Abstract

Purpose: Entrepreneurs are generally considered to be committed in order to strive for highly desirable goals, such as growth or commercial success. However, commitment is a multi-dimensional concept and may have asymmetric relationships with positive or negative entrepreneurial outcomes. This paper aims to provide a nuanced perspective to show under what conditions commitment may be detrimental for entrepreneurs and lead to overinvestment.
Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of entrepreneurs from incubators in France (N=568), this study employs a configurational perspective, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), to identify which commitment profiles lead entrepreneurs to overinvest different resources in their entrepreneurial projects.  
Findings: The paper exposes combinations of conditions that lead to overinvestment and identifies four different commitment profiles: an “Affective profile”, a “Project committed profile”, a “Profession committed profile” and an “Affective project profile” (defined in Appendix 1).
Originality: The results show that affective commitment is a necessary condition for entrepreneurs to conduct overinvesting behaviors. This complements previous linear research on the interdependence between affect and commitment in fostering detrimental outcomes for nascent entrepreneurs.