بررسی مسری بودن اشتیاق کارآفرینی میان کارکنان Is passion contagious? The transference of entrepreneurial passion to employees

abstract The scholarly entrepreneurship community is coming to recognize what practicing entrepreneurs have known for some time — that passion is a central element of the entrepreneurial process. Recent developments have more carefully defined the construct of entrepreneurial passion and modeled its impact on entrepreneurial behaviors. This paper takes the next step by building a model of how that passion may be transferred from entrepreneur to employees. The question of interest is how entrepreneurs can facilitate the contagion of their own passion to others. © ۲۰۰۸ Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Passion Emotional contagion Entrepreneurship 1. Introduction An emerging stream of research concerns the powerful role affect plays in enhancing the success potential of would-be entrepreneurs. For example, positive emotion may enhance entrepreneurial creativity, which can aid in recognition of new opportunities (Baron, 2008), and entrepreneurs that are passionate for their ventures may be more creative and persistent, and may become more absorbed in venture-related activities, which should enhance key venture outcomes (Cardon, Wincent, Singh, & Drnovsek, in press). More broadly, entrepreneurs who are passionate have been thought to be more successful than those who are not by both academics (e.g. Baum & Locke, 2004; Cardon, Zietsma, Saparito, Matherne, & Davis, 2005) and practitioners (e.g. Moses, 2001). Chang (2001: 106) argues that, “Passion inspires us to work harder and with greater effect. The irony is that we hardly notice our effort. It comes easily and enjoyably.” Yet entrepreneurs do not act alone; successful recruitment and management of employees are critical factors influencing the success of emerging ventures (Baron & Hannan, 2002; Deshpande & Golhar, 1994; Hornsby & Kuratko, 1990). A growing body of literature on alternative models of human resource management in such firms has emerged (e.g. Baron, Burton, & Hannon, 1996; Baron & Hannan, 2002; Baron, 2003; Heneman & Tansky, 2002; Heneman, Tansky, & Camp, 2000). This research suggests that firm performance can be enhanced by effective HR practices such as attracting and retaining key talent (Barber, Wesson, Roberson, & Taylor, 1999), providing appropriate compensation and incentives (Graham, Murray, & Amuso, 2002), and developing employees through training (Chandler & McEvoy, 2000). If passionate entrepreneurs make for more effective organizations, and employees are also a critical input to firm performance, then it follows that having passionate employees would also be beneficial. We know that, in general, affective experiences at work influence the direction, intensity, and persistence of employee behavior (Seo, Barrett, & Bartunek, 2004). Yet interestingly, we have only anecdotal evidence concerning the role that emotions and feelings of employees of entrepreneurial firms play in influencing firm survival and success. It is a theoretical and empirical puzzle whether strong emotions of entrepreneurs themselves, perhaps combined with effective HRM, are enough to lead to firm success, or whether in small firms the emotions of the employees are also important. Further, if employee passion is beneficial, the question becomes how entrepreneurs can transfer their passion to employees. Drawing from the psychological literature on emotions and feelings (e.g., Russell & Barrett, 1999) and emotional contagion1 (e.g. Sy, Cote, & Saavedra, 2005), as well as literature on transformational leadership (e.g., Bass, 1985), we build a model of emotional contagion within the entrepreneurial context, from entrepreneurs to employees. In the following sections we discuss entrepreneurial passion in general, then how it leads to the emotional displays of entrepreneurs. We then build a model of emotional contagion, drawing a distinction between contagion through primitive emotional mimicry and through social comparison processes. We discuss how transformational leadership can enhance contagion through social comparison, and ultimately suggest that for contagion of passion from entrepreneur to employee to occur, employees must experience both positive intense feelings for their activities and a sense of meaningfulness or identity connection to those activities within the entrepreneurial firm. This draws directly from a recent definition of passion, where our discussion begins.