No more career resilient and passionate! A longitudinal experimental insight into work overload

Abstract

Complex and excess work demands are a byproduct of corporate model in higher educational settings, however, how work overload manifests in long-run career outcomes is yet to be examined. We therefore built on the ‘primacy of resource loss’ corollary of the Conservation of Resources theory to find out the repercussions of work overload on career resilience via reduced harmonious passion. We conducted a longitudinal natural field experiment of 402 faculty members (N=198 in the standardized group (optimal load) and N= 204 in the non-standardized (overload) group working in Higher Educational Institutions in Pakistan. Data were collected in three waves (six months apart). The analysis was performed through group comparisons, trend analysis, and longitudinal mediation analysis, using SPSS and MPlus. Our findings suggest that, as opposed to the much-held conception of harmonious passion and career resilience as buffering resources to sustain work overload, these rescores are also depleted by the same phenomenon. Based on these results, we suggest that faculty members should be given optimal workload to retain their passion and resilience for teaching.