Seminar (Dept. of Organization and Human Resources)

Title: When Passion Is Not Enough: The Importance of Construal Variability for Entrepreneurial Success

Speaker: Russell Johnson (Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University)

Time: 14:00 (Thursday), March 13th, 2025

Venue: Room 1008, Mingde Business Building

Language: English

ABSTRACT:

Delivering an effective pitch is a challenging endeavor for passionate entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurial passion encompasses both an affective component—intense positive feelings toward entrepreneurial pursuits—and a conative component—meaningful self-identification with those pursuits—these motivational energies need to be channeled in appropriate ways to sell ideas effectively. Entrepreneurial pitching presents a distinct context where entrepreneurs must navigate competing demands, such as balancing desirability and feasibility, communicating both abstract and concrete ideas, and addressing both long- and short-term goals. Drawing from construal level theory, we propose construal variability—or individual differences in construal level fluctuations over time—as a cognitive construct that equips entrepreneurs with the capability to better manage the complex demands of pitching. Consistent with our central thesis, results from a multiwave field study involving an actual pitch competition demonstrated that construal variability strengthened the positive relationship of entrepreneurial passion with independent ratings of pitch performance. Importantly, the utility of construal variability, entrepreneurial passion, and their interaction remained even after controlling for other established predictors of pitch effectiveness, including cognitive ability, the Big Five personality traits, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and locus of control. I conclude the talk by discussing the implications of construal variability for OB and HR research more broadly.