What drives passion? An empirical examination on the impact of personality trait interactions and job environments on work passion

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 passion, we know only little about its antecedents. Integrating trait interaction theory with activation theory, this paper examines how personality traits, i.e. conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism impact passion at work across different job situations. Passion been conceptualized two-dimensional construct, consisting harmonious (HWP) obsessive (OWP). Our study is based on sample N = 824 participants from myPersonality project. We find positive relationship between OWP in enterprising environments. Further, three-way environment predicting OWP. findings imply that configurations forms contingent environment. Moreover, line self-regulation results reveal agreeableness “cool influencer” “hot conscientiousness passion. derive practical implications organisations to particularly HWP, organisations.