Entrepreneurial Passion: The Relation with Stress
A Quantitative Study among Entrepreneurs
University: University of Groningen
Study: Pre-MSc Small Business and Entrepreneurship Course: Research Paper for Pre-MSc 2016-2017
Name & Student Number: Ronald Voogd: S3269418
Date: 09/06/2017
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A Study on the Relationship between Entrepreneurial Passion and
Stress among Entrepreneurs
ABSTRACT
The aim of this study is to find whether there exists a relationship between passion and the perceived stress among entrepreneurs, taken into consideration that previous research has not laid its focus on this particular field of interest. Therefore, this study focuses on stress and its relation with passion. This phenomenon consists of two parts; harmonious passion and obsessive passion. There is expected that harmonious passion has a negative relationship with stress and that obsessive passion is positively related to stress. To evaluate whether there exists a relationship between these two concept, a survey about entrepreneurial passion and stress was held among 100 entrepreneurs. This survey consists of the entrepreneurial passion validation measurement of Vallerand, Mageau, Ratelle, Leonard, Blanchard, Koestner, and Gagne (2003) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) of Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein (1983). The findings of this current study indicate that entrepreneurs with a high level of harmonious passion perceive less stress than those scoring low on this aspect. It is found that obsessive passion is unrelated to stress. In order to fully understand in what way passion influences entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurial journey, future research should focus on how harmonious passion and obsessive passion influence the well-being of entrepreneurs.
Limitations of this study include a small and relative homogeneous sample size as well as a possible distorted image that a self-reported could give.
Keywords: entrepreneurship, harmonious passion, obsessive passion, stress, well-
2 INTRODUCTION
Passion is the fuel entrepreneurs run on and can be seen as the heart of
entrepreneurship. This drive, to accomplish goals and strive for the best, can have a positive effect on the search for promising opportunities (Baron, 2008; Sundararajan and Peters, 2007). Despite that passion energizes entrepreneurs to strive for positive results (Brännback et al., 2006), it also has a dark side. Passion could eventually lead to stress.
Vallerand et al. (2003) propose two kinds of passion; harmonious and obsessive. They refer to harmonious passion as the activities people voluntary engage in, which can promote healthy adaptation. On the other hand, obsessive passion is being referred as the activities that create internal pressure to devote themselves to the activities they like, which has a negative effect on healthy adaptation and persistence. The positive effect of passion can turn into an addiction which is significantly correlated with long working hours and job involvement (Burke and Fiksenbaum, 2009). Rauch, Unger, and Rosenbusch (2007) argue that approximately each and every entrepreneur faces sever signs of stress in their everyday process of running a business. A recent study of Cardon and Patel (2013) showed that entrepreneurs face significantly higher levels of stress than non-entrepreneurs, which is primarily caused by long working hours. A few studies have examined the relationship between passion and the effects on well-being. For instance, St-Louis, Carbonneau, and Vallerand (2016) studied the relationship between harmonious and obsessive passion and the well-being of volunteers who helped during local and international emergencies. Findings of this study showed that passion clearly affects the participants. Harmonious passion predicted an increase in both health and satisfaction, whereas obsessive passion predicted an increase in physical symptoms and a decline in health. St-Louis et al. (2016) stated: “harmonious passion was positively related to satisfaction with one’s involvement in the cause and unrelated to physical injuries due to cause involvement. Obsessive passion was unrelated to satisfaction but positively associated with injuries” (St-Louis et al., 2016, p. 1). Furthermore, Rousseau and Vallerand (2008) also researched the relationship between passion and stress, but this time the group of interest were older people. In conclusion, this study showed that
harmonious passion is correlated with an increase in subjective well-being, when in fact obsessive passion is correlated with a decrease in subjective well-being.
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(Macko and Tyszka, 2009). In a study of Autio, Ho, and Wong (2005) it is concluded that entrepreneurship is of great importance, since it is central in creating long-term economic growth. To ensure a prosperous economy, it is crucial to assure a good well-being of entrepreneurs and to look after them. Therefore, this study is of great importance to
understand to what extent passion influences the degree of perceived stress by entrepreneurs. The challenge, and consequently the focus of this study, is to examine the following research question: “Does a relationship exist between the degree of passion and the level of
perceived stress among entrepreneurs?”.
Although previous studies have found that harmonious passion is negatively related to the level of stress and that obsessive passion is positively related to the level of stress (St-Louis et al., 2016, Rousseau & Vallerand, 2008), it is not yet clear if there exists a
relationship between passion and the stress among entrepreneurs and to what degree passion influences the perceived stress by entrepreneurs. As concluded by Autio, Ho, and Wong (2005), the entrepreneur plays a vital role in the economic situation of a country. Therefore, in order to assure both economic and entrepreneurial well-being, it is important to understand whether passion is related to the level of perceived stress by entrepreneurs.
