Handling the Beast : How Entrepreneurs Deal with Their Obsessive Passion

Titelangaben

Streeb, Mirjam ; Franzke, Sonja ; Baum, Matthias:
Handling the Beast : How Entrepreneurs Deal with Their Obsessive Passion.
In: Academy of Management Proceedings. (2023) Heft 1 .
ISSN 2151-6561
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/AMPROC.2023.12613abstract

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Abstract

Recent research suggests that entrepreneurs are not only ‘passive victims’ (or beneficiaries) of their passion but can actively handle their passion to maximize advantages and avoid harmful consequences. Given that passion is an important antecedent of entrepreneurial success, exploring how entrepreneurs can manage their passion is of high interest for entrepreneurship research. We probe into this issue with qualitative data on 37 entrepreneurs, exploring their experience and handling strategies of obsessive passion. We find that there are several pathways to passion handling. The pathways differ regarding the degree of consciousness and active control entrepreneurs take over their obsessive passion. This has implications for how we regard obsessive passionate entrepreneurs: we move from regarding them as passive holders of an obsessive-passion-trait to active agents shaping their own obsessive passion. We show that when entrepreneurs successfully achieve to establish their own optimal obsessive passion level, they maximize the positive consequences thereof.