Rethinking the Anatomy of Passion: A Biopsychosocial Configurational Perspective on Antecedents of Work and Entrepreneurial Passion

ABSTRACT

Despite over two decades of passion research, our understanding of how passion is construed remains fragmented and dominated by additive approaches that treat antecedents as isolated predictors (both theoretically and empirically). Drawing on the biopsychosocial (BPS) framework, we challenge prior research by reconceptualizing passion as a configurational phenomenon emerging through interdependent BPS conditions which combine in complex ways to form equifinal pathways to passion. In doing so, we comparatively analyze configurations associated with harmonious and obsessive passion across the two most frequently studied domains in the management literature: work and entrepreneurship. To empirically examine this configurational perspective, we employ fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), which is well equipped to test the equifinal, compensatory, and interdependent nature of configural constructs. Using two time‐lagged samples of employees and entrepreneurs, we identify multiple distinct configurations that not only differentiate harmonious from obsessive passion but also distinguish passion across the work and entrepreneurial domains. Our results demonstrate that passion is largely domain‐contingent, such that work and entrepreneurial passion are each associated with mostly unique BPS configurations rather than universally operating antecedents. Our study advances passion research by shifting attention from isolated net effects toward a holistic view of passion as a system of interdependent BPS predictors.