Since scholars have not researched this relationship between passion and stress in the entrepreneurial field, the foundation of this research rests on the research of St-Louis et al. (2016) and Rousseau and Vallerand (2008). Therefore, it is assumed that harmonious passion will have a negative relationship with stress and obsessive passion will have a positive relationship with stress.
4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Defining Entrepreneurship
The purpose of this study is to find out whether a relationship exists between passion and the stress perceived by entrepreneurs. In order to determine whether a relationship between these concepts exists, there should first be explained what and who is defined as an entrepreneur and what the related term ‘entrepreneurship’ describes.
The term ‘entrepreneur’ has a long history in which scholars have not yet determined when the word is introduced first and what the true meaning of the word is. Although this being said, scholars recognized Cantillon (1680 – 1734) as the first person who introduced the concept of ‘entrepreneur’ and acknowledged the existence of an entrepreneurial position in the economic structure. Throughout the years, many economists developed theories about entrepreneurs and all with different perspectives.
Rauch et al. (2007) state in their study the definition of an entrepreneur according to Shane & Venkataraman (2000): “entrepreneurship is concerned with the discovery and exploitation of profitable opportunities” (Rauch et al., 2007, p. 4). This can be complemented by Kirzner (1973), who argues that after the discovery of a profitable opportunity an
entrepreneur can capture the value, in other words, profits, through innovation, changing, and creation. Gartner (1988) defines entrepreneurs as a creator of an organization by which entrepreneurs distinguish themselves from non-entrepreneurs who do not establish
organizations. Furthermore, Hisrich (1990) thinks of an entrepreneur as someone who creates value in a process by going beyond existing events, creating new situations as a result of devoting an essential amount of time and effort, (financial) resources and bearing risks which lead to rewards in monetary terms and perceived self-fulfilment. According to Macko & Tyszka (2009), entrepreneurs need to take more risks than others in order to deal with uncertain situations.
For the purpose of this paper, the interpretation of an entrepreneur according to Gartner (1988) is most applicable because it is the most extensive definition of an entrepreneur, which considers every person who creates a company to be an entrepreneur.
Passion and Entrepreneurs
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strong inclination toward an activity that people like, that they find important, and in which they invest time and energy” (Vallerand et al., 2003, p. 757). In addition to this general clarification of the term ‘passion’, a more specific definition in relation to entrepreneurship is made by Cardon, Wincent, Singh, and Drnovsek (2009), who describe passion as:
“consciously accessible positive intense feeling experienced by engagement in entrepreneurial activities associated with the roles that are meaningful and salient to the self-identity of the entrepreneur” (Cardon et al., 2009, p. 517). As discussed in the introduction of this paper, a clear distinction is made between harmonious passion and obsessive passion. Forest, Mageau, Morin, and Sarrazin (2010) define harmonious passion as: “a motivational force leading the individual to choose to engage in his or her activity” (Forest et al., 2010, p. 28), whereas obsessive passion regards an internal pressure to pursue in an activity. In the past, research of has shown that harmonious passion is positively related to well-being, whereas obsessive passion is negatively related to well-being (St-Louis et al., 2016; Rousseau and Vallerand. 2008).
Perceived Stress
In their entrepreneurial journey, entrepreneurs generally have to cope with stress resulting from running a business (Rauch, Unger, & Rosenbusch, 2007). Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, and Rosenthal (1964) argue that stress is a function of conflict between an individual’s expectations and their capability of meeting demands, and one of conflict between an
individual’s expectations and the degree to which they are able to meet demands. Stress arises if an individual is not able to meet its demands. Buttner (1992) states: “it appears that stress is associated not with the volume of work per se, but with the weightiness of the decisions that entrepreneurs must make and whether they are making the right decision” (Buttner, 1992, p. 232).
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stress, which they call distress. Stress is not entirely seen as something bad. However, this current study focuses on the dark side of passion and therefore acknowledges stress to be something negative. Therefore, this current study focuses on distress. Furthermore, in this current study, the interpretation of perceived stress by Kahn et al. (1964) is used because it highlights the perception of not being able to meet demands, which characterizes the uncertainty and unpredictability entrepreneurs face in their entrepreneurial journey.
The Role of Passion on Well-Being
Previous research (St-Louis et al., 2016; Rousseau & Vallerand, 2008) indicated the existence of a relationship between harmonious passion, obsessive passion and the level of perceived stress. In both studies it is argued that harmonious passion leads to an increase in health and is unrelated to symptoms of psychical and psychological injuries, such as stress. On the other hand, obsessive passion is significantly related to a decrease in the general well-being. As a consequence of the non-existence of research on the relationship between passion and perceived stress among entrepreneurs, this research is based upon previous research regarding non-entrepreneurs. It is argued by Carpentier, Mageau, and Vallerand (2012) that the higher the level of harmonious passion, the more it predicts a higher well-being. In contrast, people who experience high levels of obsessive passion are likely to have higher degree of distress, which predicts a decrease in well-being. Therefore, it is assumed that among entrepreneurs the degree of harmonious passion will be negatively related to stress, whereas the degree of obsessive passion is positively related to stress. A conceptual model is introduced in figure 1 in order to visualize the hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1: The degree of harmonious passion will be negatively related to the level of perceived stress among entrepreneurs.
