurial foundation of

understanding uncertainty of change and risk (2nd proposition). Heuer Jr

(1999); Ucbasaran, Shepherd, Lockett, and Lyon (2012) defined uncertainty

as the condition allowing for the most likely known results when there is an

absence of evidence or evidence of uncertain accuracy suggesting that the

likelihood of an unknown particular result may happen (e.g., future success

of a business). The framework offered a lens for viewing the phenomenon,

developing the research question, reviewing the literature, and analyzing the

experiences of second-time business owners.

Jean Baptist Say (as cited in (Bula, 2012) advanced Cantillon’s

original work by seeing the entrepreneur as the main agent of production in

the economy. Herbert and Link (2011) described the term agent as an

entrepreneur who brings business people together to build a product.

However, Long (1983) argued that few entrepreneurs possess sufficient

combination of talents and attributes to operate successful entrepreneurship.

Herbert and Link (2011) noted that entrepreneurs must have the talent to

procure capital, knowledge of the world, the talent of predictability and

anticipation of bearing the risk of opportunity cost of providing goods,

service, and products with a desire to earn a profit, a tolerance for accuracy,

and the ability to calculate the change of a product or service for determining

its value.

Entrepreneurial change promotes the key success factors in framing

the successful second-time business owners’ experience (Morris et al.,

2012). Plummer and Acs (2012) explained that entrepreneurship theory

emphasizes entrepreneur learning as the creation of new firms from

knowledge generated by the owner of existing firms. Future events in

successful entrepreneurship are a core concept of Marshall (2009) theory of

entrepreneurship, based on the entrepreneurs’ alertness, sense of proportion,

the strength of reasoning, coordination, innovation, and willingness to take

on risk and uncertainty. Ramoglou and Zyglidopoulos (2015) believed that

the functions and methods that there is no barriers that prevent success but

one wishes and action that lead to successful entrepreneurial endeavors.

Lidén (2013) argued the consequences of a widened perspective described

the theory as the macro and micro solutions to the phenomenon of pursuing

sustainable solutions to social problems.

Cope (2011) characterized three phases of entrepreneurial learning

theory: (a) the aftermath of the failure and the enduring cost of failure, (b)

the recovery from failure and the learning processes which occur in

rehabilitating the owner, and (c) the re-emergence of the owner through

documenting the outcomes of learning from failure. Politis and Gabrielsson

(2009) addressed entrepreneurial learning as a continuous process for

success in starting and managing ventures. Tseng (2013) identified five

points of selfdirected learning against failure: (a) opportunity recognition

and experience, (b) how to start-up a new venture, (c) how to develop self-

efficacy, critical thinking, and reflection among individuals, (d) self-

regulation, and (e) life cycle learning.

Culture

Business culture is the head, heart, and soul of small businesses and

drives owners’ passion (Rosenfeld, 2012). Ray Kroc, a businessman, the

creator of McDonald’s chain of restaurants had a passion for hamburgers

and Herb Kelleher, the co-founder of Southwest Airlines, developed a

corporate culture of success (Cardon, Gregoire, Stevens, & Patel, 2012).

Entrepreneurial passion coincides and links with the entrepreneur’s cultural

for sense making. Sense-making provides the process in which entrepreneurs

extrapolate data, give meaning to their prior experiences and previous launch

attempts (Cardon, Stevens, & Potter, 2011).

The culture of small business owners includes long hours, hard work,

and a passion for succeeding. Ucbasaran, Westhead, Wright, and Flores

(2010) have argued that entrepreneurial experience caused some business

owners who experienced business failure to have less enthusiasm for starting

a second business venture. The premise that failure informs success may

shape entrepreneurs’ chances of survival after failed launch attempt (Yang &

Aldrich, 2012). Hence, scholars have studied how business owners adapt

their experiences and optimism for success because of business failure.

Ucbasaran et al. (2010) surveyed 576 entrepreneurs about the idea of

sequential entrepreneurship ventures and how difficult it might be to adjust

to starting sequential ventures after a failed launch attempt. Misfortunes and

mistakes happen, including to entrepreneurs, but successful entrepreneurs

seem to find meaning in their prior experiences by making sense of their

failure (Cardon et al., 2011). Business owners’ perception of their

misfortunes might not equate to either good or bad experiences, but rather to

key contributions in understanding recovery and learning from failure

(Cardon et al., 2011; Cope, 2011). The results from the survey of 576

entrepreneurs found that experience with business failure related to

entrepreneurs who are less likely to report their hopefulness and confidence

about future successful future outcomes for other launch attempts

(Ucbasaran et al., 2010).

Leadership

Entrepreneurs’ leadership most closely resembles the team concept of

one leader and members (Carland & Carland, 2012). Military leaders learned

from the failure of other leaders and sought not to repeat their predecessor’s

mistakes (Frese & Keith, 2015). The overwhelming stereotype for

exceptional leaders is individuals who influenced and guided businesses,

organizations, and military units. Carland and Carland (2012) stated that a

stereotype about leaders is that they are beloved by all because of their

performance. Clearly, then, failure may unfold as an integral part of the

entrepreneurial process of learning (Olaison & Sørensen, 2014).

Shared leadership finds its basis in collaboration, interactions, and

relationship with a single leader at the top of the hierarchy (Carland &

Carland, 2012). Military organizations and units use a single leadership

structure. Entrepreneurs like George Merck, David Packard, and Walt

Disney were leaders of prominent companies because, even today, their

businesses have maintained a status of greatness (Hayward et al., 2010).

Collins (2005) studied 1,435 successful organizations between 1965

and 1995 and he identified 11 companies designed to endure and last. This

concept defined leadership as a means of achieving business results and

raising an awareness of business leadership characteristics that owners and

managers may find beneficial in running a successful business venture

(Udani & Lorenzo-Molo, 2013). Collins (2005) performed both qualitative

and quantitative analyses to identify organizations with level five leaders

(see Table 2). The definition of a level five leader coincides with a person

who builds enduring greatness.

Table 2

Five Levels of Being a Leader

Level Title Definition

Five Executive Builds enduring greatness through a

combination of personal humility

plus professional will

Four Effective Leader Catalyzes commitment to and

vigorous pursuit of a clear and

compelling vision stimulates the

group to high-performance

standards

Three Competent Manger Organizes people and resources

toward the effective and efficient

pursuit of predetermined objectives

Two Contributing Team

Member Contributes to the achievement for

group objectives; work effectively

with others in a group setting

One Highly capable individual Makes productive contributions

through talent, knowledge, skills,

and good work habits

Collins (2005) argued that an owner‘s level five leadership styles

included the following characteristics: (a) characterizing first who, (b)

Stockdale’s paradox, (c) building up break- through flywheel, (d) the

hedgehog concept, (e) technology accelerators, (f) a culture of discipline, (g)

compelling modesty, (h) an unwavering resolve, (i) the window and the

mirror, and (j) born or bred. Table 3 contains a detailed description of each

of the characteristics. The outlined characteristics might justify why a

confident first-time owner seems better positioned for a second launch

attempt (Hayward et al., 2010).

The overconfidence among owners who have second launch attempts

seems to persist, correlating to a single leader model within entrepreneurship

theory (Hayward et al., 2010). Langowitz and Allen (2010) studied 151 chief

executives’ leadership characteristics via the categories of proactive

behavior, strategic posture, and firms’ structure, finding no managerial

differences between founder and non-founder in leadership style. The role of

collective efficacy in the relationship between transformational leadership

and work outcomes exhibited by overconfident entrepreneurs follow the

evidence that previous business attempts may provide valuable experience

(Carter & Greer, 2013; Hayward et al., 2010). Previous business owners may

have built their leadership characteristics on valuable resources, such as

trust, regardless of whether they were the organization’s founder or non-

founder (Langowitz & Allen, 2010).

Table 3

Level Five Descriptions Style

Level five leader

characteristics

Description

(a) Who is first Vision and strategy first - People second

(b) Stockdale’s paradox Life cannot be any worse at the moment, and life

someday will be better than ever

breakthrough flywheel

Keep pushing until perpetual motion kicks in and

finding the breakthrough point

(d) The hedgehog concept Three intersection circles connecting what a

leader does well:

•What is the company best at?

•How does the company’s economy work

best?

•What are the passions of the people?

(e) Technology

accelerators

Inconsistencies and disruptive innovations

(f) A culture of discipline, Disciplined people: No need for hierarchical

assembly Disciplined thought: No need for

government

Disciplined action: No need for regulators

(g) Compelling modesty

Never be boastful – create results and provide

resolutions

(h) An unwavering

resolve Set up successors for greatness

(I) The window and the

mirror

Never blame other people, factors or bad luck

(j) Born or bred Practice and implement level one through

The relationship between leadership styles and responsibilities of

managing successful second-time organizations may lie with stronger and

more positive transformational and transactional leadership styles versus

laissez-faire leadership styles (Valdiserri & Wilson, 2010). A high-quality

relationship may exist in transactional and laissez-faire styles influencing

strategic leadership choice and organizational outcomes of successful

second-time business owners (Carter & Greer, 2013). Context and leadership

go beyond conventional leadership theories in embedding leadership within

a broader set of relationships and leadership analysis within the

organizational domain (Valdiserri & Wilson, 2010).

Prominent leaders have personal and positional power, which includes

influence in driving the business organizational culture for building

(working on versus working in business) a sustainable business (Desai &

Reighard, 2012). Tihula and Huovinen (2010) argued that first-time

entrepreneurs might influence others to adapt and how to do it, along with

the process of facilitating individuals and collective efforts to accomplish the

firm’s objectives. Successful firms’ objectives related to the human

cognitive analysis of organization change leading to possible outcomes from

working together in close relationships and sharing ideas between

organizational leadership (Kivipõld & Vadi, 2013). Cross-coordination

behavior in performing staff work may provide leaders with the ability to

adjust their leadership styles based on situational recognition and problem

solving (Desai & Reighard, 2012).

Kaiser, Craig, Overfield, and Yarborough (2011) explained that

researchers have developed contextual and multilevel theories of leadership

and problem solving to improve (a) hierarchical level, (b) operationalizing

the complexities, (c) leader’s research, and (d) communications through

networking. The contextual theories explained how leaders develop and

learn about the network and relationship after venture failures (Cope, 2011).

Organizational leaders can use competition or disruptive innovations as the

status quo for an endless stream of new advantages (Holt, 2013). The

practical application of disruptive innovation crystallizes through

sustainability with the induction of the elements of contextual theories of

leadership (Parhankangas, McWilliams, & Shrader, 2014). Peter and James

(2013) described the successful entrepreneurs as enacting change with the

new society of organizations with creative, disruptive change. Popular

entrepreneurs who caused creative, disruptive change, included Steve Jobs,

Henry Ford, and Walt Disney, who took their learning experiences and self-

regulation to build great companies (Peter & James, 2013).

Holt (2013) described what popular entrepreneurs faced when trying

to create change to maintain a competitive advantage, which translated

value. Hall and Wagner (2012) discussed evoking Schumpeter’s concept of

disruptive innovation as a panacea leading new popular entrepreneurs to use

value as the driver of success. Osman et al. (2011) reported Schumpeter’s

concepts of creative destruction and entrepreneurship theory stressed

organizational roles such as an actor and initiator in the process of creating

the opportunities for value.

Berdychevsky and Gibson (2015) reported that transcendental

phenomenological action identifies the uniqueness of lived experiences

including epoche, vagueness, urgency, imaginative variations, and

uncertainty. The conceptual approach constructs textural descriptions of the

nomadic meanings of the business owners’ experiences to attain

transcendental phenomenological reduction (Berdychevsky & Gibson,

2015). The entrepreneurship and social learning theories helped to establish

the exploration of ideas and themes for this research study. Additionally, the

first-person accounts might aid in identifying the synthesis of leadership

characteristics and practices common to successful second-time business

owners.

