Project failure from corporate entrepreneurship: Managing the grief process

In this paper, we complement social cognitive theory with psychological theories on grief in our discussion of two approaches to grief management – grief regulation and grief normalization – that hold promise for enabling corporate entrepreneurs to cope with negative emotions induced by project failure. We propose that to the extent that organizational members have high self-efficacy for recovering from grief over project failure, or this coping self-efficacy can be built through the social support offered by the organizational environment, regulating rather than eliminating, grief via normalization processes will explain superior learning and motivational outcomes.