ABSTRACT Despite over two decades of passion research, our understanding of how passion is construed remains fragmented and dominated by additive approaches that treat antecedents as isolated predictors (both theoretically and empirically). Drawing on the biopsychosocial (BPS) framework, we challenge prior research by reconceptualizing passion as a configurational phenomenon emerging through interdependent BPS conditions which combine in complex ways to form equifinal pathways to passion. In doing so, we comparatively analyze configurations associated with harmonious and obsessive passion across the two most frequently studied domains in the management literature: work and entrepreneurship. To empirically examine this configurational perspective, we employ fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), which is well equipped to test the equifinal, compensatory, and interdependent nature of configural constructs. Using two time‐lagged samples of employees and entrepreneurs, we identify multiple distinct configurations that not only differentiate harmonious from obsessive passion but also distinguish passion across the work and entrepreneurial domains. Our results demonstrate that passion is largely domain‐contingent, such that work and entrepreneurial passion are each associated with mostly unique BPS configurations rather than universally operating antecedents. Our study advances passion research by shifting attention from isolated net effects toward a holistic view of passion as a system of interdependent BPS predictors.
Empathy is increasingly valued at workplaces as it facilitates interpersonal relationships, collaboration, and team functioning. Accordingly, organizations increasingly observe and recognize employees' emotional understanding (EU) ability-a key foundation of empathy-as an important dimension of individual merit in performance evaluations. We note that, however, supervisors' gender stereotypes may constrain whether EU ability is recognized properly, particularly for female employees. Drawing on dual-process models of social cognition, we theorized that the female empathy stereotype-the belief that women are inherently more empathetic than men-leads supervisors to attribute female employees' EU ability to gender-typical traits rather than to individual merit. As a result, the supervisors' female empathy stereotype weakens the link between observed emotional intelligence (EI) ability and job performance ratings. Across a video vignette experiment (Study 1) and a field study (Study 2), we found that the relationship between supervisors' perceptions of EU ability and their ratings of job performance was consistently weaker for female than for male employees. We conducted another vignette experiment (Study 3) to test three-way interactions with two moderators (i.e., employee gender and raters' female empathy stereotype) and found that supervisors' female empathy stereotype attenuated the relationship for female employees but not for males. Our findings extend research on gender stereotypes, empathy, and EI by demonstrating how a widely shared gender stereotype can discount female employees' valuable emotional abilities.
We offer a new perspective on gender-based biases in leadership evaluations by examining individual differences in beliefs about the gender status quo. Specifically, across three studies (N = 756), we tested how gender system-justifying beliefs interact with leader gender to impact leadership evaluations. In Study 1, participants evaluated a CEO's leadership based on their decision to appoint either a female or a male leader. In Studies 2 and 3, participants evaluated the leadership of female and male candidates and made a hiring decision. Individuals with weaker system-justifying beliefs evaluated female leaders and CEOs who appointed female leaders more positively than their male counterparts. Additionally, in making hiring decisions, they were more likely to select the female over the male candidate. In contrast, participants with stronger system-justifying beliefs did not display gender-based bias. To assess whether these effects reflect a system-challenging motive, in Studies 2 and 3, we tested three beliefs central to gender system-challenging motivation-supporting greater gender equity in leadership, recognizing an unjust gender status quo, and believing the system should be changed. These system-challenging motivations predicted the same pro-female pattern as low gender system justification and, in Study 3, remained predictive when modeled simultaneously with system justification. In summary, across all three studies, participants with weaker system justifying beliefs consistently displayed bias in favor of women leaders-an effect partially explained by system challenging motivations.
Research consistently finds that workplace discrimination is harmful for employees. However, less is known about how these stressful experiences may affect employees' family members. This question is particularly salient in the context of pregnancy discrimination, given rising claims and the prevalence of dual-earner couples. Across two studies, we examine the consequences of pregnancy discrimination for both expectant mothers and their spouses. First, in a four-wave study of expectant heterosexual couples, we test whether pregnancy discrimination affects not only women's career motivation and exhaustion via changes in work self-efficacy, but also crosses over to influence their spouses' career and health outcomes. Second, to replicate and strengthen the causality of the work self-efficacy crossover effect, we conduct a pre-registered vignette experiment where we manipulate women's work self-efficacy and compare spouses' work self-efficacy across experimental groups. Importantly, the vignettes were informed by qualitative interviews with 20 male spouses, which revealed how women's workplace experiences and self-efficacy are communicated and observed within couples during pregnancy. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
The rise of performance excellence cultures and intensifying competitive pressure have made stress bragging a common workplace phenomenon. Although existing research has focused on stress bragging among peers, its effects when enacted by leaders remain poorly understood. Grounded in attribution theory and cognitive theories of repetitive thought, this study investigates how subordinates' attributions of leaders' stress bragging (performance improvement vs. impression management) shape their cognitive and behavioral responses. The results of Study 1 (a scenario-based experiment with 294 employees) and Study 2 (a two-wave survey of 332 employees) reveal that these attributions yield divergent outcomes. When perceived as performance oriented, such behavior prompted task-focused reflection, thereby boosting work engagement. Conversely, when interpreted as impression management, it sparked leader-focused rumination, which subsequently led to interpersonal withdrawal. These findings underscore the pivotal role of attributional processes in explaining the double-edged effects of leaders' stress bragging on both work-related and interpersonal outcomes.
