Working passionately does not always pay off : the negative moderating role of passion on the relationship between deliberate practice and venture performance

Deliberate practice, an iterative process that leads to expertise, is found to be positively associated with superior performance in domains such as sports, education, and entrepreneurship. At the same time, deliberate practice is also seen as being less than enjoyable and difficult to pursue consistently. As such, passion is considered to be a vital motivator of engagement in and maintenance of deliberate practice. Despite the evident importance of passion, the relationship between passion and deliberate practice in entrepreneurship has not been subject to sufficient empirical evaluation. Therefore, in this study, we consider the way in which passion moderates the relationship between deliberate practice and venture performance. We hypothesize that deliberate practice is positively related to venture performance and that passion positively moderates this relationship. We find support for our first hypothesis, in line with previous studies. However, contrary to our second hypothesis, we find that entrepreneurial passion negatively moderates the deliberate practice-venture performance relationship. In response to this finding, we provide possible explanations as to why this negative moderation effect was observed by drawing on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle

Entrepreneurial resilience

The final publication is available at Springer via DOI TBCThe vast majority of businesses in all countries - between 70% and 95% - are micro-businesses, i.e. enterprises that employ fewer than ten people (OECD, 2017). Their impact on the economies and societies in which they operate is therefore significant, collectively acting as important sources of employment, growth and innovation (ibid, 2017). However, the existence of many of these businesses is often precarious, especially in the early stages of their development. Many newly created businesses fail within the first few years of life with mortality rates ranging from around 10% (UK, USA, Sweden) to 45% (Slovak Republic) in the first year (ibid, 2017). As a result, the entrepreneurial activity to create and manage these businesses is very demanding and exposes entrepreneurs to situations which would be expected to create high levels of stress among the general population (e.g. a rapidly changing and unpredictable environment, high responsibility, high workload). The demands of business start-up and ownership could be expected to create a higher risk of mental health problems. Isolation and long working hours could contribute to an increased risk of depression. Moreover, for many entrepreneurs, their business ventures are personal passions and their self-worth and well-being can be intimately connected to the success of those ventures (Murnieks, Mosakowski and Cardon, 2014). On a practical level, the pressures are often high and can create anxiety as personal financial well-being is often directly related to the ability to close the next deal. Furthermore, Spivak, McKelvie and Haynie (2014) highlight a possible “dark side” of entrepreneurship outcomes, finding that habitual entrepreneurs can suffer from symptoms of behavioural addictions - withdrawal-engagement patterns, obsessive thoughts, and negative emotions - arising from repeated venture creation activities. However, at the same time, Baron, Franklin and Hmieleski (2016) find that entrepreneurs experience lower stress compared to other occupational groups when creating new ventures. Baron et al (2016) suggest self-selection effects as the underlying mechanism producing entrepreneurs that are above average (as a group) in their capacity to handle stress effectively, arguing that those who persist in entrepreneurship acquire this capacity, the resilience to handle the stressors and challenges of their entrepreneurial context