Success

While business success was attributed to leadership characteristics,

cultural factors such as passion or historical perspectives, as Valdiserri and

Wilson (2010) pointed out, nine out of 10 small businesses survive for only

three years after launching. Scholars have constructed a theoretical

perspective of entrepreneurial success. Olaison and Sørensen (2014)

described entrepreneurial success in the terms of good failure (general

learning) and bad failure (entails no learning). Aldrich and Yang (2014)

argued that success depends on upon the entrepreneurs' skills and efficiency

in applying knowledge from prior ventures to current efforts. Bula (2012)

described entrepreneurship success as innovators who maximize

experiments to make a profit due to commitment, patience, and risk taking.

Palmås (2012) reassessed success through social theory with the use of

Joseph Schumpeter, viewing entrepreneurial success as a vast container

similar to society with sectors, space, norms, customs, habits, and traditions.

Ignoring the lack of sustainability of small business is no longer an

option. In terms of sustainable from business practices perspective,

sustainability requires respecting and satisfying the long run requirements of

employees as well as consumers and providing benefits to communities

(Parhankangas et al., 2014). With the high rate of failure of small businesses,

few entrepreneurs obtain a sustainable growth rate required to create a

completive advantage. Growth opportunities in the small business

community might focus on sustainability as a strategy for creating private

and social value for durable competitive advantage (Parhankangas et al.,

2014).

Entrepreneurs’ success finds its roots in an owner’s decision-making

style, experiences, and his or her optimism in succeeding. Murmann and

Sardana (2012) argued that successful entrepreneurs are distinguished from

unsuccessful entrepreneurs because successful owners vary their decision-

making styles, sometimes relying on heuristics or systematic analysis.

Uncertainty occurs in entrepreneurs’ decision-making activities to include

judgments, biases in opportunity recognition, and self-regulation of (a)

opportunity assessing decisions, (b) entrepreneurial decision to enter into an

opportunity, (c) decisions about exploiting opportunities, and (d)

entrepreneurial exit strategies (Shepherd, Williams, & Patzelt, 2014a).

Murmann and Sardana (2012) proposed a framework for successful

entrepreneurs in assessing their level of expertise in the following

characteristics: (a) entrepreneurial decision-making, (b) evaluating

intuitiveness and practical (“common sense”) views, (c) delegation, (d)

analysis, and (e) evaluation.

Failures

Cardon et al. (2011) reported that failure is a significant phenomenon

in entrepreneurship, and few have explored how entrepreneurs make sense

of venture failures. The Small Business Administration (SBA) reported that

50% of new small business launch attempts survive five years or more and

about 33.3% continue operating for 10 years or longer. In 2011, 470,736

businesses closed as opposed to 409,040 starting in the same year

(Administration, 2014). The statistics indicate the high rate of

entrepreneurial failure and highlight the need to prepare entrepreneurs to

press on to attempt a second launch (Hayward et al., 2010). With a third of

start-ups failing, there is a reason to conduct more studies on the perceived

causes of small business failure (Gaskil, Van, Howard, & Manning, 1993).

Arasti, Zandi, and Talebi (2012) explored the effect of individual human

factors such as the (a) skills, (b) capabilities, (c) motivation, and (d)

characteristics of successful business owners. Many perceived factors that

cause entrepreneurs to discontinue their business operations include (a)

decreases in effective managerial and planning functions, (b) working

capital management, (c) competitive environment, and (d) overexpansion of

the industry (Gaskil et al., 1993).

The entrepreneur learning experience includes failures and successes

(Olaison & Sørensen, 2014). Failure might contribute to the function of

entrepreneurs’ skills, the profitability of the industry, product line, business

quality, or entrepreneurs’ education. Plehn-Dujowich (2010) has argued that

entrepreneurs who have experienced discontinuance or failed launch

attempts might go on to manage businesses with multiple projects. Yang and

Aldrich (2012) applied entrepreneurship theory to clarify how entrepreneurs

are (a) constrained by initial founding conditions, (b) strained by

diversifying their efforts and innovative capabilities to adapt, and (c)

stressed to develop effective strategies for survival. Effective business

strategies might be tied to how well entrepreneurs maintain consistent

outcomes of exceptional quality and high skill (PlehnDujowich, 2010).

Parker (2013) argued that previous venturing might generate benefits

from one venture to subsequent ones. Cotterill (2012) performed a

comparative study of entrepreneurs’ attitudes and barriers related to

technology ventures failures. Hayward et al. (2010) argued that

entrepreneurs with previous failures might be more self-aware of the

necessary characteristics of success.

Cotterill (2012) described three main barriers for small-business

failures, namely, (a) personal characteristics, (b) managerial deficiencies,

and (c) financial shortcomings. Ucbasaran et al. (2012) examined the

processes and consequences of entrepreneurial failures, identifying the

influencing factors of failure, which consisted of costs, how entrepreneurs

made sense of and learned from failure, and the outcomes of business

failure, including recovery, as well as cognitive and behavioral outcomes.

Ucbasaran et al. (2012) examined the financial, social, and psychological

aspects of failure.

Transition

The review of past literature suggests a gap in the existing information

pertaining to successful second-time business owners. The results from my

analysis by the researcher helped in forming the premise failure informs the

success. The study may help readers to gain an understanding of successful

business strategies through the development of new principles, knowledge,

and the information obtained from interviewing successful second-time

business owners. I explored participants’ lived experiences and other

documented information obtained from books, journals, and governmental

information on business (Administration, 2011). Section 2 provides a

detailed overview of the qualitative phenomenological study and Moustakas

(1994) modified Van Kaam method for analyzing phenomenological data.

Section 2: The Project

This section presents the methodology and rationale for exploring why

some small business owners lack strategies to succeed after a first failed

launch. I also describe the purpose, role of the researcher, and participants.

Data collection and the validity strategies, analysis processes, and coding

techniques are described as well as the steps for addressing dependability,

credibility, transferability, and confirmability (Elo et al., 2014). I explored

the most effective occupational strategies leading to successful second-time

business ownership in Virginia. After coding and analyzing the data, I used

the modified Van Kaam method to guide the development of themes. The

information was analyzed using Moustakas (1994) modified Van Kaam

method.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to

explore the strategies used by successful second-time business owners after

the first failed business launch. The phenomenological study provided

relevant information from the lived experiences of 12 successful second-

time business owners who have managed selfsustaining business operations

for least 5 years in Fairfax County, Virginia. The initial analysis interview

sample business owners equaled to six participants, with the saturation

criterion of two successive interviews without any new ideas or themes

emerging. I reached data saturation at Interview 10, after which no new

information emerged from the interviews and other observations of the

owners. Executing the saturation criterion allowed for the verification of

saturation and verification of number of interviews to achieve reliability and

trustworthiness in the research.

The population was appropriate for the study because a small number

of successful second-time business owners survive beyond 5 years (Chenail

(2011a); Turner (2010). Dworkin (2012) defined saturation as a standard

point of reference in gauging where the data collection process ceases to

offer any different, new, or relevant data. I attempted to understand the

learning experiences of successful second-time business owners. This study

focused on social realities and reflected the phenomenon from the successful

second-time business owner’s point of view. The study provided applicable

ideas, strategies, and actions that may promote the worth, dignity, well-

being, and development of individuals, communities, organizations,

institutions, and cultures.

Role of the Researcher

Researchers should mitigate their cognitive biases and personal beliefs

regarding the study topic before collecting data, analyzing data, and

reporting processes (Tufford & Newman, 2012). The mitigation process

includes stripping away the possible biases to clarify and identify the real

issues presented in their purest form. Cognitive biases include fundamental

attribution error, anchoring bias, and progression bias. Fundamental

attribution error refers to the tendency for people to overvalue personality-

based explanations for behaviors observed in others and undervalue

situational factors when assessing the same factors in themselves (Fiore,

2012). Mirror imaging bias refers to others sharing one’s current emotional

states, thoughts, and values (Moreira, 2013). Anchoring bias refers to relying

too heavily on one trait or piece of information when making decisions

(Silva, 2015).

The mitigation techniques used to reduce fundamental attribution error

were to consider the neutral factors, human error, or any outliers that might

have caused the event or issue. The first step in mitigating any bias was to

address it directly. The mirror imaging bias mitigation technique may be

counteracted by knowing the culture and beliefs of the population in

question. I broke the information into parts to identify motives or causes

associated with anchoring bias and did not rely on the first pieces of

information obtained.

Frels and Onwuegbuzie (2012) described the role of the researcher as

one who connects with the participants and generates a relaxed experience. I

formed connections with the participants. I also completed the online course

on conducting research involving human participants, earning the National

Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Certificate of Completion (Appendix C). I used

the interview protocol (Appendix A) to fulfill the requirement to understand

business owners’ lived experience.

Moustakas (1994) outlined the summary of the phenomenological

model into 2 parts. First part is the process and second part is methodology. I

used the process to perform: (a) epoche, (b) phenomenological reduction, (c)

imaginative variation, and (d) synthesis of composite textural and composite

structural descriptions of the business owners. I used methodology to: (a)

preparing to collect data, (b) collecting data, (c) organizing, analyzing, and

synthesizing data from 12 successful second-time business owners, and (d)

finally summarizing, implying, and determining outcomes of the business

owners lived experiences.

The role of the researcher in qualitative studies includes generating

knowledge through rigorous research, maintaining ethical standards, and

supporting scholarly principles (Damianakis & Woodford, 2012). I collected

data through semistructured interviews, which enabled observations and

processes of epoche, transcendental phenomenological reduction,

imaginative variation, and synthesis (Moustakas, 1994). ). I interviewed

participants, collected data, transcribed recorded interviews, documented,

and complied with data security requirements for protecting participants’

data and confidentiality for 5 years to ensure accessibility for future audits or

future research (Cseko & Tremaine, 2013).

I used an interview protocol (Appendix A) to understand business

owners’ lived experiences. Englander (2012) described phenomenological

researchers as having an interest in the subjectivity of other individuals,

which allows for descriptions of subjectivity through interviewing. The

interviewing method provides access to people’s experiences, allowing them

to express a conscious understanding of the experience through language

(Seidman, 2012). Borg, Gall, and Gall (2007) discussed the major

advantages of interviewing and argued that if the interviewer builds trust

with the participant, it makes it possible to obtain responses that the

participant probably would not expose by any other collection method.

Seidman (2012) defined interviewing as a process of interacting with

participants by inviting them to reflect upon and recreate their stories. I

possessed no direct or personal experience with the phenomenon of small

business failure. As a business management consultant, I worked with the

leaders of successful, growing small organizations. If there were any bias, it

would lie with the selection of the topic based on my experiences in a town

where my parents ran a town store.

Participants

Thorpe (2014) reported that a way to assess whether research

participants know something relating to a place or thing or perceive it as

correct or incorrect is to examine the consistency of participants’ responses.

In this study, I employed a sampling strategy for the selection of 12

successful second-time business owners (Borg et al., 2007). Roberts (2013)

argued that small sample size has become appropriate to focus on individual

experiences in achieving saturation and redundancy for a researcher

conducting the interviews. I selected participants who had an understanding

of the phenomenon under examination.

The eligibility criteria included the minimum length of time (5 years)

owners spent operating their successful businesses the second time. I limited

participants to individuals located within one of the nine districts of Fairfax

County, Virginia. I pursued an equal number of male and female

participants, and the headquarters for each business resided within the state

of Virginia. The selected participants did not have any business or personal

relationships with me.

I used eligibility selection criteria with essential attributes of

successful secondtime business owners based on the purpose of the study to

ensure the collected data provided a range of perspectives for data saturation

(Petty et al., 2012). Cope (2011) emphasized purposive sampling as a

method of selecting successful second-time business owners based on their

experience to enable a detailed understanding for enriched

learning. I gathered business owners’ information from Fairfax County’s

Personal Property and Business License Division, Department of Tax

Administration.

I obtained the business owners names and addresses by submitting a

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Fairfax County’s Personal

Property and Business License Division, Department of Tax Administration.

