Does one size fit all? The role of job characteristics in cultivating work passion across knowledge, blue-collar, nonprofit, and managerial work

Abstract

We integrate the job characteristics and dual work passion models to explore the indirect (via work meaningfulness) effects of job characteristics (i.e., job autonomy, task identity, skill variety, task significance, feedback from the job and feedback from others) on two types of work passion, harmonious passion (HP) and obsessive passion (OP). We first advance occupation-specific predictions for job characteristics-to-work passion relationships and then explore differences in those relationships between HP and OP across four occupational sectors: knowledge work (n = 201), blue-collar work (n = 148), nonprofit work (n = 141), and managerial work (n = 133). Our findings demonstrate that job characteristics are important drivers of work passion. However, our key discovery is that the motivational impact of the job characteristics is not universally applicable but rather depends on the specific occupational context and whether passion is harmonious or obsessive. We therefore conclude that when it comes to translating job characteristics into work passion, the one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate.