Work Passion: Construction of Reliable and Valid Measurement Scale in the Indian Context

Abstract

Today ‘work passion’ is highly sought-after human capability to overcome intensifying environmental challenges. In this paper, we develop and validate the measure of ‘work passion’ in India. Two separate studies were conducted in this regard. In Study 1, work passion scale was developed and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to examine its factor structure and reliability. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted and construct validity was examined through its convergent and discriminant validity. Results of both EFA and CFA yielded a 17-item work passion scale (WPS) with four distinct dimensions: work enjoyment, self-motivation, self-identity and sense of learning. The model emerged as a perfect fit on various fit indices. Analyses reveal high internal consistency for both the total scale (α = 0.93) and the four sub-scales (α’s from 0.89 to 0.92). The resulted 17-item WPS is a short, reliable, valid and easy to administer measure that holds potential for use in future research and practice.

Keywords

Work passion joy enthusiasm vitality internal motivation sense of learning EFA CFA

Introduction

In today’s world, organizations need to keep pace with rapid advancement in technology. At the same time they also need to abridge the time to market. In this competitive environment, organizations need endless innovation and creative thinking to gain competitive advantage. In doing so, organizations need to hire and retain passionate employees as passionate employees easily adapt to new and challenging situations and remains focused to their goals (Gubman, 2004). In addition, work passion enables innovation and creativity and drives employee to seek out new sources of knowledge as well as to build relationships within and outside the organization to tap into the latest thinking and insights (Hagel, Brown, Kulasooriya & Elbert, 2010). So, to move forward with continuous innovation, organizations need to select passionately talented candidates as their employees. However, the important question that still remains is how to measure the passion quotient in a candidate for employment. Thus, the central aim of the present series of studies is development and validation of a measurement scale of work passion in India. In the following sections, we provide an overview of existing literature on passion. Subsequently, we present two studies: In Study 1, we explain the development of work passion scale and undertake exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine its psychometric properties (reliability and factorial validity). In Study 2, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to cross-validate the factor structure of work passion scale and additionally examined its discriminant and convergent validity.

Review of Literature

Passion is studied as a domain-specific motivational construct in social psychology (cf. Chen, Yao & Kotha, 2009). Researchers have studied the concept of passion broadly in three different domains: (i) in context of activities, (ii) in context of entrepreneurship and (iii) in context of work. In the context of activities, the most influential definition of passion till date is proposed by Vallerand et al. (2003). They defined passion for an activity as ‘strong inclination or desire towards a self-defining activity that one likes (or love), finds important and in which one invests time and energy’ (Vallerand et al., 2003). They proposed two types of passion: harmonious passion (HP) and obsessive passion (OP), which differ in regard to how autonomously they are integrated into personal identity (in consonance with self-determination theory, Deci & Ryan, 2000).

Harmonious passion (HP) refers to an autonomous internalization leads individuals to choose to engage in the activity that they like. On the contrary, obsessive passion (OP) refers to a controlled internalization of an activity in one’s identity that creates an internal pressure to engage in the activity that the person likes.(Vallerand et al., 2003)

In context of entrepreneurship, most of the researchers focused only on the emotional component of passion for defining the concept. Such as, Baum and Locke (2004) defined it as ‘love for one’s work’, similarly, Shane, Locke and Collins (2003) called it a ‘selfish love of work’. Smilor (1997) defined passion as the ‘enthusiasm, joy, and even zeal that come from the energetic and unflagging pursuit of a worthy, challenging, and uplifting purpose’. Later, the concept of entrepreneurial passion evolved with the work of Cardon, Wincent, Singh and Drnovsek (2009). They integrated the emotional and motivational component of passion into single construct. According to Cardon et al. (2009) ‘entrepreneurial passion’ is defined as ‘consciously accessible intense positive feelings experienced by engagement in entrepreneurial activities associated with roles that are meaningful and salient to the self-identity of the entrepreneur’.