The FOIA requested a list of businesses that had been active in Fairfax

County between 2005 and 2010. I received a list of 10,000 businesses that fit

the criteria in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, numbered 1to

10,000 arranged by street address number. I used sample size calculator that

determined a sample size of 260 businesses for obtaining a confidence level

of 95% with a confidence interval of 6. A random number generator was

used in selecting the 260 participants from the original sequence sent by the

Department of Tax Administration. I polled the businesses by sending

invitations to the 260 randomly selected businesses. The business owners

who participated provided names of other business owners who they thought

met the criteria.

Wagstaff and Williams (2014) argued that gaining access to such

participants involves convincing people that they should become participants

through relationship building using formal and informal access strategies.

Seidman (2012) argued that, before selecting participants for an interview

study, the interviewer should make contact with participants. Gaining access

included the use of online directories, telephone calls, email, mail, and

contacting familiar associates and organizations with similar interests,

agendas, culture, and gatekeepers.

The importance of building rapport with gatekeepers made the

difference between access and denial ability to business owners (Chikweche

& Fletcher, 2012). Making contact and receiving authority for access to

participants was through formal and informal gatekeepers, administrators,

and third parties (Seidman, 2012). Sangasubana (2011) ) suggested that

researchers seek formal permission to gain access through participating or

volunteering in groups or organizations. The snowballing sampling method

aided in facilitating access through established networks of participants who

made recommendations and introductions to gatekeepers as well as well as

other candidates (Chikweche & Fletcher, 2012).

The first step in the strategies began with the Walden IRB’s approval

number of 09-18-15-02677956. The second step included arranging a

contact visit with potential participants to introduce the study, explain the

project, and determine the interest of potential participants. In Step 3, I

mailed a letter to the potential participants. The letter provided a detailed

explanation of Walden University’s DBA program, the purpose of the study,

and the role of the participants. Additionally, I explained the procedure for

each interview to be audio-recorded, and I asked each participant to sign the

consent form. The fourth step included waiting for the potential participants

to reply to the mail and agree to participate in the study. Step 5 included

conducting face-to-face interviews with 12 successful business owners.

I transcribed each participant’s interview and downloaded it to the

designated computer. The recorded responses were compiled and filed in a

secure folder for coding and analysis. Identities of participants were

confidential (Corti, 2012). This study did not include any personal data.

Each participant was allowed to withdraw from the study for any reason at

any time (Cseko and Tremaine (2013).

The recruitment of potential participants through the mail, electronic

mail, or phone conversation started when I obtained approval from the

Walden University Institutional Review Board (IRB). Formal requests were

sent to participants using email addresses or postal information, and follow-

up telephone calls were used to set up interviews. The selected participants’

demographic data (Fairfax County, Virginia) met the following selection

criteria: (a) 5 years of successful business operation, (b) registration with the

local chamber of commerce, (c) current headquarters located in Fairfax

County, Virginia, (d) owning a previous business, (e) enduring a failed

business attempt, and (f) owning the current company for at least 5 years.

Each participant who agreed to take part in the study was asked to sign a

consent form. At the end of the interview, the participants received a copy of

the consent form that they signed. The process was in accordance with the

IRB of Walden University for the protection of the participants’ identity and

data. The study did not include any participants under the age of 18 years or

members of a vulnerable client group as designated by the United States

Department of Health, Education and Welfare (Greaney et al., 2012).

Research Method and Design

The phenomenological research design included a semistructured

interview format, enabling me to explore the experiences, knowledge, and

skills of successful second-time business owners The objective of the study

was to explore the strategies of successful second-time business owners after

a first failed business launch. I explored the factors leading to success in

Virginia and examined the most effective occupational experiences via the

qualitative research method.

Research Method

The qualitative research method was the most appropriate for this

research study because it allowed for analytic generation and interpretation

of non-verbal communication with structural information leading to thicker

descriptions, thus increasing the ability to reach saturation (Onwuegbuzie &

Byers, 2014). Based on the purpose of the study that the phenomenon was

the object of the research, not the person; although, a person was required to

describe the phenomenon. The qualitative research method captured

personal descriptions of a phenomenon (Englander, 2012). This qualitative

research by definition was an exploration of the subject of the study (Bluhm

et al., 2011). The qualitative research methodology was suitable for the

research study because it enabled the investigation of human practices and

insights from experienced business owners’ perspectives (Moustakas, 1994).

Cope (2011) argued that conducting a phenomenological study

involves capturing the lived experiences of subjects. A quantitative research

method is used to test for projectable findings or expectations. The

quantitative approach includes numerical expressions of data collected

(Anyan, 2013). Williams (2011) noted that the quantitative method starts

with a hypothesis and tries to explain a particular problem or situation with

particular outcomes of specific numbers. Given this emphasis, the

quantitative method was inappropriate for my study, because quantitative

analysis would not have allowed for the exploration of the lived experiences

of successful second-time business owners.

Phillips-Pula, Strunk, and Pickler (2011) discussed the transcendental,

existential, and hermeneutic as the three types of phenomenology studies

with transcendental focusing on the essential meanings of the individual

experience. Bluhm et al. (2011) described qualitative research as

encompassing a descriptive approach, which involves capturing the

complexity of phenomena. Husserl (2012) developed the idea of a

phenomenological method, insisting that the study of consciousness relates

to humans, and the study of nature relates to the scientific method.

Stierand and Dörfler (2012) described the phenomenological method

as research conducted for an idiographic understanding of how to manage

complex cognitive phenomena through qualitative research. The philosophy

behind the qualitative method examined owners’ successful business

operations, with the goal of capturing factors and patterns of successful

second-time business owners. The scripted, standardized openended

interview format enables participants to express their lived experiences in

detail (Turner, 2010). The detail included the successful second-time

business owners providing examples of their lived experiences. The research

building processes may contribute to the body of knowledge (Bluhm et al.,

2011).

Research Design

I employed a transcendental phenomenology research design, and a

standardized open-ended (face-to-face) interviews format and follow-up

questions to focus on the essential meaning of lived experiences and

perspectives of individuals (Turner, 2010). Berdychevsky and Gibson (2015)

argued that transcendental phenomenology referred to the essence of the

individual experiences and meanings of the phenomenon through the phases

of epoche, phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation, and

synthesis. Transcendental phenomenology guided the researcher to focus on

the completeness of experience and the search for the essence of experience

(Clark, 2013).

Moustakas (1994) argued that transcendental phenomenology required

researchers to bracket out their own views to develop a description of what

and how they experienced the phenomena. The qualitative transcendental

phenomenological research is human-centered rather than method centered,

focusing on the essence of experiences, practices, and strategies that

successful second-time business owners have used to achieve their success

(Van Kaam, 1966). The inferences and implications obtained from the

successful second-time business owners helped in understanding the

phenomenon experienced by business owners. The examination of the

problem took place from all sides, describing things in themselves as results

of the meanings and experiences of the owners (Moustakas, 1994).

Within the realm of qualitative research design, this study could have

been conducted in other forms, such as ethnography—social patterns,

grounded theory— theory generation, case studies—unique living

experience, and narrative search— focusing on stories (Petty et al., 2012).

This qualitative transcendental phenomenological research was human-

centered rather than method-centered, focusing on the essence of

experiences, practices, and factors about successful second-time business

owners (Van Kaam, 1966). The transcendental phenomenology study

provided the essence of the experience from the point of view of business

owners over time (Moustakas, 1994). The interviewer employed the

standardized open-ended interview format with a predetermined sequence

and worded questions requiring the researcher to ask each identical

participant questions, thus eliciting detailed responses about the

phenomenon (Turner, 2010).

The qualitative research design enables the researcher to focus on the

phenomena, compiling the information from the participants, transcribing

and coding the descriptive information, and reviewing the supported

literature (Frels & Onwuegbuzie, 2012). The data saturation process was

large enough to measure the depth of the data and range of the lived

experience (Mason, 2010). Data saturation equated to forming universal

structural descriptions by putting together similar lived experiences from

business owners’ individual structure descriptions to a point where no new

knowledge was obtained (Griffith, 2013; Moustakas, 1994). O'Reilly and

Parker (2012) reported that data saturation is not solely determined by the

number of subjects interviewed; rather, it is sufficient when applying

sampling adequacy to reach transferability. Dworkin (2012) defined data

saturation as occurring when the researcher collects no new stories, no new

themes, findings, concepts, problems, or evidence from a set of participants.

Population and Sampling

The research population for the study was a small group of successful,

secondtime business owners in the same demographics and eligibility

criteria. O'Reilly and Parker (2012) argued that in qualitative research the

objective is not a fixed sample, but acquire depth from the information to

fully describe the phenomenon The purposeful sample consists of 12

successful second-time business owners who meet the following

eligibility criteria:

1. Five years of successful business operations;

2. Registration with the local chamber of commerce;

3. Current headquarters in Fairfax County, Virginia;

4. Must have owned a previous business and endured a failed business

attempt; and

5. Must have owned their company for at least five years (Yang &

Aldrich, 2012).

I used business information from Fairfax County, Personal Property

and Business License Division, Department of Tax Administration to obtain

the population who met the eligibility criteria. I obtained data by submitting

a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Fairfax County’s Personal

Property and Business License Division, Department of Tax Administration.

The FOIA requested a list of businesses that had been active in Fairfax

County between 2005 and 2010. I received a list of 10,000 businesses that fit

the criteria in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, numbered 1 to

10,000 arranged by street address number. A sample size calculator was

used in determining a sample size of 260 businesses for obtaining a

confidence level of 95% with a confidence interval of 6. A random number

generator was used in selecting the 260 participants from the original

sequence sent by the Department of Tax Administration. I polled the

businesses by sending invitations to the 260 randomly selected businesses.

The business owners who participated provided names of other business

owners who they thought met the criteria.

The relatively small number of successful second-time business

owners who met the eligibility criteria determined by the population size for

sampling. The choice of criterion sampling identified successful second-time

business owners to achieve saturation Petty et al. (2012) argued that

researchers could use criterion sampling to discover, understand, and gain

insight. I used a criterion-based process in the selection of successful

second-time business owners.

Saturation may occur with the readers’ understanding of the

phenomena after the completion of the exploration(Walker, 2011). Guest,

Bunce, and Johnson (2006) conducted 60 interviews and found that

saturation occurred within the first 12 interviews, and certain themes were

observed as early as six interviews. Moore, Kimble, and Minick (2010)

interviewed seven women on cardiac risk factors and this is what Silva

(2015) addressed as the law of small numbers. Wagstaff and Williams

(2014) reported that an interpretative phenomenological analysis study of

mental health services of black men diagnosed with mental illness used

seven participants to reach saturation.

Dworkin (2012) defined saturation as a standard point of reference in

gauging where the data collection process ceases offering any different, new,

or relevant data recurrence of codes and themes, which benefits

phenomenology research. The term saturation may be defined by the

collection of data in a study until redundancy of the data has occurred

(Morse, Barrett, Mayan, Olson, & Spiers, 2008). However, saturation is

more; it signifies and categorizes the analytical and cognitive processes of

lived experiences in terms of their properties and dimensions, including

variations of the conceptual theories to delineate the relationships between

the theoretical constructs and lived experiences (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

Green and Thorogood (2013) argued that data saturation does not refer

to the point at which no new ideas emerge, rather the point where the codes

were categorized based on similarities and fully accounted for by

recognizing the inconsistency between the categories providing clarity

through validation that might lead to theory development. Theoretical

saturation occurs when no new themes have been identified when analyzing

data, and the researcher searches for variations of each construct or

proposition contributing to the theory until redundancy occurs (Guest et al.,

2006). Thus, the justification for an accurate number of participants for an

interview might lie with the number of codes to the numbers of interviews,

where the maximum number of codes is reached within the first six

interviews (Marshall, Cardon, Poddar, & Fontenot, 2013).

