Passion at work: A meta-analysis of individual work outcomes

Academic research on passion is much more complex than the extant literature or popular press portray. Although research on work-related passion has progressed rapidly over the last decade, much remains unknown. We are now just beginning to recognize the different theoretical underpinnings and empirical operationalizations that work passion research has adopted, and the confusion this has generated hampers our understanding of the construct and its relationship to workplace outcomes. Accordingly, we use a meta-analytic examination to study the work-related outcomes of three dominant literature streams of work passion: general passion, dualistic passion (i.e., harmonious passion and obsessive passion), and role-based passion (i.e., passion for developing, passion for founding, and passion for inventing). We employ meta-analytic techniques using random effects modeling summarizing 106 distinct samples across 87 manuscripts totaling 384 effect sizes (total unique N = 38,481; 43.54% women, average age is 38.04). Importantly, we highlight how each of the three streams of passion relates to various outcomes differently, illuminate several important heretofore undetected nuances in passion research, and provide a roadmap for future inquiry on passion at work.