The emergence of team entrepreneurial passion from team helping: An affective events theory perspective

Abstract

Research has acknowledged the outcomes of entrepreneurial passion, but little is known in regard to how it occurs. In this article, we shift the focus to the team level and investigate the emergence of team entrepreneurial passion (TEP) from the team helping perspective. Drawing on affective events theory (AET), we examine how team help-seeking and -giving facilitate TEP. Team-level analyses were performed on data drawn from 487 members of 112 new venture teams in an accelerator for high-technology firms in China. Our findings show that team help-seeking and -giving are in a direct relationship with TEP; we highlight how the interaction between these two aspects is positively associated with TEP. This article extends the study of TEP to team helping and treats the latter in relation to its two separate but related aspects of seeking and giving. Further, our focus moves from singular effects to an interactive perspective on the antecedents of TEP.