In context of work, Perttula (2004) defined passion for work as ‘a psychological state characterized by the experience of intense positive emotions, an internal drive to work, and a sense of meaningful connection towards ones’ work’. This conceptualization of work passion considers it as a state consisting of both emotional (joy and subjective vitality) and cognitive component (meaningful connection and internal drive). Meaningful connection refers to ‘how an individual’s identity is intertwined with their work’. An intense inner drive that propels individuals in their work reflects the second dimension of work passion. The emotional aspect deals with the joy dimension of work passion that caters to feelings of enjoyment, happiness and love toward work. On the other hand, subjective vitality refers to a feeling of energy and aliveness at work (Ryan & Frederick, 1997). Recently, Zigarmi, Nimon, Houson, Witt and Diehl (2009) opined that a person becomes passionate about the work he or she does through a mental process. They defined the concept of employee work passion as ‘an individual’s persistent, emotionally positive, meaning-based, state of wellbeing stemming from reoccurring cognitive and affective appraisals of various job and organizational situations that result in consistent, constructive work intentions and behaviours’. However, the concept of passion has not been explored as much in organizational research as passion for activities and entrepreneurial passion.

Based on above domain-specific definitions of passion, it can be concluded that passion comprises of emotional as well as cognitive component. In spite of the obvious overlap in different conceptualization of passion, there are some measurement issues as well. Past researches reveal the existence of few scales for measuring work passion in an employee. The first attempt to measure passion was made by Vallerand et al. (2003). This scale focuses on the measurement of how the experience of passion relates to the other aspects of one’s life—whether it is in harmony or takes over the other aspects of life in obsessive manner—rather than what passion is. Items in the scale were intended to measure the type of passion one has. HP was measured through items like ‘This activity is in harmony with the other activities in my life’, similarly, to measure OP items such as ‘I have an almost obsessive feeling for this activity’ were used. Only single items were used to measure the three dimensions of passion: liking the activity, activity valuation and investment of time and energy (three items are: ‘This activity is important for me’, ‘I like this activity’ and ‘I spend a lot of time doing this activity’). Although, this is the most widely used and accepted measure of passion till date, its application in the context of work is limited. To our knowledge, there are only two studies on this concept of dualistic model of passion in work settings (Forest, Mageau, Sarrazin & Morin 2011; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003).

The second scale deals with the measurement of what passion is and how it is experienced at workplace with emphasis on four dimensions: joy, subjective vitality, meaningful connection with work and internal drive (Perttula, 2004). This measure of work passion captures the two components of work passion: emotion and cognition. Items, like ‘I really love my work’ and ‘I have spirit and energy at work’ captures the emotional aspect of experiencing work passion. While items, such as ‘I feel a strong connection between my inner self and my work’ and ‘A sense of inner urgency drives me in my work’ are expected to measure the cognitive aspect of individuals experience of work passion. Since this scale was developed for Canadian workers and has not been applied in any other context yet, hence the validity of this scale remains questionable.

Development of ‘Work Passion’ Scale

The objective of the first study is to develop and test a generic scale that can be used to quantitatively measure work passion among employees of India. We first define the process of developing the scale and then present the results of EFA and reliability.

Stage 1: Generating Operational Definition of Work Passion

Due to no prior research on the concept of work passion in India, our first step was to develop a comprehensive conceptual definition of ‘work passion’ in Indian context. In doing so, 21 individuals were interviewed from wide range of occupation, industry and organizational levels to secure broad conceptualization of work passion (see Table 1). As people were finding it difficult to define, explain or describe the construct, we asked them to recall and describe a time when they had experienced passion at work. In contrast to their inability to provide a clear definition of the construct, the ‘interviewees’ were able to provide rich descriptions of their experience of ‘work passion’.

Table 1.

Demographic Information of Interviewees

Experience/Gender	0–3 years	3–6 years	6–10 years	Above 10 years	Total
Male	2	3	5	4	14
Female	1	3	2	1	7
Total	3	6	7	5	21

Source: Authors’ findings.

Table 2.

Dimensions of ‘Work Passion’

Components	Dimensions	Description
Emotion	1. Joy	Love, like, enjoy
	2. Vitality	Enthusiasm, zeal and energy, aliveness
Cognition	3. Seeing one’s identity	Belongingness, meaning, pride
	4. Sense of self-motivation	Self-driven, inner motivation
Behaviour	5. Willingness to learn	Learning, improvement, new challenges

Source: Authors’ findings.