After obtaining Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, I first

contacted ReferenceUSA.COM about information on second-time private

business owners in Fairfax County, Virginia. ReferenceUSA provides

information on how to obtaining business information from within Fairfax

County Government. After contacting Fairfax County’s Personal Property

and Business License Division, Department of Tax Administration and

receiving a list of prospective business owners, I developed a contact list.

The next step included mailing the business owners to introduce the study,

explaining the project, and determining the interest of the owners. The letter

provided a detailed explanation about Walden University’s Doctoral DBA

program, the purpose of the study, and how it will involve the owners,

specifically. Additionally, I explained that the procedure called for each

interview to be audio-recorded and I would ask each owner to sign the

consent form. The four step included waiting for the owners to reply to the

mailed letter of invitation, determining the eligibility criteria, and receiving

the signed consent form from the owners to participate in the study. Step

five encompassed establishing an in-person face-to-face interview session

with 12 successful business owners at places and times convenient for the

business owners. I conducted an online interview in real-time with face-to-

face interactions using Skype.

Ethical Research

Cseko and Tremaine (2013) described ethically the anticipated higher

level of trust as the connector to achieving trustworthiness in research. The

ethical measures laid out in this study protected the participants and

coincided with honesty, trust, respect, and confidence. Biomedical and

Behavioral Research (1978) established three ethical principles for the

protection of research participants: (a) respect for the person, (b) beneficence

and non-maleficence, and (c) justice. The ethical principle pointed to the

need for establishing and maintaining a sense of fit with the participants as

well as an understanding of the importance of each participant to the value

of the study(Cseko & Tremaine, 2013).

I took on the responsibility to protect the confidentiality of each

business owner’s information. Additionally, I captured, protected, and

reported the information in an ethical manner. The consent form provides

owners with certain privacy rights such as the refusal to participate and the

privilege to withdraw from the study at any time.

I stored the owners’ personal information in a protected database

accessible only to the researcher for a period of five years (Corti, 2012). The

owners’ anonymity and data protected in accordance with ethical and federal

standards. I provided owners with an explanation of the study and the

opportunity to withdraw from the study at any point.

I treated owners in accordance with Walden University’s ethical

guidelines and the guidelines of the Internal Review Board (IRB). Each

owner’s private personal information was not disclosed. Seidman (2012)

argued that the researcher should avoid listing names of places, locations, or

participants that could be rediscovered later after completion of the study. I

informed the owners of the purpose of the study and explained the potential

risks and benefits of study participation. The owners were informed of their

rights as participants prior to taking part in the study; there was no

compensation for participation.

There was no potential risk for perceived coercion to participate in

this study due to any existing or expected relationship between the

participants and researcher. The owners did not endure any undue social or

economic loss because of taking part in the study. Seidman (2012) argued

that the researcher should promise to use some form of pseudonyms or

aliases to mitigate the risk of discovery. Thus, owners’ names and their

business associations remain confidential and were not used in the study. I

used pseudonyms for labeling notes and transcripts (Xu & Storr, 2012).

Caballero-Gil, Caballero-Gil, and Molina-Gil (2013) discussed mitigating

the risk of discovery, maintain confidentiality, and privacy of participants

with a pseudonym name.

I stored all study materials, including working papers, transcripts, and

collected data, for five years on a password-protected hard drive in an

electronically encrypted file and stored in a locked fireproof storage cabinet.

I am, the only individual who has access to the files storage at 9067 Emma

Ann Way, Fairfax Station, Virginia.

I informed owners of the IRB regulations regarding the destruction or

any plans made for the destruction of secured data. I also, informed owners

they may withdraw or refuse to participate at any time during the study.

Additionally, I completed an online course on conducting research involving

human participants, earning the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH)

Certificate of Completion (Appendix C). I used the following paraphrased

annotated checklist:

1. Permission obtained from all owners.

2. All copyrighted work and attributions to others’ work were cited in

accordance with the APA Publication Manual (6th ed.).

3. All required forms and permissions wew presented for review by IRB

to assure compliance with research ethics and policy at Walden

University.

4. All information, including informed consent, permissions required

pursuant to the study, and other materials was conformed to the code

of ethics for research at Walden University. I followed all reasonable

steps required to assure the privacy and anonymity of study’s subjects.

5. Contributions made by others in reviewing materials for accuracy and

or privacy were acknowledged; however, the researcher is the sole

author of the study.

6. All necessary steps were taken to ensure participants’ welfare and

minimize exposure to risk.

7. The NIH Training and Ethical Guidelines for Ethical, Research using

Human Subjects on September 17, 2011 (Appendix C) was completed

by me. The guidelines were abided by me during the training (45 CFR

46).

8. The Walden University IRB Certification course and passed the quiz

(IRB

Certification, 2011) were completed by me.

9. Any Virginia State laws regarding data collection activities was

compiled by me.

Data Collection Instruments

Giorgi (2012) reported that instruments used in phenomenological

studies describe data collected from interviewing participants as a subject-

subject relationship, but not a subject-object relationship. I gained a meaning

and understanding of the lived persistent successful strategies used by

business owners in a second launch attempt Chan, Fung, and Chien (2013)

described the planning for data collection interviewing as guide for open-

ended questions and analysis as essentially the plan that brackets before data

collection begins based that the two are sequentially related. Moustakas

(1994) argued that relationship requires researchers to bracket out their own

views to develop a pure description of what and how they may have

experienced the phenomena through the collected data. Bracketing helped

with evaluation of lived experiences and reflective observations.

I focused on bracketing fundamental attribution error, anchoring bias,

and progression bias. Fundamental attribution error psychology posits a

tendency for people to over-weight personality-based explanations for

behaviors observed in others and under-value situational factors when

assessing the same factors in themselves (Fiore, 2012). Mirror imaging bias

unconsciously assumes that others share one’s current emotional states,

thoughts, and values (Moreira, 2013). Anchoring bias relies too heavily on

one trait or piece of information when making decisions (Silva, 2015).

As a functional part of the lengthy standardized (structured) open-

ended interview approach, I used a criterion sampling strategy focusing on

bracketed areas and guided by the purpose (Moustakas, 1994). Turner

(2010) reported that standardized open-ended interviews allow participants

to fully express their viewpoints and experiences in as much detail as they

desired, which might decrease the time for observing similar themes or

codes. I asked predetermined sequenced and worded questions to gain

insights to help answer what strategies small business owners use to succeed

beyond five years in a second business after a first failed launch attempt

(Chenail, 2011a; Turner, 2010).

The allocated time for each participant to complete the interview

protocol is 30 minutes (Appendix B). Rowley (2012) argued that new

researchers should aim for around 12 interviews of roughly 30 minutes in

length. Burkholder (2014) ) reported that discontinuation of participants’

recruitment occurred when redundancy, clarity, and confidence in saturation

were achieved. The allocated amount of time was sufficient to complete the

interview and gather a number of natural descriptions from each participant

to meet the category need to fully accounted for the analysis (O'Reilly &

Parker, 2012). The conceptual framework, research question, purpose, and

interview questions offer the researcher with the framework for the oral

questions asked by the interviewer and responses by the participants (Borg et

al., 2007; Chenail, 2011b). Such questions were designed to capture the

lived experiences of successful second-time business owners.

The following are examples:

1. Describe the strategies you used to judge business success.

2. Describe the factors that contributed to your success and growth over

the past five years.

The participants’ responses helped set the meaning of reliability

(dependability) and validity (credibility and transferability) of the qualitative

study through sharing their lived experiences (Petty et al., 2012).

I established the credibility of the study using (a) assessment of rival

explanations, (b) researcher bias identification, (c) field review panel, and

(d) member checking (Marshall & Rossman, 2010). Prior to the interview,

each participant received a letter of invitation explaining the background,

benefits, and intent of the study (Appendix D). I complied with the ethical

standards set by Walden University, and U.S. civil and federal regulations to

ensure the ethical protection of participants. Access includes the use of

online directories, telephone calls, email, mail, and contacting familiar

associates and organizations with similar interests, agendas, and culture.

I analyzed the data gained from interviewing and audio recording the

12 successful second-time business owners. The interview protocol

described the agenda and format for the use of open-ended interview

questions in either a personal face-to-face interview and through Skype.

Goldblatt et al. (2011) argued that member checking is a procedure

designed to enhance study credibility and return to the participants to ensure

information accuracy Nartea (2013) argued that member checking is a

procedure designed to enhance study credibility and return to the participants

to ensure information accuracy. Mathias and Williams (2014) posited that to

ensure robustness to findings employed a panel of six experts’ entrepreneurs

to validate research materials.

The selected members of the field review panel of business

practitioners were not participants in the study but provided valuable

feedback increasing the accuracy and reliability of the exploratory questions.

I obtained instrumentation rigor and validity in the interview questions

through the use of field review panel consisting of business professionals’

and business practitioners’ assessments (Laursen, 2013). Incorporating

feedback from the practitioners validated the open-ended questions, prepared

the researcher for conducting interviews, allayed and mitigated concerns

about cognitive biases, and field assessment (Bernard & Bernard, 2013). The

combination of rich descriptions of the study population and context with the

use of a field review panel will provide readers with the information

necessary to assess the transferability of the study findings and conclusions.

Data Collection Technique

The data collection technique includes making observations, and

interviews of 12 business owners. The interviews were face-to-face,

standardized, open-ended, and 30 minutes long. The recorded interviews

were transformed from oral to written form creating accurate transcripts,

observation notes, and nonverbal actions were captured in Microsoft Word

document. Niemants (2012) discussed transcription as a basic systems

developed within conversation analysis to account for all aspects of oral

communicative behavior describing what participants in recorded

interactions were heard to be saying and doing.

Turner (2010) reported that a standardized open-end interview design

process includes (a) creating an interview guide with the specific questions

and sequence in which the question are to be asked, (b) selecting participants

from the targeted populations, (c) engaging gatekeepers for access to

candidates, (d) reviewing the interview guide and use as a screenplay of

what to start with and end each interview , (e) studying and visiting the

interview sites to prepare for any conditions, (f) inviting the participants

(Appendix D), (g) using only a single idea question, (h) using probing

questions when it is appropriate, (i) not cross-examining the participants, (j)

concluding the interview, and (k) interpreting data.

Preparing for data collection included (a) selecting successful second-

time business owners purposefully; (b) selecting the interview site; (d)

gaining access and rapport; (e) collecting data; (e) interviewing, recording,

and transcribing participants’ responses led to developing follow-up

questions; and (f) storing data (Petty et al., 2012).

The data recording standardized interview protocol included:

1. Introduction

2. Topic of interest

3. Ground rules

4. Questions

5. Methods of probing

6. Time between questions to allow the recorder to capture the responses

7. Proper closure

8. A statement of thanks

Borg et al. (2007) described the outcomes of a step-by-step process for

a standardized open-ended interview as (a) a predetermined sequence and

wording using the same set of questions to be asked of each participant, to

diminish the possibility of bias; (b) an appropriate process when a large

number of people are interviewed on the same topic; (c) a process to reduce

the variation in responses because the same questions are asked in the same

order on a single topic; and (d) a systematic and thorough process that

reduces flexibility and spontaneity for both the interviewer and the

respondent. The advantages and disadvantages of face-to-face data

techniques lie in the amount of structure desired in the interview (Merriam,

2009). Patton (1990) divided interviews into four major types (see Table 4).

Zohrabi (2013) reported that informal conversation interviews are probing in

nature but undeniably difficult for new researchers.

Merriam (2009) argued that structured open-end interview questions

are in a fixed order, thus creating a rigid atmosphere that does not allow the

researcher to access participants’ perspectives and understandings of the

phenomena. Zohrabi (2013) posited that closed-fixed response interviews

were too mechanical for participants because they are not given the freedom

to express their understanding of the phenomena, and they only answer the

questions in a fixed format. Brown, Clarkson, Barton, and Joshi (2014) noted

that the closed fixed-value response interview format is useful for new

interviewers who are not seasoned in interviewing. Zohrabi (2013) argued

that, in the interview guide approach, topics and questions are specified;

however, they might be redrafted in any order based on the situation. I used

the standardized open-ended interview techniques so that owners can

respond to their experiences freely.

