Research Magazine 2017

Entrepreneurial Passion and Burnout – Disentangling the Connections David L. Witt (DBA Student), Susan L. Young (Committee Co-Chair), Joseph E. Coombs (Committee Co-Chair) and Torsten M. Pieper (Committee Member)

Entrepreneurs are passionate about their ventures. Fueled by passion, many put tremendous amounts of effort and energy into their endeavors. However, such great effort over time may cause exhaustion, eventual burnout, and loss of productivity. How can entrepreneurs leverage passion’s benefits while limiting the potentially detrimental effects of overextending themselves? Present research differentiates passion into harmonious or obsessive, and characteristics of entrepreneurs as: analyzers, who prefer to carefully assess available choices before taking action; and doers, who prefer change and performing something different even if that may still need to be determined. According to our conjecture, when an entrepreneur of a “doer” type engages in duties of an “analyzer” type, stress likely results, and similarly in the opposite case. Stress contributes to exhaustion and leads to burnout, but passion likely acts as a buffer. Harmonious passion is expected to limit “doer” stresses whereas obsessive passion likely limits “analyzer” stresses. The proposed research will use surveys with actual entrepreneurs to explore these relationships empirically. The findings will contribute to better understanding the intricate dynamics underlying passion and burnout and will provide entrepreneurs and their advisors with useful strategies for coping effectively with burnout, stress, and other potentially negative effects of entrepreneurship. Overview

8 | DBA Summary

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