Based on qualitative analysis of these interviews, we identified five dimensions of work passion consisting of emotional, cognitive and behavioural dimensions (see Table 2). On the basis of dimensions identified, we operationally defined ‘work passion’ as a psychological state characterized by: (i) love for one’s work experienced through the feeling of joy and vitality at work, (ii) sense of self-motivation to do one’s work, (iii) seeing one’s identity in terms of one’s work and (iv) willingness to learn and improve continuously.

Stage 2: Generating Items Grounded on Real Experience of Interviewees

Initially, 30-item pool was constructed to reflect the five dimensions of employee work passion that emerged from our operational definition (see Table 2). These statements were generated from the interviewee’s description of work passion. To make it understandable to the target population many items used the actual words of interviewee (e.g., ‘The work I do is a cause of pride for me’, ‘I always attempt to find new and better ways of doing my work’, ‘I am ever willing to learn more and more about my work’).

Stage 3: Review of Instruments of Related Constructs

In addition to self-generated items based on our operational definition, three other instruments of related constructs, namely, work-related flow inventory (Bakker, 2008), subjective vitality scale (Ryan & Frederick, 1997) and passion for one’s work scale (Perttula, 2004), were reviewed. The purpose of this review was to include those items that were capturing the experience described by interviewees but were not reflected in the initial pool of self-generated items. This step resulted in the addition of 10 more items that were either used directly or adapted to fit with the Indian population. Finally, this resulted in an item pool of 40 items.

Stage 4: Review of Item Pool by Experts

This pool of 40 items was analyzed by a different group of experts comprising both academicians and professionals. Qualitative feedback was sought from these academicians and professionals on these items. From the feedback received only those items were retained which were in line with our operational definition and were not problematic in terms of language and understanding. As a result, 10 items out of the 40 items (from Stage 3) were deleted. The output of above four stages resulted in a final list of 30 items.

Study 1: EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis)

EFA was conducted using principal axis factoring method with varimax rotation in SPSS to examine whether the five factors could be meaningfully distinguished from each other. As a criterion to retain factors, only those factors that had an eigenvalue greater than one were retained. In addition, within factors we retained items with primary factor loading of >0.40 and secondary factor loading of <0.30 and those that did not load on more than one factor were retained. Items not meeting the criteria were removed one at a time. Factor analysis was repeated until a solution in which all the items included in the analysis met all criteria were retained.

Method

Procedure and Participants

The 30-item instrument was distributed to service sector employees working in the region of Delhi/NCR. Participants responded to each item by reflecting on their experiences at work, using a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Basic demographic data on gender, age, marital status, occupation, income and work experience were also collected.

Responses were received from 388 individuals comprising 149 females and 239 males. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 60 years. Approximately 78 per cent of participants were between 20 and 40 years. The majority of respondents were married (67.8 per cent) and the rest were single. The distribution based on level of education included doctoral degree holder (6.2 per cent), postgraduates (46.9 per cent), graduates (45.6 per cent) and diploma holders (1.3 per cent). Socio-economic status-wise family income was below ₹0.3 million among 27 per cent, above ₹0.3 million but less than ₹0.6 million among 39.9 per cent and rest more than ₹0.6 million per annum.

Results and Discussion

Before moving on to EFA, we conducted a test of homogeneity where items were subjected to correlation analysis (Pearson’s product moment method) between individual item responses and the total score. We retained items for further analysis if they correlated with the overall passion score at a level of at least 0.40 (p < 0.01) resulting in deletion of 13 items. Building on this, we then set out to establish the validity of the work passion construct by examining its factor structure and reliability.

