Healthy Entrepreneurs for Healthy Businesses : An Exploratory Study of the Perception of Health and Well-Being by Entrepreneurs

With this paper, we want to emphasise the importance of healthy entrepreneurs for sustainable business development. We contribute to the field of entrepreneurship and show how entrepreneurs assess their own health state. We contribute to the field of occupational health by explicitly focusing the social dimension of health besides the physical and mental well-being. Drawing on a multiple-case study of six entrepreneurs, we show that entrepreneurs' rarely perceive their health as a resource for business performance. Whereas the concept of physical well-being is relatively well understood by the entrepreneurs, they have a very limited awareness and understanding of the mental and social well-being dimensions.