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Method
Sample
This current study is conducted among 100 participants selected based on the criteria defined by Gartner (1988), who emphasizes the importance of founding a business when classifying someone as an entrepreneur. Participants were primarily approached via personal networks, including respectively 94 Dutch entrepreneurs. It is not known which nationality the other 6 participants have. This research includes 27 female entrepreneurs and 73 male entrepreneurs, with an average age of 42 years (SD = 14,65 years). The age categories with the largest number of entrepreneurs were 20–29 years (30%) and 50-59 years (33%). On average, the entrepreneurs founded their businesses 13 years ago (SD = 12,87 years). Within these businesses these entrepreneurs approximately work between 30-40 hours a week, which can plan their working hours flexible (76%). When comparing their health situation, on average these entrepreneurs rate their health situation as “good”. In more detail, 72
entrepreneurs participate in physical activities, 94 occasionally drink alcoholic consumptions and 23 smoke cigarettes.
Procedure
The data is collected by self-reported, electronic questionnaires. Students were asked to approach a minimum of eight people who were willing to participate in the research. The total response was 177 participants, however 100 of them completed the questionnaire (response rate of 56,50%). Questions related to entrepreneurial passion and the level of perceived stress by entrepreneurs were relevant for this present study.
Measures
Passion. To examine the degree of passion, this current research adopts the
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The Cronbach’s alpha is used to examine the reliability of the model by which passion is measured. A clear distinction has been made as a result of one hypothesis focusing on harmonious passion and another hypothesis concentrating on obsessive passion. Cronbach’s alpha for harmonious passion measures is .88 (p < .05) and for obsessive passion it measures .92 (p <.05). Taking harmonious passion and obsessive passion together results in a measure of .87 (p < .05). In the original study of Vallerand et al. (2003) the Cronbach alphas resulted in .73 for harmonious passion and .85 for obsessive passion.
Stress. To measure the level of stress, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) of Cohen et al.
(1983) is used. This model consists of a 14-item scale; 7 positive related questions and 7 negative related (see: Appendix B). The participants responded to each question by ticking one of the boxes of the 5-point Likert Scale (1932) indicated by 0 = never, 1 = almost never, 2 = sometimes, 3 = fairly often, and 4 = very often. Furthermore, in order to obtain the total sum of the PSS scores, the scores on the seven positive related questions were reversed.
To assess the reliability of the PSS measurement scale, the Cronbach’s alpha is
examined. The Cronbach alpha for the PSS scale is 0.70 (p < .05). Originally, the PSS scale of Cohen et al. (1983) resulted in .84 for sample 1, .85 for sample 2, and .86 for the smoking cessation group.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
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Multiple Regression Analysis
It is predicted that harmonious passion is negatively related to stress (hypothesis 1a) and that obsessive passion is positively related to stress (hypothesis 1b). To test whether these hypothesis are correct, the harmonious passion and obsessive passion variables are regressed on the perceived stress.
In this current study, a multiple regression is used to test if harmonious passion and obsessive passion significantly predict the participants’ perceived level of stress. Table 3 illustrates the results of the regression analysis.
The results show that harmonious passion is significantly negatively related with stress (β = -.44, p < .01). No significant relation is found between obsessive passion and stress (p > .05). Based on the results of the correlation and multiple regression analyses, harmonious passion is significantly related and correlated to stress. This indicates sufficient evidence to accept hypothesis 1a: the degree of harmonious passion will be negatively related to the level of perceived stress among entrepreneurs. However, there is insufficient evidence to accept hypothesis 1b: the degree of obsessive passion will be positively related to the level of perceived stress among entrepreneurs.
In conclusion, the only significant relationship resulting from the correlation and multiple regression analyses is between harmonious passion and stress.
Discussion
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phenomenon as one of the key aspects of entrepreneurial success. It made me curious in what way passion would influence the level of perceived stress by entrepreneurs. This current study offers new insights to the entrepreneurial literature by looking whether a relationship exists between passion and perceived stress among entrepreneurs. The correlations and regression analyses showed that harmonious passion was the only predictor of stress. Despite the fact that the sample size was relatively small, it is relevant to discuss some findings.
