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