The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was 0.928, above the recommended value of 0.6 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ² (136) = 4,887, p = 0.000) which justifies the use of factor analysis. Result of EFA on the remaining 17 items, yielded a four-factor solution which contradicts our expected five-factor model of work passion that emerged from qualitative analysis of interviews. The emotional component of passion comprised of joy and vitality loaded in to single factor. The reason behind this might be that the respondents were not being able to differentiate between these two dimensions of emotion. The four factors that emerged from analysis were labelled as: work enjoyment (WE 5 items), self-motivation (SM 4 items), self-identity (SI 4 items) and sense of learning (SoL 4 items). These four factors captured the essence of the five dimensions in our definition. The items loading on WE reflected the emotional dimension of work passion characterized by feeling of intense positive emotions (e.g., ‘I do not feel exhausted and bored while doing my work’) and feeling of vitality at work (e.g., ‘I feel good and lively at my work’). The items loading on SM and SI were reflecting primarily the cognitive dimension from the definition which was characterized by a sense of being internally motivated to do one’s work (e.g., ‘I get my motivation from the work itself and not from the rewards for it’) and seeing one’s identity in terms of one’s work (e.g., ‘I identify myself with the work I do’). The items loading on SoL reflected the behavioural dimension of ‘work passion’ definition which was characterized by a sense of continuous learning (e.g., ‘I am ever willing to learn more and more about my work’) and improvement (e.g., ‘I make every effort to improve the work I do’). Cronbach’s alpha was used to check reliability or internal consistency of each factor. Concerning the reliability or internal consistency of the factors, values above 0.80 indicate good reliability (Field, 2009; Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). All four factors showed high reliability, with alpha coefficients higher than 0.90. The items retained in the model and factor loadings are presented in Table 3. The table shows all factor loadings greater than 0.40.

Table 3.

Results of EFA

Items	Alpha Values	Factor 1 WE	Factor 2 SM	Factor 3 SI	Factor 4 SoL
PW22 I enjoy my work.PW12 I really love my work.PW6 I do not feel exhausted and bored while doing my work.PW1 I generally feel excited to go to my work.PW19 I feel good and lively at my work.	0.92	0.820.810.810.780.77
PW28 I would still do this work, even I received less pay.PW24 I get my motivation from the work itself and not from the rewards for it.PW4 Something inside me forces me to do my work.PW11 I often work extra hours even though nobody ask me to do so.	0.89		0.790.830.820.78
PW 21 I identify myself with the work I do.PW25 My work reflects qualities that I like about myself.PW 14 I feel a sense of belongingness with my work.PW 5 The work I do is a cause of pride for me.	0.90			0.780.810.780.80
PW 16 I make every effort to improve the work I do.PW 27 I always attempt to find new and better ways of doing my work.PW18 I am ever willing to learn more and more about my work.PW8 I often attempt to perform my work in the best possible way.	0.89				0.790.790.770.77

Source: Authors’ findings.

Notes: WE—work enjoyment, SM—self-motivation, SI—self-identity, SoL—sense of learning, PW—(passion for work).

Items deleted from item-total correlation: PW2, PW3, PW7, PW9, PW10, PW13, PW15, PW17, PW20, PW23, PW26, PW29 and PW30.

Study 2: Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Discriminant and Convergent Validity

To determine the construct validity as well as to confirm the exploratory model, CFA was done using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software package (Arbuckle, 2006) on a new set of 177 respondents. CFA is a structural modeling technique used to determine the goodness-of-fit between hypothesized model and the sample data. In this study, two measurement models were tested and compared: the one-factor model and the four-factor model. To assess which model fits better to work passion scale, four indices were used; Tucker–Lewis index (TLI; Tucker & Lewis, 1973), the comparative fit index (CFI; Bentler, 1990) and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA; Browne & Cudeck, 1993) and chi-square/df ratio. The chi-square/df ratio gives information about how loosely the model fit compared to perfect fit. A value less than three generally indicates a good model fit (Kline, 2011). Similarly values of 0.90 and above for TLI and CFI are considered acceptable for a model fit. RMSEA, a parsimony-adjusted index, values <0.05 indicate approximate fit and values <0.08 indicate reasonable error of approximation (cf. Chaudhary, 2014). Further, construct validity was examined in this study through convergent and discriminant validity.

Method

Procedure and Participants

The final 17-item work passion instrument was distributed among employees of service sector working in the region of Delhi/NCR. Participants responded to each item by reflecting on their experiences at work, using a seven-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Basic demographic data on gender, age, marital status, occupation, income and work experience were also collected.

