Handling the beast: How entrepreneurs regulate obsessive passion

Passion is a powerful force in entrepreneurship but can become dysfunctional when it takes an obsessive form. Entrepreneurs’ passion can substantially fluctuate owing to changes in situational demands and contextual conditions and their efforts to shape their internal states and external environments. Self-regulation theories motivate our active-agentic perspective according to which entrepreneurs actively respond to—and proactively influence—their passion’s salience. Building on this perspective, we explore how entrepreneurs actively manage their obsessive passion. Drawing from interviews with 37 entrepreneurs, this study identifies several regulation strategies that differ in the degree of intentional regulation applied and which can enhance or diminish obsessive passion’s salience. Results demonstrate that obsessively passionate individuals can act as active agents who regulate their passion’s salience to minimize its potentially harmful consequences and maximize positive outcomes.