Foremost, in line with previous research, there is found that people with a high degree of harmonious passion likely perceive less stress. According to Vallerand, Paquet, Philippe, and Charest (2010), a higher degree of harmonious passion results in more task flexibility. The significance of harmonious passion can be explained, since 76% of the entrepreneurs in this current study can flexible plan their activities. This flexible engagement “allows one to let go of work at the end of the day” (Vallerand et al., 2010, p. 307). As a result, the person is positively affected and minimizes negative affect on subjective well-being. Furthermore, there was expected to be a positive relationship between obsessive passion and stress. However, no significant relationship was found. It was expected that both low and high levels of obsessive passion would result in a decrease in well-being, which result in a positive relation. However, in this current study, obsessive passion is found to be non-related to perceived stress among entrepreneurs. Previous research of Vallerand et al. (2010) shows that obsessive passion is related to general negative affect. Nevertheless, they argue that obsessive passion is “either unrelated or negatively related to subjective well-being” (Vallerand et al., 2010, p. 307). As a result, it explains that the findings of different studies regarding obsessive passion depends on the research area.
Conclusion
This present study focuses on harmonious passion and obsessive passion in an effort to find whether there exists a relationship with the level of perceived stress. Furthermore, this is the first study that examines this relationship among entrepreneurs. In total, 100
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Limitations
The most considerable limitation of this research was the relative limited number of participants (N = 100). Initially 177 people were asked to participate in the study, however only 100 people completed the online questionnaire. Moreover, a low number of participants has a negative effect on the statistical power. The length of the questionnaire is considered to be the most significant reason for the low response rate, since it took participants on average 30-40 minutes to fill in the questionnaire. Another limitation is the relative homogeneity of the sample. Approximately 75% were male participants, which affect the ability to generalize to a lesser extent. Additionally, the age categories 20–29 years and 50-59 years consist of more than 60% of the sample, which again affects the generalizability. Another limitation concerns the fact that the survey was self-reported. In general, people tend to behave differently when not being observed. Spector (1994) argues: “questions regard job stress cannot be adequately answered with a cross-sectional self-report study” (Spector, 1994, p. 391). It is recommended that future research should use a different technique in order to confirm the findings of this current study.
Practical Implications
The present study results in a better understanding of the relationship between passion and the level of perceived stress among entrepreneurs. In the entrepreneurial journey, passion is the fuel entrepreneurs run on. In this study it is described that a high degree of harmonious passion leads to a low level of perceived stress. In turn, a low degree of harmonious passion leads to a high level of perceived stress. In order to fully understand in what way passion influences entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurial journey, future research should focus on how harmonious passion and obsessive passion influence the well-being of entrepreneurs. It should be analysed what triggers harmonious passion and how the degree of harmonious passion could be increased in order to stimulate economic and entrepreneurial well-being.
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APPENDIX A:
Items and Instructions for Passion; Harmonious Passion and Obsessive Passion When you fill in the scale below please take your entrepreneurial activity in mind.
0 = strongly disagree 1 = disagree 2 = somewhat disagree 3 = neutral 4 = somewhat agree 5 = agree 6 = strongly agree
1. This activity allows me to live a variety of experiences.
2. The new things that I discover with this activity allow me to appreciate it even more. 3. This activity allows me to live memorable experiences.
4. This activity reflects the qualities I like about myself.
5. This activity is in harmony with the other activities in my life. 6. For me it is a passion, that I still manage to control.
7. I am completely taken with this activity. 8. I cannot live without it.
9. The urge is so strong. I can’t help myself from doing this activity. 10. I have difficulty imagining my life without this activity.
11. I am emotionally dependent on this activity.
12. I have a tough time controlling my need to do this activity. 13. I have almost an obsessive feeling for this activity.
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APPENDIX B:
Items and Instructions for Perceived Stress Scale
The question in this scale asks you about your feelings and thoughts during the last month. In each case, you will be asked to indicate how often you felt or thought a certain way. Although some of the questions are similar, there are differences between them and you should treat each one as a separate question. The best approach is to answer each question fairly quickly. That is, do not try to count up the number of times you felt a particular way, but rather indicate the alternative that seems like a reasonable estimate.
For each question choose from the following alternatives. 0 = never
1 = almost never 2 = sometimes 3 = fairly often 4 = very often
1. In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly?
2. In the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life?
3. In the last month, how often have you felt nervous and “stressed”?
4. * In the last month, how often have you dealt successfully with irritating life hassles? 5. * In the last month, how often have you felt that you were effectively coping with important changes that were occurring in your life?
6. * In the last month, how often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your personal problems?
7. * In the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way?
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9. In the last month, how often have you been able to control irritations in your life? 10. * In the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things?
11. In the last month, how often have you been angered because of things that happened that were outside of your control?
12. In the last month, how often have you found yourself thinking about things that you have to accomplish?
13. * In the last month, how often have you been able to control the way you spend your time?
14. In the last month, how often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them?