Table 4

Interview Formats

Name Description3

Informal

conversation

interview

Relies on the spontaneous generation of questions with

no predetermined questions asked, so the interaction

between interviewer and interviewee may remain as

natural as possible (Borg et al., 2007; Patton, 1990)

Interview guide

approach

Refers to the guided approach that outlines a set of

topics to ensure that the same general areas of

information are explored with the intent of finding

common information retrieved from each participant

(Borg et al., 2007; Patton, 1990)

Standardized

openended

interview

Involves asking all participants open-ended questions in

a predetermined order to allow for analysis and

comparison (Borg et al., 2007; Patton, 1990)

Closed,

fixedresponse

interview

Comprises a set of predetermined questions in which

the participants are asked the same questions and asked

to choose answers from among the same set of

alternatives (Patton, 1990)

Member checking allowed the participant to review the write-up in

order to check if the researcher accurately reported the participant’s

worldview (Koelsch, 2013). Goldblatt et al. (2011); Morse et al. (2008)

argued that member checking, a complicated technique for obtaining

credibility, may require additional procedures such as peer discussion.

(Merriam, 2009) called member checking respondent validation, so that the

researcher solicits feedback on the emerging findings from some of the

participant interviewed.

The transcript review objective seeks the interviewees approval of the

recorded response into a written language and discovery and correction of

the inconsistencies for validation of the transcript with written approval from

the interviewees (Mero-Jaffe, 2011). Goldblatt et al. (2011) argued that

researchers might present to all or some of the interviewees their transcript

allowing the interviewees to comment on findings and the researcher’s

interpretations of their own and others’ quotes. Borg et al. (2007) described

transfer review as a process that ensures representation from the emic

perspective by having the participants review the collected transcribed data

for accuracy and completeness. Mero-Jaffe (2011) describe the transfer of

the transcripts to the interviewees for the purpose of validating the

transcripts, preserving research ethics, and to grant the interviewees a final

edit of what was transcribed. Conklin (2011) labeled each transcript as

exposures of each new conversation with the participants and multiple

transcript reviews to return to the phenomenon.

Goldblatt et al. (2011) reported that conducting member checking

happens twice in a study: first, when the researcher asks a participant to

review the interview transcription information confirming its reliability and

validity before coding and analysis, and, second, after the final analysis,

when the researcher validates interpretations of the collected information.

However, Morse et al. (2008) stated that the member-checking process of

sharing data with the participant might invalidate the work of the researcher

and keep the level of analysis incorrectly close to the data. Nonetheless,

Merriam (2009) argued that member checking offers participants the

opportunity to recognize their lived experience in the researcher’s

interpretation and emerging findings. Data Organization Technique

I secured all interview information including recording, electronic

files and paper notes in a fireproof, locked container for a period of five

years. Chaudhuri, Dayal, and Narasayya (2011) addressed data organization

techniques such as database management systems, column-oriented storage,

and data compression for significantly increasing the retrieval effectiveness

for answering the request for information. A commercial product called

EndNote is the study’s data organization system for tracking reflective

journals, managing references, and bibliographies.

EndNote is a commercial reference management software package,

used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays,

dissertations, and articles (Bouyukliev & Georgieva-Trifonova, 2013).

EndNote is produced by Thomson Reuters. EndNote offers its users several

ways to add or send a reference to a library, such as (a) manually, (b)

exporting, (c) EndNote Web, (d) importing, and (e) connecting from

EndNote (Emanuel, 2013). The current EndNote product line (EndNote X7)

offers users the functionality of a drop-down menu to select the type of

reference they require (book, newspaper article, film, congressional

legislation, etc.), and fields ranging from the general (author, title, year) to

those specific to the kind of reference (ISBN, abstract, reporter's name,

running time, etc.) (Stausberg, 2014).

Watkins (2012) observed that data organization of multiple pages and

types of qualitative data could be overwhelming and significant to the

overall outcome of a qualitative study. Skar, von Tetzchner, Clucas, and

Sherr (2014) ) examined the developmental, organizational system software

applications for transcribing and coding for the qualitative data study as

HyperRESEARCH. This study entailed transcribing and reading the data,

selecting the relevant quotes from participants, creating the codes, deciding

which codes matches participants’ quotes (HyperRESEARCH), and using

results from HyperRESEARCH to see patterns in the data and codes.

Data Analysis

The explication of the data provides cognitive assimilation and

accommodation for the transformation of the information captured from the

business owners through interpretation (Sulaiman, 2011). Hence, I used a

modified Van Kaam to (a) explore the lived experience and identify what

strategies small business owners use to succeed beyond five years in a

second business after a first launch attempt, (b) identify the component parts

of the experience and sample various small business owners, (c) reduce data

by bracketing and eliminating the overlap by clustering and classifying

responses into themes, and (d) continue the analytical process until

saturation, (e) erect an explanation of the intentionality, noema, and noesis

from the data which answers what strategies small business owners use to

succeed beyond five years in a second business after a first failed launch

attempt (Phillips-Pula et al., 2011).

Husserl (2012) coined the term eidetic phenomenological reduction

meaning bracketing effectively erasing the outer world of speculation and

bias in order to achieve essences. Bracketing eliminates pre-judgments of

particular preconceived notations about phenomena to see it clearly

(Berdychevsky & Gibson, 2015). Bracketing the phenomenon helps to

explore the essence of successful second-time business owners’ shared

experiences to provide a common basic structure (Merriam, 2009). Hycner

(1985) described the explication process as (a) bracketing and

phenomenological reduction, (b) describing units of meaning, (c) assembling

of units of meaning to assimilate and accommodate themes, (d) summarizing

each interview, validating the interviews and when necessary modifying the

interviews and (e) extracting general and unique themes from all the

interviews and making a composite summary.

The interpretive phenomenological analysis provides descriptions of

what strategies business owners used to make sense of success after failure

that represent experiences of personal significance of the major life event

(Onwuegbuzie & Byers, 2014). Zhang and Wildemuth (2009) argued that

the validity, reliability, and objectivity are criteria for evaluating quality of

data analysis for an interpretive method to gain trustworthiness. Trochim

(2006) recommended credibility, transferability dependability, and

confirmability for interpretive evaluation. Hanson, Balmer, and Giardino

(2011) argued that qualitative researchers integrate specific strategies to

establish trustworthiness by using dependability, credibility, transferability,

and confirmability. Dependability is how the researcher accounts for

changing conditions in the phenomena to obtain the same results by

capturing the changes in the setting and how these changes affected the

research approached (Trochim, 2006). Credibility is a basic method for

representing the construction of the phenomena under study (Bradley, 1993).

Activities that increase and improve the credibility of research results

include saturation, triangulation, and checking the interpretation of the data

with the participants (Zhang & Wildemuth, 2009). Transferability shows the

convergent understanding of the ideas, themes, and results which can be

generalized or transferred into other contexts (Trochim, 2006).

Confirmability was achieved through audits of the research process and

findings, or collaboration with others who read the results (Zhang &

Wildemuth, 2009).

The evidence from transcendental phenomenological data was derived

from business owners’ lived experiences and the researcher’s own insight

(Moustakas, 1994). Triangulation procedures served as a method to assess

consistency in qualitative coding across the coded texts with themes and

categories serving as a measuring stick against which qualitative codes are

judged (Oleinik, 2011). Merriam (2009) described triangulation procedures

as using multiple sources of data to compare and cross-check interview data

collected from business owners with different perspectives or from followup

interviews with the same business owner.

The qualitative approach introduces an inductive style of analysis for

exploring dispersed data elements for outlining, reporting, and categorizing

while valuing the individual meaning from the business owners’ lived

experiences (Burton, Shaw, & Gibson, 2013). The data elements entail three

major components. The conceptual framework and the phenomenon was the

first component. The second component consists of the research question

explaining the phenomenon and posing the open-form questions to the

participants (Fiet et al., 2012). The third component involved the

coalescence of participants’ structure themes, which then extrapolate into

analytic generalizations, leading to transferability (Fiet et al., 2012). This

process involves data processing and analysis. The processing began with

the interview responses (Chan et al., 2013) and includes:

1. Organizing and coding the data units to report the business owners’

events, activities, common themes, and business behaviors with the

information obtained from demographic data for analysis using

HyperRESEARCH software;

2. Studying the data and performing pattern analysis;

3. Shifting and comparing the coded information to determine structure,

function, and activity to any of the patterns;

4. Describing each of the structure functions, and activities associated

with each segment and their themes;

5. Determining how the structure functions, and activities related to

successes or failures;

6. Preparing a descriptive theme for each structure’s functions and

activities; and

7. Analyzing and reporting the observations from the examination of the

structure’s functions and activities.

The modified Van Kaam approach for data explication drew on data

from the following open-form questions:

•Please explain your life experiences, attitudes, and circumstances that

relate to business and financial strategies o in your first business

attempt; o in your second business attempt.

•Please provide an account of the business and human barriers you

encountered o in your first business attempt; o in your second

business attempt.

o How did you overcome these barriers?

•Please describe any significant changes in the business environment

that affected your business success o in your first business attempt; o

in your second business attempt.

•Please describe any strategies that you believe may have contributed

to your business success in your second business attempt.

•Is there anything else you can tell me that you think is important about

why you succeeded in your second business attempt?

I used HyperRESEARCH as the software applications for coding the

analysis of qualitative data (Winton & Pollock, 2013). The essential

software application operated on a Mac computer using Mac OSX Maverick

operating system. The project entailed reading the data, selecting the

relevant quotes from the participants, creating the codes, deciding which

codes matched the participants’ quotes (HyperRESEARCH), and using

results from HyperRESEARCH that delineated patterns in the data and

codes.

Berdychevsky and Gibson (2015) described data analysis as the

epoche process of transcendental phenomenological reduction, proceeding to

imaginative variation, and ending with the synthesis of the data. I

constructed an explanation of the explored experiences of business owners,

presenting the relevance to the research question and purpose (Van Kaam,

1966). The epoche process encourages an open perception of relevant

information through listening and hearing without cognitive bias trying to

interview without prejudging, coloring, or comparing (Moustakas, 1994).

This data analysis sought to highlight the noema experienced and noesis the

way the business owners experienced it.

Reliability and Validity

Morse et al. (2008) defined verifying qualitative reliability and

validity as a strategy that checks for trustworthiness and consistency of

research findings and reporting. Elo et al. (2014) focused on the following

elements to assess the trustworthiness of qualitative research analysis: (a)

credibility, (b) dependability, (c) confirmability, and (d) transferability.

Berdychevsky and Gibson (2015) identified dependability as the degree of

congruity between the data, researchers' interpretations and actual

occurrences in the research setting. (Thomas & Magilvy, 2011) argued that

credibility refers to the element that allows others to recognize the

experiences contained within a study through the interpretation of

participants’ experiences. Berdychevsky and Gibson (2015) defined

transferability as the possibility of applying a study’s interpretations to

similar phenomena. Hanson et al. (2011); Thomas and Magilvy (2011)

argued that confirmability occurs when credibility, transferability, and

dependability have been established, and a paper trail exists for other

individuals who did not conduct the study to determine if the line of

reasoning makes sense. Klenke (2008) defined the essential elements of

qualitative research as reliability and validity: (a) credible or believable from

the standpoint of the participants, (b) transferable to other settings and

contexts, (c) able to obtain the same results by impartial researchers, and (d)

confirmed by committee members.

This study employed the constructivist worldview. Salehi and

Golafshani (2010) described constructivism as a worldview in which

knowledge is socially constructed and subject to change. Hall, Griffiths, and

McKenna (2013) defined constructivism as the constructivist paradigm with

multiple constructions, transactional and subjectivist point of views, and

constructivism findings and knowledge are not discovered as much as it

made or constructed for reliability. Theoretical sufficiency is likely to be

achieved in advance of reaching the sample set size if the categories are fully

accounted for (O'Reilly & Parker, 2012). The qualitative reliability criteria

for trustworthiness was met when two or more researchers achieve the same

outcome when they independently code and evaluate the data (Cook, 2012).

