Abstract
Hubris is an extreme manifestation of confidence and ambition that is characterized by preoccupations with success, feelings of excessive pride and self-importance, arrogance, contempt for advice and criticism, and an imperviousness to learning. It belongs to the same nomological net as overconfidence and hyper core self-evaluation (Haynes et al., 2015) but is distinct from narcissism (Asad and Sadler-Smith, 2020). The origins of hubris research in business and management can be traced back to the foundational work in behavioural finance in the ‘hubris hypothesis’ of mergers and acquisitions (Roll, 1986) which explained the negative consequences of chief executive officer (CEO) overconfidence. Hubris research has branched out subsequently into areas that include strategic management (for example, Hiller and Hambrick, 2005), leadership (for example, Akstinaite et al., 2019) and entrepreneurship (for example, Hayward et al., 2010). Research suggests that hubris is far from uncommon in entrepreneurs (Haynes et al., 2015) and in this chapter we examine the characteristics, causes and consequences, both positive and negative, of entrepreneurial hubris.