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Collective Passion in Entrepreneurial Teams

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Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind

Part of the book series: International Studies in Entrepreneurship ((ISEN,volume 24))

Affective processes of individuals and teams at work are increasingly becoming acknowledged as important drivers of business decision-making processes and organizational behaviors. In particular, there has been an increasing interest in the notion of passion and its role in entrepreneurship. Business practitioners reckon that to stand even a chance of winning in a cutthroat environment dominated by larger, richer competitors, an entrepreneur needs to have “passion” – the “fire of desire” that enables an entrepreneur to surmount even the most difficult obstacles.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://archives.emergic.org/archives/2001/10/17/index.html

  2. 2.

    http://www.straightfromthegut.com/meet/meet_qa.html

  3. 3.

    In this chapter we use role identity as a proxy for a set of entrepreneurship-specific activities. Based on a taxonomy of entrepreneurial activities developed by Gartner et al. (1999), three role identities can be envisioned: (1) an inventor identity where the entrepreneur’s passion is for activities involved in identifying, inventing, and exploring new opportunities; (2) a founder identity, where the entrepreneur’s passion is for activities involved in establishing a venture for commercializing and exploiting opportunities; and (3) a developer identity, where the entrepreneur’s passion is for activities related to nurturing, growing, and expanding the venture once it has been created. All three of these role identities are prevalent and important for entrepreneurship and we do not suggest a specific hierarchy.

  4. 4.

    Even though “affective diversity” has traditionally been applied to individual differences in affective traits or personalities between people (Barsade et al. 2000), we contend that this theoretical lens is still appropriate to use when examining the collective passion of entrepreneurial teams. The primary difference between emotion states (like passion) and emotion traits (the traditional focus of affective diversity) is that the former has a clearly identifiable target while the latter emerges from a personality predisposition and, as such, does not need to have a clear target (Barsade et al. 2000). Despite this difference in sources, the effects of both state and trait affect, once produced, may be similar (Baron 2008; Lyubomirsky et al. 2005). Using a lens, such as affective diversity, that acknowledges the social nature of affect (e.g., Parkinson, 1996) allows us to examine the interpersonal effects of passion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploscad 17, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Mateja Drnovsek

  2. Lubin School of Business, Pace University, 861 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY 10570, USA

    Melissa S. Cardon

  3. US Air Force Academy, Colorado 80840, USA

    Charles Y. Murnieks

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  1. Mateja Drnovsek
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  2. Melissa S. Cardon
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  3. Charles Y. Murnieks
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Correspondence to Mateja Drnovsek .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Global Entrepreneurship Center, Florida International University, SW., 8th Street 11200, Miami, 33199, U.S.A.

    Alan L. Carsrud

  2. Dept. Business Administration, Swedish University Abo, Henriksgatan 7, Turku, 20500, Finland

    Malin Brännback

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Drnovsek, M., Cardon, M.S., Murnieks, C.Y. (2009). Collective Passion in Entrepreneurial Teams. In: Carsrud, A., Brännback, M. (eds) Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 24. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0443-0_9

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