Abstract: Existing studies have ignored the damage caused by entrepreneurial defection to entrepreneurs’ personal feelings and interests, especially lacking research on whether and how such damage affects organizational performance. Based on 275 questionnaires, this paper uses hierarchical regression and Bootstrap methods to examine the impact of entrepreneurial defection damage on organizational performance by integrating emotional event theory and resource-based theory. The results show an inverted U-shaped relationship between entrepreneurial defection damage and organizational performance. Entrepreneurial passion and enterprise resource capacity play positive and negative mediating roles between entrepreneurial defection damage and organizational performance. The results of this study deepen the understanding of the relationship between the degree of entrepreneur damage and organizational performance in the context of entrepreneurial defection and put forward an intermediate path of the transformation of the degree of defection damage to organizational performance, which has important implications for the entrepreneurial practice of entrepreneurs.

Key words: entrepreneurial defection, entrepreneurial passion, enterprise resource ability level, organizational performance