Job crafting, leader autonomy support, and passion for work: Testing a model in Australia and China

Building on the dualistic model of passion Vallerand (The psychology of passion: A dualistic model Oxford University Press, New York, 2005), we examined a hypothesized model whereby harmonious and obsessive passion mediate the relationships of job crafting and leader autonomy support with work engagement and burnout in both Australian and Chinese work samples. Compared with four alternative models, our results supported the hypothesized model as the best fitting model in both samples, showing cross-sample invariance of factor loadings and regression paths. Across both samples, job crafting and leader autonomy support positively predicted harmonious passion, yet exhibited disparate relations with obsessive passion. Both forms of passion positively predicted work engagement, yet only obsessive passion positively predicted burnout. Findings are consistent with the notion that job crafting is an approach that employees use to internalize harmonious and obsessive passions into work identities, which have corresponding and disparate impacts on work engagement and burnout across cultures.