{"title":"Reprint of: Divergence between employer and employee understandings of passion: Theory and implications for future research","authors":"Jon M. Jachimowicz, Hannah Weisman","doi":"10.1016/j.riob.2023.100184","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>There is an increasingly prevalent expectation in contemporary society that employees be passionate for their work. Here, we suggest that employers and employees can have different understandings of passion that potentially conflict. More specifically, we argue that although employers may often be well-intentioned, their emphasis on employee passion may at times amount to normative control and reflect a <em>means to attain valued work outcomes</em>. In contrast, employees may primarily view their pursuit of passion as an opportunity to self-actualize, and thereby, view passion as <em>an end in itself</em>. We propose that when employees notice that these two understandings of passion diverge, they experience uncertainty in adjudicating which understanding of passion—their own or their employer’s—to privilege. Critically, employees may feel responsible for and subsequently seek ways to reduce this uncertainty, and doing so places added demands that impedes employees’ ability to perform. We discuss why employers may not necessarily recognize how their understanding of passion can create challenges for employees, and examine the difficulties employers face in attempting to resolve the tensions employees experience. Subsequently, we develop an agenda for future research that highlights how individual, organizational, and cultural differences may lead to variation in divergent understandings of passion, and the critical role managers could play in helping address employees’ uncertainty.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":56178,"journal":{"name":"Research in Organizational Behavior","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191308523000047/pdfft?md5=084a9779375993a42683e2c1de5846e3&pid=1-s2.0-S0191308523000047-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Research in Organizational Behavior","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191308523000047","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
There is an increasingly prevalent expectation in contemporary society that employees be passionate for their work. Here, we suggest that employers and employees can have different understandings of passion that potentially conflict. More specifically, we argue that although employers may often be well-intentioned, their emphasis on employee passion may at times amount to normative control and reflect a means to attain valued work outcomes. In contrast, employees may primarily view their pursuit of passion as an opportunity to self-actualize, and thereby, view passion as an end in itself. We propose that when employees notice that these two understandings of passion diverge, they experience uncertainty in adjudicating which understanding of passion—their own or their employer’s—to privilege. Critically, employees may feel responsible for and subsequently seek ways to reduce this uncertainty, and doing so places added demands that impedes employees’ ability to perform. We discuss why employers may not necessarily recognize how their understanding of passion can create challenges for employees, and examine the difficulties employers face in attempting to resolve the tensions employees experience. Subsequently, we develop an agenda for future research that highlights how individual, organizational, and cultural differences may lead to variation in divergent understandings of passion, and the critical role managers could play in helping address employees’ uncertainty.
期刊介绍:
Research in Organizational Behavior publishes commissioned papers only, spanning several levels of analysis, and ranging from studies of individuals to groups to organizations and their environments. The topics encompassed are likewise diverse, covering issues from individual emotion and cognition to social movements and networks. Cutting across this diversity, however, is a rather consistent quality of presentation. Being both thorough and thoughtful, Research in Organizational Behavior is commissioned pieces provide substantial contributions to research on organizations. Many have received rewards for their level of scholarship and many have become classics in the field of organizational research.