Hycner (1985) described the qualitative validation process in the following

steps: (a) the researcher queried the participants to validate the findings; (b)

the researcher evaluated the findings as being true; (c) the research

committee evaluated the findings for objectivity and subjectivity; (d) the

researcher compare the findings against the current literature; and (e) the

researcher submitted the findings to the scientific and the lay communities

where they will be accepted, rejected, or modified.

Reliability

Reliability refers to the consistency of responses and dependability of

the coding to make data meaningful (confirmability) (Yu, Jannasch-Pennell,

& DiGangi, 2011). Meaningful data might contribute to the confirmability

and dependability of the study by focusing on the response process and the

value of common themes within the lived experiences of the participants

(Padilla & Benítez, 2014). Reliability depends on a set of standards used to

construct defensibility and meaningful results, which are replicable

(Weideman, 2012). I sought reliability through the conceptual framework for

exploring the lived experiences of successful second-time business owners’

descriptions of the factors contributing to a successful second business

launch attempt. Characterizing each owner’s perspective included

aggregating common themes emanating from the participants to draw

overarching inferences about their successes. The reliability process included

(a) checking transcripts, (b) avoiding drift in the interpretation of codes, and

Validity

Validity is whether the data accurately represent the phenomenon

being studied (Hycner, 1985). Validity is the extent, process, and causal

mechanism for the findings to be transferable and credible (Bluhm et al.,

2011), which are indicators of sufficient internal and external controls, thus

ensuring the perspectives and views are drawn from participants’ lived

experiences (Bygstad & Munkvold, 2011). Hanson et al. (2011) determined

that qualitative researchers should begin coding data while still interviewing

participants, to ensure that emerging themes sufficiently repeat and that no

new insights emerge before making a decision on saturation and

transferability.

Validity is largely synonymous with logical truth in the interpretation

of the participants’ lived experiences (Rehman & Roomi, 2012). The

procedure for establishing validity included data triangulation and member

checking. Data triangulation aided in reducing bias and adds integrity to the

research findings through survey techniques that systematically examined

segments of data that provided an audit trail and isolate certain fixes (or

themes) (Ali & Yusof, 2012). The study triangulated interviews,

observations, and scholarly documentation (Kaczynski, Salmona, & Smith,

2014). The use of triangulation created and helped to maintain credibility

and transferability through a comparison of responses and data sources in the

search for common themes (fixes) that supported the validity of the finding

(Lam & Harker, 2013).

Thomas and Magilvy (2011) argued that, in achieving credibility, a

researcher reviews the participants’ transcripts looking for similarities within

and across the study participants. Bernard and Bernard (2013) reported that

field review panels possess experienced individuals who validate research

processes and findings in providing measures of effectiveness. Based on

recommendations by Bernard and Bernard (2013), I employed a field review

panel to ensure external validly of qualitative findings. Wright and Craig

(2011) described results from studies that used panelists that provided

reviews of the content and data collection procedures relating to content

validity of the instrument provide consistency and reduce bias. Niemants

(2012) explained that an intelligent agent is required who interprets the

results of a study making it worth spreading.

Marshall et al. (2013) defined data saturation as the process, which

brings in new participants continually into a study until the data set is

complete through the indications of data replication or redundancy based on

a suitable sample size. Ando, Cousins, and Young (2014) reported that

reaching the data saturation point in thematic analysis drives validity in

qualitative studies and set the sample size. For a project of a scope like this

one, Polkinghorne (1989) argued that recommended 5 to 25 participants was

sufficient to achieve data saturation. Tasnim, Yahya, and Zainuddin (2014)

noted that the saturation experience occurred in a study where no new

themes could be generated by the fifth interview. Dworkin (2012) defined

data saturation as a standard point of reference in gauging where the data

collection process ceases offering any different, new, or relevant data

recurrence of codes and themes, which benefits phenomenology research. I

collected data until reaching data saturation for logical truth and validation

in the interpretation of the owners’ lived experiences (Rehman & Roomi,

2012).

Member checking will increase legitimacy through debriefing

interviews and query the participants to validate the findings (Frels &

Onwuegbuzie, 2012). Member checks rely on respondent validation and

enhances the credibility of a study (Berdychevsky & Gibson, 2015). Such

checking ensured credibility and transferability (Biederman & Nichols,

2014). Member checks assist the researcher in ruling out the possibility of

misinterpreting the respondents’ replies (Bygstad & Munkvold, 2011).

Houghton, Casey, Shaw, and Murphy (2013) suggested that member

checking should happen after transcription rather than after analysis to

validate the participant’s own words. For this study, I verified the study

findings are providing participants with copies of their transcribed responses

to validate the accuracy.

Francis et al. (2010) discovered the ten plus three rule for confirming

saturation for a pre-determined smallest sample size and a threshold for rare

information beyond saturation Bernard and Bernard (2013) ) reported that

qualitative phenomenology research studies use the smallest of sample sizes

possible to reach saturation. Trotter and Robert (2012) argued that interviews

rarely exceed 15 and 25 experts to reach saturation. Polkinghorne (1989)

recommended interviewing 5 to 25 participants when conducting research-

employing interviews. Hodges (2011) explained that saturation is more

about a sample size of conducting enough interviews, observations, and the

representation of understanding that the phenomenon can be developed; it is

no new themes surfacing. I contemplated reaching data saturation and

stopped collection after conducting two consecutive interviews without new

ideas or themes emerging.

Pereira (2012) articulated that, without rigor, research seems

insignificant, becomes untruth, and loses its helpfulness. To ensure rigor, I

included the feedback from members of the field review panel consisting of

individuals from higher education and the business community. Study

participants were not included on the field review panel. No collection of

study data took place from a participant on the field review panel. The field

review panel did not have access to confidential participant information or

study data. The function of the field review panel was to provide

independent feedback based on their business expertise regarding the

applicability and accuracy of study findings. Morse et al. (2008) explained

that methodological coherence, appropriate sampling, data collection, and

analysis concurrently, theoretical thinking, and theory development function

as verification strategies, which incrementally and interactively contribute to

and construct reliability and validity, thus confirming rigor.

Transition and Summary

I used open-form questions to examine the lived experiences of

successful second-time business owners. Next, I defined, identified, labeled,

and outlined the phenomena behind professional business actions, leading to

the success of successful second-time owners. I aimed to define the

phenomenon and added to the body of knowledge about entrepreneurial

success, which increased the likelihood of success for future first-time

business owners (Chenail, 2011b). Triangulation and member checking

provided validity and reliability. The outlining of these lived experiences

added to the existing literature concerning the reasons why successful

second-time business owners succeed after a failed first attempt.

Section 3: Application to Professional Practice and Implications for

Change

Introduction

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to

explore the strategies used by successful second-time business owners after

a first failed business launch. This section contains findings from data

collected from business owners who have operated self-sustaining

businesses for at least 5 years in Fairfax County, Virginia. The stories,

findings, concepts, implications, and inferences of the business owners were

used to conduct Step 7 of the modified Van Kaam method of constructing a

texturalstructural description for each participant (Moustakas, 1994).

Dworkin (2012) defined saturation as a point of reference in gauging

when the data collection process ceases to offer any different, new, or

relevant data. Through the use of the Moustakas (1994) modified Van Kaam

method, I was able to identify themes that emerged from the individual

textual descriptions. The four themes gathered from the 12 participants

included (a) owners assimilated and accommodated lessons from previous

failure, (b) owners did not look at obstacles as barriers, (c) owners acquired

the ability to have successful plans, and (d) owners value people who make

businesses successful. In Section 3, I present a detailed description of the

outcomes of the study. This section includes (a) presentation of the findings,

(b) application to professional practice, (c) implications for social change,

(d) recommendations for action, (e) recommendations for further study, (f)

reflections, and (g) summary of the study conclusions.

Presentation of the Findings

The study’s primary research question was the following: What

strategies do business owners use to help them succeed in a second launch

attempt? I conducted semistructured interviews of 12 business owners. Each

owner had at least 5 years of business, professional, and occupational

experience in Fairfax County, Virginia (Appendix F). The owners included

one female and 11 males. The business owners participated in the standard

interviews and responded to the following questions:

•Please explain your life experiences, attitudes, and circumstances

that relate to business and financial strategies o in your first business

attempt; o in your second business attempt.

•Please provide an account of the business and human barriers you

encountered o in your first business attempt; o in your second

business attempt.

o How did you overcome these barriers?

•Please describe any significant changes in the business environment

that affected your business success o in your first business attempt;

o in your second business attempt.

•Please describe any strategies that you believe may have contributed

to your business success in your second business attempt.

•Is there anything else you can tell me that you think is important

about why you succeeded in your second business attempt?

These questions will be referred to as Question 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

throughout

Section 3.

Themes

In this study, I used a transcendental phenomenological design to

conduct semistructured interviews and used the modified Van Kaam method

to develop themes after coding and analyzing the data (Appendix A).

Moustakas (1994) outlined the summary of the phenomenological model

into 2 parts. First part is the process and second part is methodology. I used

the process to perform: (a) epoche, (b) phenomenological reduction, (c)

imaginative variation, and (d) synthesis of composite textural and composite

structural descriptions of the business owners. I used methodology in: (a)

preparing to collect data, (b) collecting data, (c) organizing, analyzing, and

synthesizing data from 12 successful second-time business owners, and (d)

finally summarizing, implying, and determining outcomes of the business

owners lived experiences.

I used the transcendental phenomenology process to perform

diagnostic analysis of the textual descriptions plus imaginative variation to

create the final description of the structures (Chan et al., 2013).

Berdychevsky and Gibson (2015) described imaginative variation as the aim

to consider one’s thoughts on the structural qualities of experience. The

phenomenological research process provided the framework to bracket the

imaginative variation, label the categories, cluster the invariant constituents,

identify the invariant constituent for theme reapplication, and prepare a

summative review for the field review panel.

The field review panel reviewed a copy of the draft study findings. A

bipolar scale (not important to extremely important) was presented to a

group of six men and women (Appendix J). I received feedback on the

validity of the initial findings and themes from each member of the field

review panel (Appendix L). The participants received a copy of their

interview transcripts and a draft of study findings as part of member

checking (Houghton et al., 2013).

Berdychevsky and Gibson (2015) reported that transcendental

phenomenological action is used to identify the uniqueness of lived

experiences including epoche, phenomenological reduction, imaginative

variations, and synthesis. Exploring the uniqueness of the lived experiences

of business owners was consistent with Cantillon (1755/2010) descriptions

of the key propositions of the theory of entrepreneurship: (a) function by

bearing risk, (b) understand uncertainty of change and risk, (c) bear the

intrinsic value of the opportunity cost of making goods and products, and (d)

understand the basic economic concepts of supply and demand to deal with

changing situations. I explored the uniqueness of the owners’ experiences to

grasp the strategies second-time business owners’ used after a failed first

launch.

Each theme was derived from various questions. Theme 1 was based

on Questions 1, 2, and 5. Theme 2 was derived from Questions 2 and 3. The

third theme was derived from Questions 1, 4, and 5. Finally, the fourth

theme originated from Questions

1, 2, and 5. Interview questions are presented in Appendix E

I used a modified Van Kaam to (a) explored the lived experiences of

the

participants and identify the strategies small business owners used to

succeed beyond 5 years in a second business launch attempt, (b) listed every

expression relevant to the experience, and (c) reduced the data by bracketing

and eliminating overlap by clustering and classifying responses into themes.

Participants’ interviews were labeled P1 through P12 to keep the

participants’ names and any identifying information confidential. The panel

members were labeled PM1 through PM6 to keep the panel members’ names

and identities confidential.

