The performance implication of obsessive work passion: unpacking the moderating and mediating mechanisms from a conservation of resources perspective

ABSTRACT

Work passion is an important determinant of work performance. While harmonious work passion (HWP) shows its consistent predictive value, obsessive work passion (OWP) appears to have a mixed relationship with work performance. To address this puzzle, we integrate research on OWP and emotional exhaustion with conservation of resources (COR) theory. Specifically, we argue that OWP determines emotional exhaustion, whose relationship with work performance is attenuated by leader-member exchange (LMX). By conducting a field study with a sample of 262 US employees, we found supportive evidence, even when controlling for psychological detachment from work. The findings somewhat reconcile the inconsistent results about OWP and work performance in the literature, shed light on research on work passion, LMX, and emotional exhaustion, and provide implications for managerial practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Work passion
• work performance
• emotional exhaustion
• leader-member exchange

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Robins School of Business and the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond for funding this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. While there are other scales measuring emotional exhaustion, including the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure (Shirom & Melamed, 2006), Pines, Aronson and Kafry’s (1981) Burnout Measure, and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (Demerouti & Bakker, 2008), research by Qiao and Schaufeli (2011) found that the emotional exhaustion scale in these measures were strongly correlated with that in the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) used here (with rs ranging from .50–.63). Thus, we chose the more widely used Emotional Exhaustion scale of the MBI so as to allow for comparison with prior studies examining the link between passion and burnout (e.g., Carbonneau, Vallerand, Fernet, & Guay, 2008; de Mol et al., 2018), and expect that the result patterns would be similar if we used the Emotional Exhaustion scale from the other three measures.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Richmond Jepson School of Leadership Studies; University of Richmond Robins School of Business.