Research On Development And Transition Of Entrepreneurial Passion

Innovation and entrepreneurship play an important role in social and economic development and national strategic planning.Passion is a phenomenon that attracts much attention in entrepreneurial process and is the core driver of entrepreneurship.Inspiring and releasing individual’s passion can effectively transform individual talents and interests into actions which can promote success,thus making an important contribution to society.In the actual entrepreneurial process,entrepreneurial passion emerges from a few individuals.Moreover,the passion released by entrepreneur often changes and sometimes decreases or even fades,which is not conducive to the thriving of entrepreneurship.Therefore,to know how to drive development of entrepreneurial passion,to predict and adjust the transition of entrepreneurial passion,is the key to use passion to achieve entrepreneurship goals and promote social and economic growth.For a long time,studies on entrepreneurial passion have mainly focused on the impact of entrepreneurial passion.Only a few studies have explored the development and transition of entrepreneurial passion,and the results always are inconsistent.These studies unable to explain the reason about why various entrepreneurs form differentiate entrepreneurial passion and fail to solve the problem about whether and how entrepreneurial passion transit,which cannot provide reasonable suggestions for management practice activities.The reasons for these problems are as follows:First,existing studies usually focus on the influence of one aspect of internal or external factors on certain entrepreneurial passion,and only discuss the influence of entrepreneurial behavior factors on certain component changes of some entrepreneurial passion.Second,existing studies on the measurement and portray of entrepreneurial passion are not unified and divorced from the actual situation of entrepreneurial passion,which either separate different entrepreneurial passion(passion for inventing,passion for founding,and passion for developing)respectively,or separate the emotion element and identity element of entrepreneurial passion,or simply add different components or different kinds of entrepreneurial passion,ignoring the characteristics of entrepreneurial passion rooted in the identity,overlooking the fact that different entrepreneurial passions coexist sequentially and influence each other.The person-centered perspective can precisely identify the different combinations of the three entrepreneurial passions and distinguish the heterogeneous entrepreneur subgroups with different level and shape of entrepreneurial passions.Based on the person-centered perspective,this study builds the theory framework about the development and transition of entrepreneurial passion,which consider the development and transition of three entrepreneurial passion and go beyond the limitation of variable-centered perspective by exploring the development and transition regularity of three entrepreneurial passion’s structure relationship.This conforms to the hypothesis of"complex man" management theory and achieves new results that are more consistent with management practice.Therefore,this research adopted literature analysis,field data research,behavioral experiment research,complex network,latent profile analysis,latent transition analysis for theoretical research and empirical test.Based on literature review,this research systematically sorts the concept and measurement of entrepreneurial passion,topic analysis of entrepreneurial passion research,influence of entrepreneurial passion,antecedents of entrepreneurial passion,transition of entrepreneurial passion,and a person-centered approach.Then,this research conducted hundreds of questionnaires in some province such as Beijing,Inner Mongolia,Shandong,Sichuan for many times.By using latent profile analysis,this research identified and verified different combinations of passion for inventing,passion for founding and passion for developing.Combined with DCON analysis method,the discriminative validity of entrepreneurial passion profiles was tested.Combined R3STEP analysis method,this research explored how self,family,social factors impact the development of different entrepreneurial passion’s combinations.Using latent transition analysis,based on longitudinal data analysis,this research detected the transition of different entrepreneurial passion combinations.Based on the conditional transformation probability analysis,a hybrid calculation model is formed,combining the behavioral experimental research,the influence of the change of goal content on the change of entrepreneurial passion is explored.The following breakthrough results have been achieved:Firstly,this study found the realistic form and discriminative validity of entrepreneurial passion.Using two samples of students who participated in entrepreneurship course activities and entrepreneurs who participated in entrepreneurship activities,adopting latent profile analysis,we identified four entrepreneurial passion profiles with level and shape differences.Respectively,the sustainable passionate(with highest level of all three entrepreneurial passion)and the dispassionate(with lowest level of all three entrepreneurial passion)showed dominant level difference.The action-driven(with relatively high level of passion for founding and passion for developing,and mediate level of passion for inventing)and the interest-driven(with mediate level of passion for inventing and relatively low level of passion for founding and passion for developing)showed dominant shape difference.Then we test the validity of differentiation for entrepreneurial passion profiles by introducing entrepreneurial success and psychological wellbeing.The results found the sustainable passionate showed the highest level of entrepreneurial success,successively followed by the action-driven,interest-driven and the dispassionate.And the action-driven experienced highest level of psychological well-being,followed by the sustainable passionate,then by the interest-driven and the dispassionate.The results show that the differentiation between different entrepreneurial passion profiles is effective.The identification and verification of the number and form of entrepreneurial passion profiles and the confirmation of the discriminant validity of different entrepreneurial passion profiles can provide a basis for the subsequent exploration of the development and transition of entrepreneurial passion.Secondly,we detected how self,family,and social factors impact the development of entrepreneurial passion profile.Based on the results of latent profile analysis,a hybrid model is established.The results show that entrepreneurial experience cannot distinguish between the sustainable passionate and the actiondrive,and the higher entrepreneurial experience increases the development probability of sustainable passionate and action-driven,followed by interest-driven,and finally,the dispassionate.Family-work