Melissa S. Cardon

University of Tennessee | UTK · Management & Entrepreneurship

Despite growing interest among researchers and practitioners in the topic of work passion, multiple conceptualizations of this construct exist, and research within each conceptualization has advanced along independent streams with little integration or cross‐fertilization. In this editorial, we provide a brief overview of the literature on work pas...

The voice is often the only continuous channel of expression in pitch videos. We isolate the influence of entrepreneurs' vocal expressions on funding by examining how valence (positivity/negativity) and arousal (activation) shape funders' perceptions of passion and preparedness. We show that an entrepreneur's high-arousal vocal expressions, whether...

While it is well-established that entrepreneurs benefit from social support, little is known about how and when instrumental and emotional support from household members facilitate entrepreneurial action and persistence. Through a longitudinal, qualitative study, we develop a conceptual framework that shows how social support from the household bec...

Entrepreneurs face considerable obstacles in accruing funding and other resources when starting a new venture; problems that are likely compounded when starting a new venture after experiencing failure. In particular, it is unclear how early-stage investors react to entrepreneurs with prior failure experiences in terms of how they perceive the entr...

Despite contributing to its legitimacy and relevance, scholars have raised concerns that an economic paradigm may be limiting the future of entrepreneurship research. To address these concerns, we propose religion as an alternative and complementary foundation for our field's economic legacy by allowing for transformative research that embraces mul...

This review aims at synthesizing and assessing the literature on human resource management (HRM) in entrepreneurial firms. Our review over the time period 2004–2020 is relevant as entrepreneurial firms have a central role in the economy and are important for technological advancement and employment. Furthermore, managing entrepreneurial firms diffe...

When new ventures tap into the labor market, they must battle with more established companies to recruit top human capital. We examine how an attribute known to influence new venture funders, entrepreneurial passion, also contributes to the ability of the firm to recruit employees. Through conjoint analysis of potential employee ratings of the attr...

Research on identity in entrepreneurship represents a central, dynamic, and quickly growing field of research. Yet, rapid growth has led to a diversity of theoretical conversations and methodological advancements that has yielded a largely disjointed body of existing work. To advance research in this area, we systematically review 180 articles on i...

Empirical evidence is mounting that passion is an important part of entrepreneurship, contributing to behavior and outcomes for entrepreneurs, employees, and ventures. Yet knowledge of the performance implications of passion within new venture teams is sorely lacking. We examine how both the average level of entrepreneurial passion and the diversit...

This chapter delves into the identity–passion interface and examines how nuances in this relationship manifest in different outcomes. The construct of identity and how it relates to an individual’s self-concept is discussed to more fully understand how identity plays a central role in passion. We argue that identities serve as a foundation of an in...

Exhaustion is a prominent problem in entrepreneurship because it inhibits cognitive functioning, opportunity identification and evaluation, decision-making, and perseverance. We examine the possible benefits of sleep and mindfulness exercises in reducing the exhaustion experienced by entrepreneurs in the course of launching and growing ventures. Ac...

We integrate literatures on entrepreneurial passion, shared emotions, and group identities to extend a conceptual model of team entrepreneurial passion (TEP). We de-lineate mono-focal, complete, and incomplete poly-focal TEP, and examine how each type and focus of TEP is related to team performance. We test our hypotheses with 73 new venture teams....

We integrate literatures on entrepreneurial passion, shared emotions, and group identities to extend a conceptual model of team entrepreneurial passion (TEP). We delineate mono-focal, complete, and incomplete poly-focal TEP, and examine how each type and focus of TEP is related to team performance. We test our hypotheses with 73 new venture teams....

Although much attention has been paid to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences that an individual brings when he or she transitions into an organizational role, little attention has been given to the history of the enactment of the role into which he or she is transitioning. This article examines how the behaviors of a predecessor influ...

Research on passion is burgeoning in the entrepreneurial literature, yet we still know little about what factors drive entrepreneurial passion. Recognizing the socially embedded nature of entrepreneurship, we examine identity-related social forces that may fuel the fire of entrepreneurial passion. Employing a lagged design that controls for known a...

Entrepreneurial passion helps coordinate cognition and behavior of entrepreneurs, providing the fire that fuels innovation, persistence, and ultimate success. However, our knowledge of the sources of passion is limited and focuses primarily on activities predetermined by scholars, rather than those generated by entrepreneurs themselves. Using a phe...

Entrepreneurial identities and emotions can have profound effects on entrepreneurs. We examine how positive emotion (PE) among entrepreneurs may be influenced by the congruence they experience between their self-concept and the entrepreneur social identity. Given that uncertainty in the business environment can exert powerful effects throughout the...

