The Effect of Social Support on Job Stress of Entrepreneurs

INTRODUCTION Today, entrepreneurship is emphasized in all economies, as an important concept that is thought to contribute to the social and economical developments. The changing economic conditions not only increased the participation of women and men in labor force but also in entrepreneurial activity. The supporting activities of the national economies, providing incentives, increased need to change and diversity, developing technology, the easy access to information through the internet and social and individual factors increased the willingness of individuals to become an entrepreneur. In macro level, engaging in entrepreneurial activities contribute to the countries' economies by providing employment opportunities for others, creating new businesses, generating new wealth and adding to national income and creating social change with innovative actions. In individual level, it also provides benefits such as individual autonomy, control and particularly financial freedom and freedom on adjusting work schedule. All these positive features are the one side of the coin, challenging work conditions, taken risks that are based on the motive of making profit and critical decisions in order to ensure the sustainability of business present the other side of coin. All these difficulties which are related with work life create a physical and psychological response that is called job stress. Today's work life consists of rapidly changing technology, globalization and many economic crises that causes the individuals to perceive higher level of job stress than before. The relation between job stress and employee well-being and health has been the subject of many studies. Nurses, doctors, emergency workers, firefighters and policemen have formed the sample of the many studies on job stress due to stressful working conditions and job quality (Cevik, 2011; Goceri, 2014). The results revealed that job stress affects employees' physical and mental health directly and negatively, and is positively related to their job dissatisfaction, burnout, absenteeism, loss of production and performance, and high turnover rates (Bolino & Turnley, 2005; Flanagan, 2006; Kazmi, Amjad & Khan, 2008; Rothmann, Jackson & Krueger, 2003). Social support is the other important variable associated with the job stress. La Rocco, House & French (1980), in their study on 636 male employees revealed that employees perceived social support from their colleagues and managers affect negatively their job stress. Blau (1981), reported that social support reduces the level of job stress and negative judgments of business through which individuals may have. Daniels and Guppy (1994), indicated that, in the light of data obtained from 244 accountants, social support decreases the job stress of accountants and have a positive impact on well-being of individuals. Despite the individual, social and economical advantages of entrepreneurship, it also considered as stressful and difficult work activities due to nature of business environment. Therefore, identification of the possible effect of social support on job stress of entrepreneurs provides necessary information about correctional entrepreneurs' work environment and rendering support. The absence of empirical research about the association of social support and job stress, especially on entrepreneurs creates the incentives to do the present study. This study aims at assessing the effect of perceived social support on job stress for entrepreneurs in Australia. The examination of reducing factor of stress such as support would help to deal with stress' costly negative outcomes that affect individuals and organizations alike. In addition, it intends to find out whether there is any difference between women and men entrepreneurs on perception of this effect or not by multi-group structural equation modeling. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESIS Conservation of resource theory, which is a stress theory developed by Stevan Hobfoll (1989), examine the demands in the environment and the individuals' resources to deal with these demands in order to identify stress process. …