enrichment successively increases the development probability of the action-driven,followed by sustainable passionate,then by interest-driven,and dispassionate.Social support successively increases the formation probability of the sustainable passionate,followed by action-driven,then by interest-driven,and the last is dispassionate.However,entrepreneurial experience,family-work enrichment and social support have similar effects on entrepreneurial passion profile at different time points,suggesting that these three factors cannot predict the evolution of entrepreneurial passion.Third,we studied the transition of entrepreneurial passion and its implications.Based on the previous two studies,the entrepreneurial passion profiles at different time points are connected.The results show that,at the inter-individual level,the entrepreneurial passion profiles are stable across time points,that is,the number and of entrepreneurial passion profiles at the two time points is unchanged and the structure is similar.At the intra-individual level,the stability of entrepreneurial passion profile is moderate.Specifically,about 50%of the subjects of the sustainable passionate,interest-driven and dispassionate could maintain the same entrepreneurial passion profile at two time points.Only 15%of action-driven participants maintained the same entrepreneurial passion profile at both time points,while the entrepreneurial passion profile of the rest subjects experienced transformation.In addition,the transition from the sustainable passionate and action-driven entrepreneurs to dispassionate and interest-driven entrepreneurs was associated with lower entrepreneurial success and psychological well-being,and vice versa.The transition from interest-driven to dispassionate entrepreneurs was associated with lower entrepreneurial success,the transition from sustained passion to action-driven was associated with lower entrepreneurial success,and vice versa.Fourth,we explore the impact of goal content on the transition of entrepreneurial passion.Based on the results of the study 1-3 and longitudinal data at two time points,the study found that the rise of internal goals can increase the probability of entrepreneurial passion’s transition:dispassionate to action-driven,interest-driven to action-driven or sustainable.The reduction of internal goals can increase the transition probability of action-driven to dispassionate,action-driven to interest-driven,and sustained passionate to dispassionate or interest-driven.The rise of external goals can increase the probability of transition from dispassionate to action-driven,interest-driven to action-driven or action-driven to sustainable passionate;decrease of external goals increase the probability of transition from interest-driven to dispassionate,action-driven to dispassionate or interest-driven,sustained passion to dispassionate or interest driven.In addition,the results of behavioral experiments confirm that the goal content can be changed by intervention,thus leading to changes in entrepreneurial passion.The theoretical contribution of this study is shown in four aspects:(1)Based on thinking framework of people-centered,this study finds four realistic forms of entrepreneurial passion,verifies the understanding of level differences of entrepreneurial in traditional variable-centered perspective,explores shape difference of three entrepreneurial passion in distinct entrepreneurs,solves the ignorance about influence and orderly coexistence across three entrepreneurial passion.This echoes that entrepreneurial passion reflects the dynamic of entrepreneurial process and provides a conceptual model of entrepreneurial passion that is more consistent with entrepreneurial management practice activities.(2)Based on the person-centered perspective,by introducing the theoretical framework of resource investment,this study establishes the model about the effect of entrepreneurial experience,work-family enrichment,and social support on the development of entrepreneurial passion,shows the development of entrepreneurial passion including level and shape formation,finds that the formation of entrepreneurial passion is the result of the both internal factors and external factors.This reveals that there is not a simple linear relationship between resources from different sources and entrepreneurial passion,integrates the divergence of previous studies on the development of entrepreneurial passion,and solves the lack of studies on the development of entrepreneurial passion.(3)This paper establishes the transition model of entrepreneurial passion at two time points from person-centered perspective,ensuring various the self-regulation results of different entrepreneurial passion form,and finding the changing rules of the level and shape of entrepreneurial passion.This expands the content of identity theory,reveals the importance of three entrepreneurial passion may change,and goes beyond the limitation about that variable-centered perspective just discuss the level change of emotion or identity component of some entrepreneurial passion.(4)Based on intervention thought about dynamic management incentive,this study establishes a person-centered model of the impact of the change of goal content on the transition of entrepreneurial passion,which groundbreakingly find goal content can change the level and shape of the three entrepreneurial passion and trigger different transition process of entrepreneurial passion.This innovatively complements the research gap in stimulating the change of entrepreneurial passion.According to the research results,this study provides the following implications for entrepreneurial management practices:(1)Entrepreneurs should not only pay attention to the level of entrepreneurial passion,but also pay attention to the synergistic,reinforcing,compensating or contradictory relationship among the three entrepreneurial passion;(2)It provides suggestions for entrepreneurs to construct the development of entrepreneurship passion by obtaining self,family,and social resources;(3)The results provide effective suggestions for entrepreneurs to predict the change direction of entrepreneurial passion,prevent the level of entrepreneurial passion from fading,and avoid different entrepreneurial passion from turning into a "contradiction" relationship that weakens each other;(4)The results provide guidance for entrepreneurs to improve their current entrepreneurial passion through management intervention of goal content.Finally,the disadvantages of this study and possible future research are pointed out:(1)Analyze entrepreneurial passion differences across subjects with different background characteristics;(2)Introduce qualitative research methods or dynamic computing models to explore the changes of entrepreneurial passion in each stage of entrepreneurship;(3)Expand the discussion of entrepreneurial passion from a person-centered perspective to team and organizational level,and even build the connection of entrepreneurial passion at different levels.