Unfortunately, for many entrepreneurs there comes a time when they must exit their firms due to economic distress. While some exit quickly once they perceive the need to do so, others delay, and there are benefits and costs to both approaches. Using an escalation of commitment framework, we explore variation in exit speed, and find that time to exi...

Angel investors often make investment decisions based on motivational cues communicated during pitches – including enthusiasm, preparedness, and commitment – to evaluate potentially important qualities of entrepreneurs. We tested the independent and interaction effects of these cues by having 72 angels complete 1,995 evaluations of 133 live pitches...

Research summary: Entrepreneurial passion has gained credence in recent years in explaining entrepreneurial efforts, yet examination of the dynamics of this emotion and its effects on venture growth is still in its infancy. Building on the literature on entrepreneurial motivation and entrepreneurial passion, we develop and test a model of entrepren...

Passion has been discussed in the popular press as a valuable driver for commitment, performance, and well-being. Although academics in disciplines such as philosophy, literature, and religious studies have touched on the concept historically, only in the early 21st century have comprehensive efforts in psychology become focused on developing nonro...

Research in entrepreneurship has been booming, with perspectives from a range of disciplines and numerous developing schools of thought. It can be difficult for young scholars and even long-time researchers to find their way through the lush garden of ideas we see before us. The purpose of this book is to map the research terrain of entrepreneursh...

We introduce the concept of team entrepreneurial passion, a team-level construct representing the level of shared intense positive feelings for a collective and central team identity for new venture teams. Additionally, we develop a dynamic theoretical model of (1) the processes by which team entrepreneurial passion can emerge from different combin...

The purpose of this panelist symposium is to draw together scholars interested in the study of ideas to develop a shared language and common research agenda on the topic. While ideas are in the backdrop of many scholarly conversations—e.g., entrepreneurship, creativity, strategy—they are often not the primary focal phenomenon. We have little theory...

We examine how failure ascriptions (how the core causal characteristics of a failure are identified) impact perceptions of learning, defined here as the ability to transfer knowledge from a failed venture to a subsequently started new venture. Our findings are consistent with prior work in that internal unstable failure ascriptions are associated w...

We explore how national culture impacts emotional and cognitive processes of entrepreneurs. In particular, we extend the recent conceptual work on entrepreneurial passion by linking it to the theoretical lens on situated emotions. We also extend current work on entrepreneurial cognitions by suggesting that cognition is distributed among group proce...

Occupational stress is associated with numerous health problems that cost organisations considerable resources. We explore whether the detrimental effects of stress on individual health are accompanied by productive effects on individual performance for self-employed people, thereby making stress somewhat “worth it” for this occupational group. Giv...

What makes some entrepreneurs persist in their venture efforts while others quit? Self-efficacy has robustly been found to drive persistence, yet recent work suggests that affect, in particular entrepreneurial passion, may also enhance persistence. We empirically examine the possibility that the long-standing relationship between self-efficacy and...

Despite interest in understanding the role passion plays in investor decision making, little is known about the conditions under which perceived passion is likely to play a significant role in the funding decision process. We first establish a relationship between perceived passion and evaluations of funding potential, then use affective reactivity...

Entrepreneurial exit—the process by which the founders of privately held firms leave the firm they helped to create (DeTienne, J Bus Venturing, 2010)—is an important component of the entrepreneurial process, yet researchers know very little about it. We examine entrepreneurs’ intentions to exit by a range of possible exit paths [acquisition, initia...

This study examines the role of passion among entrepreneurs. In particular, the authors integrate identity theory with the literature surrounding passion to investigate the possible pathways through which entrepreneurial identities might influence passion, as well as the relationship between entrepreneurs' passion and behavior. Structural equation...

Entrepreneurial emotion refers to the affect, emotions, moods, and/or feelings - of individuals or a collective - that are antecedent to, concurrent with, and/or a consequence of, the entrepreneurial process, meaning the recognition/creation, evaluation, reformulation, and/or the exploitation of a possible opportunity. In this paper, we explore thi...

The purpose of this chapter is to present an overview of research on passion and show its relevance to the realm of work and organizations. We first provide a brief review of how passion has been used in research from a historical perspective. We then explain in detail three different conceptualizations of passion, each at a different level of abst...

This paper contributes to our understanding of minority entrepreneurs in the US by showing that ethnicity alone should not be used to describe or categorize small business owners. We examine a sample of 508 entrepreneurs from three minority groups (African, Mexican, and Korean Americans) and a white group using cluster analysis to explore a categor...

This study examines cultural views of venture failure through the lens of sensemaking, which includes attributions of causality. Specifically, we explore failure accounts that are attributed to mistakes made by entrepreneurs, and those attributed to misfortunes outside the control of the entrepreneur. Reports of entrepreneurial failures from 1999 t...