The following four themes emerged: (a) owners assimilated and

accommodated lessons from the previous failure, (b) owners did not look at

obstacles as barriers, (c) owners acquired the ability to have successful

plans, and (d) owners value people who make businesses successful. The

following sections present the description of each theme.

Theme 1: Owners Assimilated and Accommodated lessons from

Previous Failure

Today’s business owners adapt their experiences by using assimilation

and accommodation. Piaget (1974) defined assimilation as a cognitive

process used to manage how individuals take in new information and

incorporate the new information into their existing knowledge. Kolb and

Kolb (2008) argued that entrepreneurial learning is cultivated through an

emphasis on accommodation of learning, while strategy formulation of

learning tends to place emphasis on assimilation. The second-time business

owners’ learning experiences included failures and successes (Olaison &

Sørensen, 2014). Assimilation occurred when business owners’ failures and

successes added new knowledge to the existing knowledge learned from

previous experiences.

Olaison and Sørensen (2014) described entrepreneurial success in

terms of good failure (general learning) and bad failure (no learning).

General learning occurred as an accommodation when the business owners’

existing knowledge did not fit within a certain existing business schema.

Piaget (1974) defined accommodation as the process of dealing with new

information or events by either modifying an existing schema or forming a

new one. Aldrich and Yang (2014) argued that success depends on the

entrepreneur’s skills and efficiency in applying new business schema

(experiences) from prior ventures to current efforts. Piaget (1974) defined

the term schema as a category of knowledge that an individual currently

holds that helps the individual understand the world and provides some basic

guidance for future events. When business owners experienced no learning,

it left no need for change. However, when business owner’s encountered

experiences that provided general learning based on good failure though

accommodating old ideas, owners could change how they view future

business situations based on the knowledge learned from previous

experiences.

In 1755, Cantillon (as cited in Bula, 2012) identified the key economic

strategies associated with the theory of entrepreneurship. Brown and

Thornton (2013) argued that one of the pivotal roles of Cantillon’s

theoretical construction is an intrinsic value based on opportunity cost and

market price, which yields either a profit or loss. Business experience and

entrepreneurs’ learning from prior launch attempts coincide with social

learning theory, which addresses how people learn by doing (Wang &

Chugh, 2014). This theme is important because it incorporates the owners’

thoughts on why the business owner is most successful on the second launch

attempt. The business owner took the information, adapted it, and made the

accommodation be successful. This theme was best described by P1 and P2.

P1 stated the following:

I always felt that the companies that serviced the Department of

Defense, the agencies that I had worked at, were always large,

cumbersome, and they nickeledand-dimed the government. So it’s sort

of like a parent and a child. A child grows up, and you come to some

conclusions about how you want to be. Do you really want to be like

your parents, or do you want to be some hybrid of what you grew up

with? And I looked at my business model in the same light.

P2 stated the following:

Okay, well during my first launch attempt I was actually teaming up

with three other gentlemen. I was in my maybe mid-20s, at the time. The

other gentlemen I was teaming up with they were probably well in their 40s,

even 50s. And, they obviously had a lot more experience than me, but I felt

like I offered kind of a new thought being the youth of the bunch. And, we

tried to make some things happen. Theme 2: Owners Did Not Look at

Obstacles as Barriers

Aguilar-Morales, Sandoval-Caraveo, Surdez-Pérez, and Gómez-

Jiménez (2013); Tasnim et al. (2014) argued that successful business owners

are able to succeed by using their willpower, tenacity, and perseverance not

to recognize cognitive obstacles as barriers. Business owners described

obstacles as things they go through, over, or around to move the

organization to the next level, but not things that stopped them from being

successful (Taneja et al., 2016). Business owners viewed obstacles as

opportunity for grow. The business environment consists of obstacles and

risks of some sort to overcome and earn a profit. Business owners regarded

grow opportunities as a foundational trait of their success; valuing their

ability to identify obstacles (earning opportunities) as learning experiences

for creativity and profit (Tasnim et al., 2014).

In 1755, Cantillon (as cited in Bula, 2012) identified the key economic

strategies associated with the theory of entrepreneurship. Brown and

Thornton (2013) described constraints or obstacles as having a pivotal role

in Cantillon’s theoretical construction describing the theory of

entrepreneurship as the labor markets that contain skilled labor and represent

an opportunity in time cost to training and risk of learning. Cotterill (2013)

described three main barriers for small-business failures: (a) personal

characteristics, (b) managerial deficiencies, and (c) financial shortcomings.

The lens or propositions of the entrepreneur theory ground in risk of failure

and the opportunity of success. Economic theorists stressed studying

commercial activities such as buying at certain prices and selling at an

uncertain price is an example of living and having a high tolerance for the

obstacles of risk (Long, 1983). Cantillon (as cited in (Link & Scott, 2010)

believed in uncertainty and monetary theories, which led to his writing in

establishing the entrepreneurial foundation of understanding uncertainty of

obstacles (2nd proposition). Heuer Jr (1999) and Ucbasaran, Shepherd,

Lockett, and Lyon (2012) defined uncertainty as the condition allowing for

the most likely known results when there is an absence of evidence or

evidence of uncertain accuracy suggesting that the likelihood of an unknown

particular result may be an obstacle. Participants 4 and 5 described the

concepts of not looking at obstacles as barriers.

P4 stated the following:

My first attempt in business, the barriers really -- cause it was a

smaller local business in a town, and it was really the red tape of

getting the proper licensing. Being positioned, having to go in front of

the town board to get approvals and knowing that that town board,

with a little bit of a smaller town mentality, was gonna change their

answers every single week or every single month that I went in front

of that board. It’s about being patient. It’s about being positive. It’s

about realizing that don’t fight the system, work with the system.

P5 stated the following::

I never burned a bridge. I don’t believe in burning bridges in life. I

think you can get past anything, and you remember if someone does an

injustice to you or something, you remember that you never forget that,

but you don’t let it stand in the way of what needs to be done. So that

was my view in the first company. The second company I probably

would listen to my wife more, you know they give you good counsel,

and some of the mentors that are very strong businessmen, you know,

they said hey, you’re bringing the value, these guys are going to pile

on top of you, and I, you know I thought, I’m a believer in mankind,

and I continued to make some of these mistakes caused I believe

people are telling me what they can bring to the table.

Theme 3: Owners Acquired the Ability to Have Successful Plans

Brown and Thornton (2013) discussed Cantillion’s theory of the

entrepreneur from 3 points of view: (a) plans, (b) actions, and (c) constraints.

Brown and Thornton explained entrepreneurs’ planning entailed actions

relative to change defined by the law of supply and demand as a significance

aspect of the foundation of Cantillion’s entrepreneur theory. Business

owners continuously acquire the ability to have a plan to anticipate the law

of supply and demand by learning from their previous experiences and

putting the knowledge into practice. Parker (2013) argued that learning from

previous ventures might generate knowledge that continuously supports

subsequent ventures.

However, owners’ attitudes about the experiences are as important as

experiences for acquiring knowledge to plan for future ventures (Cotterill,

2013). The plan is not just a to-do list, but a vision involving strategic

learning with the ability to adapt to present and upcoming situations.

In 1755, Cantillon (as cited in Bula, 2012) identified the key strategies

associated with the theory of entrepreneurship. Andrade et al. (2015)

described entrepreneurship as the business or plan for something generating

benefits to individuals and society. Hambrick and Meinz (2011) reported

that successful second-time business owners acquired knowledge by

deliberately working on their business by focusing on planning while other

owners focused on working in their business. Similar to medical students,

who gradually transition from deliberate practicing, and gaining experience,

to the transformation in to medical doctors. Entrepreneurs move from novice

to expert through acquiring the knowledge to have successful businesses

(Bate et al., 2013). This theme is best described by P10 and P11. Participants

10 and 11 described their lived experiences on how they used adaptive

planning to make an adjustment and then fine-tune the plan to each business

situation.

P10 stated the following:

But yeah, there have definitely been many times when we've bid on

stuff, we didn't know the customer, but we read what they wanted, and

we said, "We don't have anything else going on, screw it, we'll write a

proposal." And more often than not, those won, weirdly enough.

P11 stated the following:

And it was an exciting, and it was interesting because we learned a lot

about the space, we learned a lot about ourselves. So yeah, while you

have to be very kind of even-keeled, you do occasionally have to roll

the dice because you can't grow as a business if you're not

occasionally going to take a calculated risk.

Theme 4: Owners Value People Who Make Businesses Successful

Cooper, Steffel, and Griffin (2014) argued that the wisdom of

business owners’ success relies on their human and management skills to

work with people and cognitive skills to work with ideas about not just

managing people, but taking care of people.

Business owners’ in today’s business environment pride themselves on

valuing people above all else (Torres, 2013). Successful business owners'

objectives relating to human capital relies on cognitive analysis of how

organizational changes influence how people work together in close

relationships and how information and ideas are shared between people,

elements, and domains (Kivipõld & Vadi, 2013). The cross-coordination

behavior between people and their work may provide business owners with

the agility to adjust their landscape based on situational recognition and

problem solving else (Torres, 2013). Arasti et al. (2012) explored the effect

of individual human factors such as the (a) skills, (b) capabilities, (c)

motivation, and (d) characteristics of successful business owners. Many

perceived factors that cause entrepreneurs to discontinue their business

operations include (a) decreases in effective managerial and planning

functions, (b) working capital management, (c) competitive environment,

and (d) overexpansion of the industry (Gaskil et al., 1993). This theme is

best described by P9 and P12. Participants 9 and 12 described their lived

experiences on how people, employees, and human resources have made

businesses successful.

P9 stated the following:

Nowhere in the Army does it teach you how to grow a business or

how to develop business. But what it does do is teach you how to deal

with all kinds of people. Especially as an infantry officer, I had men

who were college graduates from very good institutions. I had men

who had graduated high school barely in the middle of nowhere and

come out here and first time away from home. And you had to adapt

and deal with all types of individuals. And I think that was very

important on how I shaped my business in terms of being able to

relate to all kind of other people to develop business strategies in

terms of business development strategies.

P12 stated the following:

“Being able to manage the process, manage the funds, manage

people's time, manage all the things that it takes to keep the business

running”.

Conclusions: From the Themes

The themes described in this section establish a criterion for

addressing small business owners who lack strategies to succeed after a first

launch attempt. The first theme relates to business owners’ ability to

assimilate and accommodate information from failure and to learn from

these lived experiences (Tripathi & Sethi, 2014). The explication of the

interview data provided the description for the emerging theme (Sulaiman,

2011). The first theme was derived from questions one, two, and five. The

information obtained from the questions are consistent with the conceptual

framework. Cantillon (1755/2010) described the key propositions of the

theory of entrepreneurship as: (a) function by bearing risk, (b) understand

uncertainty of change and risk, (c) bear the intrinsic value of the opportunity

cost of making goods and products, and (d) understand the basic economic

concepts of supply and demand to deal with changing situations.

The second theme relates to the business owners’ ability to either

transcend to innovate through, over, or go around to effectively move the

organization to the next level, but not something that stopped an owner from

being successful (Taneja et al., 2016). Cotterill (2013) described three main

barriers for small-business failures, namely, (a) personal characteristics, (b)

managerial deficiencies, and (c) financial shortcomings. The second theme

was derived from questions two and three. The information obtained from

the questions were consistent with Cope (2011) characterization of the three

phases of entrepreneurial learning theory: (a) the aftermath of the failure and

the enduring cost of failure, (b) the recovery from failure and the learning

processes which occur in rehabilitating the owner, and (c) the re-emergence

of the owner through documenting the outcomes of learning from failure.

The third theme relates to the business owners’ ability to fulfill a plan

by learning certain things from previous experiences and putting the

knowledge learned into practices. Brown and Thornton (2013) addressed the

pivotal roles of Cantillon's theoretical construction as plans for economic

geography based on the size and location of a village to make production

decisions. The third theme was gained from one, four, and five. The

information obtained from the questions asked to the owners; lived

experiences on how business owners used adaptive planning to fine tuning

and make adjustment to business situations and is consistent with Politis and

Gabrielsson (2009) explanation of entrepreneurial learning as a continuous

process for success in starting and managing ventures.

