Harmonious and Obsessive Entrepreneurial Passion and Their Interaction with the Environment

We examine how passion affects individual entrepreneurs. In particular, we integrate theories on harmonious and obsessive passion with extant work on entrepreneurial passion to develop models indicating how passion might influence affective and behavioral outcomes among entrepreneurs. We test our models across two different studies. Results suggest that harmonious entrepreneurial passion links to increased positive affect and lower burnout whereas obsessive entrepreneurial passion ties to lower positive affect and higher burnout. More interestingly, these results are contingent on the competitive intensity of the entrepreneurial environment. As competitive intensity increases, perceived burnout among obsessively passionate entrepreneurs appears to reduce. This research provides a starting point for investigating how the external environment may interact with an individual entrepreneur’s passion to influence various different outcomes.