We develop a conceptual model of entrepreneurial exit which includes exit through liquidation and firm sale for both firms in financial distress and firms performing well. This represents four distinct exit routes. In developing the model, we complement the prevailing theoretical framework of exit as a utility-maximizing problem among entrepreneurs...

Purpose The aims of this paper are to: critically review and identify gaps in current literature on entrepreneurial self‐efficacy, provide a definition of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy that addresses some of those gaps, and explore the role of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy during the phases of a business start‐up process. The research seeks to defi...

Small firms face many challenges in creating a productive workforce given often severe resource constraints and informal organizational structures. This may be particularly problematic in industries with intense product-market competition. In this study, we focus on the relationship between product-market competition and labor productivity, particu...

In this study, we seek to understand the key differences between the entrepreneurial experience for Mexican immigrant and US-born Mexican entrepreneurs. We focus on differences in motivation for start-up, reliance on ethnic enclaves and business management practices. Using data from the 2005 National Minority Business Owner Survey, our sample consi...

Project failure is likely to generate a negative emotional response for those involved in the project. But do all people feel the same way? And are some better able to regulate their emotions to learn from the failure experience? In this paper we develop an emotion framework of project failure that relies on self-determination to explain variance i...

Entrepreneurial passion plays an important role in entrepreneurship, but theoretical understanding of what it is and what it does is lacking. We build on fragmented and disparate extant work to conceptualize the nature of entrepreneurial passion associated with salient entrepreneurial role identities. We also theorize the mechanisms of the experien...

Affective processes of individuals and teams at work are increasingly becoming acknowledged as important drivers of business decision-making processes and organizational behaviors. In particular, there has been an increasing interest in the notion of passion and its role in entrepreneurship. Business practitioners reckon that to stand even a chance...

In this research we examine how the selection and assembly of initial strategic resources (financial, human, and technological) impact the entrepreneurial exit strategy. Our results suggest that an IPO exit strategy is positively related to all three types of strategic resources, while a strategic sale exit strategy is positively related to financi...

In this paper we examine the relationship between the passion an entrepreneur displays, the passion angels perceive, and the impact on angels' interest and funding of ventures. Our qualitative study results indicate that angels do use displayed passion as a factor in their investment decisions and specifically focus on the enthusiasm, preparedness,...

Although researchers in such diverse fields as economics and organizational sociology have explored firm exit, little research has explored entrepreneurial exit - the decision by the majority - owner founders of privately-held firms to harvest their profits and remove themselves from the primary ownership and decision-making structure of the firm....

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...

Entrepreneurial passion may strongly influence cognitions, behaviors, and outcomes of entrepreneurs. For example, positive affective states such as passion may foster creativity and recognition of new patterns of information critical to opportunity recognition and exploitation in novel environments. However, to date there is no empirically validate...

Despite the virtually unchallenged view that passion is important for new venture creation and growth, surprising little systematic theoretical or empirical work exists concerning the notion of passion and its influence on entrepreneurial activities. Through a review of the literature, we highlight the inconsistencies and gaps concerning work on en...

While most organizational theories avoid emotion, many entrepreneurs act with emotion. Entrepreneurs often describe their businesses as their “babies,” expressing personal connection and even identification with their businesses. We therefore suggest that through exploring associated relational metaphors, we can gain additional insight into entrepr...

While much of our knowledge concerning traditional HR topics (e.g., recruiting, compensation, or performance management) in large firms may also apply in small or emerging organizations, evidence suggests that new ventures are different and that management of people within them may not clearly map to management within larger, more established organ...

Entrepreneurship is an emerging and evolving field of inquiry. Entrepreneurship research has been expanding its boundaries by exploring and developing explanations and predictions of entrepreneurship phenomena in terms of events such as innovation, new venture creation and growth as well as characteristics of individual entrepreneurs and entreprene...

While all firms can benefit from engaging contingent labor, due to the flexibility, real options, and new knowledge these workers may provide, these benefits are compounded in emerging organizations due to their lack of resources, legitimacy, and time to focus on HR issues. By carefully weighing the risks and benefits, and making purposeful and int...

Failure is a fundamental component of entrepreneurship. This study examines cultural views of failure within the US through the lens of attribution theory. Specifically, we examine under what conditions failures are attributed to mistakes made by entrepreneurs themselves versus being attributed to misfortunes, of factors that adversely impacted the...

An emerging stream of research concerns the powerful role emotion plays in enhancing the success potential of would-be entrepreneurs. Yet entrepreneurs do not act alone; successful recruitment and management of employees are critical factors influencing the success of emerging ventures. A growing body of literature on alternative models of human re...