Theme number four relates the business owners’ ability to weight the

value of people in continuous business success. Business owners

demonstrate an understating of human factors about people and not about

just managing people, but the treatment of people. Arasti et al. (2012)

explored the effect of individual human factors such as the (a) skills, (b)

capabilities, (c) motivation, and (d) characteristics of successful business

owners. The fourth theme was gained from questions one, two, and five. The

information obtained from the questions described business owners lived

experiences on how people, employees, and human resources have made

business owners successful.

The conceptual framework, research question, purpose, literature, and

interview questions offered the researcher the framework for forming and

describing the themes Cantillon (1755/2010) articulated the key proposition

of understanding uncertainty of change and risk, which was the essential

factor in the development of the four themes. Brown and Thornton (2013)

described Cantillon’s proposition as being an aid in confirming,

disconfirming, or extending knowledge for comparing the collected data,

reviewing the answers to the interview questions, and integrating the

literature.

The conclusions from the participants’ responses guided the research

to the following inferences: (a) experience culminates with skill and

knowledge acquired over years gives context to the business exercise, (b)

barriers for the participants were not just lack of knowledge but also lack of

capability, (c) participants saw environment as anything that influenced

buying and selling behaviors, (d) strategy is the future of business, (e)

success is derived from integrating participants’ experience, strategy,

environment, and culture as they worked through obstacles for 5 years.

This exploration of second-time business owners was consistent with

Cope (2011) characterization of the three phases of entrepreneurial learning

theory: (a) the aftermath of the failure and the enduring cost of failure, (b)

the recovery from failure and the learning processes which occur in

rehabilitating the owner, and (c) the re-emergence of the owner through

documenting the outcomes of learning from failure. Additionally, second-

time business owners exploration supported Politis and Gabrielsson (2009)

explanation of entrepreneurial learning as a continuous process for success

in starting and managing ventures. Finally, the exploration of the second-

time business owners was consistent with Tseng (2013) identification of the

five points of self-directed learning against failure: (a) opportunity

recognition and experience, (b) how to start-up a new venture, (c) how to

develop self-efficacy, critical thinking, and reflection among individuals, (d)

self-regulation, and (e) life cycle learning. This exploration of secondtime

business owner was important and support the reason why business owners

are most successful for a second launch attempt.

Applications to Professional Practice

In this study, the findings indicate several potential applications for

professional practice. The results can inform other business owners how

different strategies drove the participants to pursue success and can improve

business practices. Service organizations like Fairfax County Economic

Development Authority (FCEDA), Small Business

Administration (SBA), Virginia Small Business Development Center

(SBDC), and Senior Corps of Retired Executive (SCORE) may use the

results to provide business advice.

SCORE may review the material and decide to incorporate some of

the findings into their training programs and then assess the results. The

Small Business Administrative may choose to try and implement some of

the concepts into the frequently asked questions protocol. Additionally, the

findings may be reviewed for used as a training vehicle either in Blackboard

or with focus groups as guide exercises on success strategies. The finding

may be used as feeder information for instructional system designers for

producing academic information that may make a difference in the social

impact of the community.

The study supports Abosede and Onakoya (2013) the underpinning

importance of entrepreneurial behavior and practice identified by Cantillion.

Taneja et al. (2016) described small businesses owners practice as a

cognitive continuous innovate thought patterns (ideas) to be ready to adapt

(accommodation) to changes in the marketplace by improving their learning

capability (assimilation) to survive and surpass the competition. Good

business owners, successful business owners, they are always learning,

always thinking, and always reflecting. This study captured the descriptions

of the good and successful business owners lived experiences, and stories

associated with the thirty strategies found in Appendix I.

Implications for Social Change

Abosede and Onakoya (2013) pointed out that the role of business

owners as change agents for social change taking risks for their actions while

in the same breath meeting the need of the social gap of the community

trying to effect change. Successful business owners in Fairfax County are

trying to effect social change, by driving the economy, and helping to

maintain the business community. Kreft and Sobel (2005) described this

effort as maintaining the community by driving to increase sales and add

jobs, fueling positive social change through the longevity of sustaining a

business for more than five years.

The implication for positive social change emerged in the business

owners’ potential for creating and applying the lived experiences, ideas,

strategies, and actions to promote successful communities, organizations,

institutions, cultures, and societies. Positive social change resulted in the

improvement of human and social conditions to (a) change the number of

successes and failures of small businesses, (b) increase research on what

strategies helped successful second-time business owners after the first failed

launch attempt, and (c) expand the payrolls of existing owners (Stolarick et

al., 2011).

Successful business owners performed at the root of social change,

driving the economy, and remaking communities (Desai & Reighard, 2012).

Successful second-time business owners contributed to urban life, decreasing

and averting poverty, and fueling planning for workable solutions for the

poor (Miller et al., 2012). Hence, positive social change contributed to an

increase in net employment, with the increase in jobs resulting in an overall

positive effect on the community (Stolarick et al., 2011).

Recommendations for Action

Cardon et al. (2012) reported on business owners’ experiences,

resulting in an argument on how cognitive behaviors manifested into

outcomes when owners were willing to exert a higher level of effort to

achieve a particular goal. I recommend as a particular goal that the

assimilation and accommodation theme where business owners took the

information presented, thought about it, and made decisions with the

feedback from their staff. Successful business owners thrive at being able to

hit their goals and evolving their businesses into a success culture through

assimilation and accommodation (Rosenfeld, 2012). Business owners’

success is achieved through overcoming issues and anticipating desirable

options to reach desirable outcomes (Tasnim et al., 2014). Shepherd,

Williams, and Patzelt (2014b) described how business owners’ successful

decision-making was based on various factors, including owners’ knowledge

and experience, situations, and conscious processing that inform beliefs

leading to final outcomes and feedback. The themes and patterns noted in

the data analysis describe how business owners reached business outcome

through the use of either money, planning, people, administration strategies,

or a combination (see figure 1).

Business owners’ decision process includes generating mutually

exclusive alternatives for any situation to exhaust all reasonable possible

solutions it will occur (yes) or it will not (no). The decision process involves

the determination of possible options; that may happen or happen

simultaneously. The options entail the environmental forces and factors

affecting business owners’ decision-making process in reaching their desired

outcomes. Business owners visualize the outcomes of implementing the

outcomes through the use of either money, planning, people, administration

strategies, or a combination. The strategies are implemented through the

development of options and outcomes using decision points to give insight

into possible business opportunities.

Business owners continuously prepare for a sequence of causal and

temporal events, or tracking decisions between initiating events, closing

events, and selecting a final outcome. Determining business decisions using

the event is based on business indications and environmental factors. My

recommendations for actions are to take the processes as explained in this

study.

Business decisions are mediated by the strategies and goals of the

business owners through their communications loop (Caliendo, Fossen, &

Kritikos, 2014). Second-time business owners’ communications loop

included: (a) employee feedback, (b) experiential learning, (c) network

assimilation, (d) communications inputs and outputs, and (e) flexible

accommodation.

My recommendations are for some small business owners, and others

who support the small business community is to use the decision tree.

Business owners learn how to make decisions based on their past

experiences incorporating information from the feedback loop and their

decision-making model developed through the use of assimilation and

accommodation. The decision tree is a visual tool use to depict business

owner’s options, using decision points to give insight into possible business

issues and events. I will offer the findings to leaders and members of the

Fairfax Chamber of Commerce (FCOC) business organization, George

Mason University – Mason Enterprise Center, and the Virginia Department

of Business Assistance (VDOBA). The results from this study may be

distributed at the FCOCs, George Mason, and VDOBA networking meeting,

education seminars, trade shows, and other business development programs

and community projects.

Recommendations for Further Research

Hayward et al. (2010) observed that the information gap concerning

highly confident entrepreneurs who rebound to start another venture is

limited. Kirschenhofer and Lechner (2012) ) argued that second-time

entrepreneurial experience provided positive cognitive effects on the

entrepreneur’s performance. Addressing this gap in the body of knowledge

may improve business practices of venture capitalists, innovators, scholarly

practitioners, and small business owners. The knowledge obtained from

exploring successful practices may aid in reducing opportunity costs.

Cantillon (1755/2010) as well as generate new constructs about the

phenomena and new business operating procedures through extraction of

data from the participants. Consequently, this business research may address

the gap in the body of knowledge, allowing improvements in small business

policy, and implementing positive social change to enhance the small

business environment and social learning characteristics.

Further research regarding the individual business segments and

occupations of successful second-time business owners is needed.

Additional insights may be gained by not bracketing the scope of the

research by location and years of operating. Narrowing the criteria by using

a stated occupation such as accounts, barbers, ministers, and real estate

appraisers who have more than five years may deliver additional insights.

Conducting research on business owners of nonprofit business

establishments may add social valuable through exploring the business

strategies required to run a successful nonprofit. Future research that

combines qualitative and quantitative analyses on successful second-time

business owners might provide insight into the strategies used and provide

statistical data for the business community to benefit from the scholarly

research.

The next set of recommendations surrounds several potential

applications for professional practice. Professional practice informs the first

time business owners, community business leaders, and scholarly

practitioners on how different strategies drove second-time business owners’

success. The lack of literature on the emerging themes from the study

indicate a need for further research relating to business value. The future

exploration and documentation of owners’ business values are necessary to

increase academic knowledge on deliberate practices that led to success in

business the secondtime. I recommend that researchers investigate and

document the human practices and insights from experience second-time

business owners’ perspectives. Additional research on how to integrate the

study findings into the business community’s documentation would help

exporting and applying the findings and to inform local, state, and national

policy governing small businesses updating and adding to the existing

literature.

Reflections

As a researcher, the elements of the DBA doctoral study process

provided a way to gain understanding on how to break down objects or ideas

into simpler parts and find evidence to support inferences and implications.

The process guided me to use scholarly practitioners’ traits to compile the

component ideas into a new whole concept or propose alternative solutions.

Finally, the DBA process steered the practitioner’s side of me to apply

knowledge to actual scholarly situations.

Reflecting back, the journey seems short when compared with

planning an adventure looking forward. My images of 12 participants,

professors, and other scholarly practitioners flick on and off as my

metacognition sparks with awareness of the reflections of the journey. The

conceptual operation of inverting the scholarly events with respect to the

DBA Doctoral Process might be described as campaigns. The explorations

off the journey are reflected in each completed element within the DBA

Doctoral Study process. As a scholarly practitioner navigating through these

elements, I gained the intellectual confidence, humility, fair-mindedness,

courage, empathy, autonomy, integrity, and perseverance and I know that

one day I will make social change.

The changes in my thinking after completing the study lies with the

value of the DBA Doctoral Study process. The value of change equates to

the blind spot bias but now having the willingness to be perceived others

ideas, thoughts, or options as having knowledge and worth. The insights and

inferences gained from traveling through the scholarly mysteries of my

change process sparked the improvement strategies required for a life

learner.

Summary and Study Conclusions

The researcher set out to explore what strategies business owners used

to help them succeed in a second launch attempt. After reviewing the

literature, the researcher suggested that a gap existed in the scholarly

information pertaining to successful secondtime business owners. A

combination of the business owners’ rich descriptions and context with the

use of a field review panel provided the information necessary to assess the

transferability of the study findings and conclusions.

The results from the study findings and implications by the researcher

shaped the premise that the failure informs the success. Information about

the business owners lived experiences, implications, and inferences on what

strategies business owners used to help them succeed in a second launch

attempt added to the existing literature concerning the strategies used by

successful second-time business owners. The study’s findings and

descriptions aided the comprehension, application, and understanding of

successful business owners’ strategies. These strategies illustrated how vital

and significant the business owners’ development of new principles,

knowledge, and situation awareness of the business environment

demonstrated an understanding of success.

Strategies That Make Entrepreneurs Sucessful On A Second Business Launch

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