Abstract
Passionate employees are essential for organisational success as they foster higher performance and exhibit lower turnover or absenteeism. While a large body of research has investigated the consequences of passion, we know only little about its antecedents. Integrating trait interaction theory with trait activation theory, this paper examines how personality traits, i.e. conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism impact passion at work across different job situations. Passion has been conceptualized as a two-dimensional construct, consisting of harmonious work passion (HWP) and obsessive work passion (OWP). Our study is based on a sample of N = 824 participants from the myPersonality project. We find a positive relationship between neuroticism and OWP in enterprising environments. Further, we find a three-way interaction between conscientiousness, agreeableness, and enterprising environment in predicting OWP. Our findings imply that the impact of personality configurations on different forms of passion is contingent on the job environment. Moreover, in line with self-regulation theory, the results reveal agreeableness as a “cool influencer” and neuroticism as a “hot influencer” of the relationship between conscientiousness and work passion. We derive practical implications for organisations on how to foster work passion, particularly HWP, in organisations.
Highlights
Worldwide, only 13% of workers are passionate about their work (Gallup, 2013)
Our study aims at fostering our understanding of what drives passion at work by considering the impact of trait interactions in different job environments on work passion
After classifying samples of previously explored trait interactions into RIASEC environments, we focused on interactions between conscientiousness and agreeableness (C*A) or neuroticism (C*N)
Summary
Only 13% of workers are passionate about their work (Gallup, 2013). Passion at work embodies “a strong inclination toward an activity that people like, that they find important, and in which they invest time and energy” This emotional investment helps organisations to thrive (Gallup, 2013). In the rapidly changing global economy, work passion becomes increasingly decisive for organisations that aim to sustainably. More recent work has shown evidence for social contagion of work passion (Ho et al, 2021)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have