Responses were received from 177 individuals comprising 53 females and 124 males. Participants ranged in age from 20 to 55 years. Approximately 94 per cent of the participants were aged between 20 and 50 years. The majority of respondents were married (68 per cent) and the rest were single. The distribution based on level of education included postgraduates (46.9 per cent), graduates (52 per cent) and others (1.1 per cent).

Result

CFA was done to cross-validate the four-factor model of work passion obtained from EFA: WE, SI, SM and SoL. For better understanding of the construct dimensionality this four-factor model was compared with the one-factor model of work passion. CFA of the one-factor model resulted in a poor fit with Chi-square/Degrees of Freedom (CMIN/df) or Normed Chi-square (NC) = 7.90, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.642; TLI = 0.591 and RMSEA = 0.198 (see Table 4). On the other hand, the four-factor model emerged from EFA was tested and confirmed, resulting in a good fit on all indices (Figure 1). The results of this model are: CMIN/df or NC = 1.155, p < 0.001; TLI = 0.991; CFI = 0.992 and RMSEA = 0.030 (see Table 4). The beta value of all the items ranges from 0.730 to 0.921 (Figure 1). To avoid confusion, the item coding has been not changed and the same coding is used for CFA as it was in EFA. Based on the results of two CFAs, it may be concluded that the four-factor model outperforms the one-factor model of work passion on all indices. These results suggest that work passion is a multidimensional construct consisting of four dimensions.

Table 4.

CFA Model Fit Indices

Model Fit Indices	CMIN/df	CFI	TLI	RMSEA
Four Factor Model	7.90 (p < 0.001)	0.642	0.591	0.198
One Factor Model	1.155 (p < 0.001)	0.992	0.991	0.030

Source: Authors’ findings.

Note: CFI—comparative fit index, TLI—Tucker–Lewis index, RMSEA—root mean square error of approximation, CMIN/df—(chi-square/degrees of freedom).

Figure 1.

Source: Authors’ findings.

After confirming the dimensionality of scale with CFA, reliability and validity of the scale was measured. In this study, construct validity of the work passion scale was measured through convergent and discriminant validity. Hair, Black, Babin and Anderson (2010) suggested the following measures for establishing validity and reliability: composite reliability (CR), average variance extracted (AVE), maximum shared variance (MSV) and average shared variance (ASV). The suggested thresholds for these values are: CR > 0.7 (reliability); AVE > 0.5 and standardized factor loadings > 0.5 (convergent validity); MSV < AVE; ASV < AVE; square root of AVE greater than inter-construct correlations (discriminant validity) (Hair et al., 2010). CR, also known as Jöreskog’s rho (Chin, 1998), was used to measure the reliability of the construct. The scale was found reliable with CR values for all the four factors ranging from 0.88 to 0.93 (see Table 5) which were more than the recommended value of 0.71 (Hair et al., 2010).

Table 5.

Discriminant Validity and Convergent Validity

	CR	AVE	MSV	ASV	SoL	WE	SM	SI
SoL	0.906	0.707	0.377	0.353	0.841
WE	0.936	0.745	0.377	0.354	0.614	0.863
SM	0.886	0.662	0.368	0.352	0.607	0.601	0.814
SI	0.908	0.712	0.325	0.322	0.561	0.570	0.570	0.844

Source: Authors’ findings.

Note: CR—composite reliability, AVE—average variance extracted, MSV—maximum shared variance, ASV—average shared variance, SoL—sense of learning, WE—work enjoyment, SM—self-motivation, SI—self-identity.

The validity of the scale was established by examining the convergent and discriminant validity of the construct. Convergent validity refers the degree to which multiple attempts to measure the same construct are in agreement (Bagozzi, Yi & Phillips, 1991). To measure the convergent validity of the construct we followed the criteria suggested by Hair et al. (2010): standardized loading estimates to be greater than 0.5 for all items (where values more than 0.7 are considered excellent), and AVE should be greater than 0.5. Result of analysis reveals that the standardized loading estimates of each item on specified factors were more than 0.7 (see Figure 1) and the CR value for each factor was greater than 0.7 (WE = 0.93, SM = 0.88, SI = 0.90 and SoL = 0.90) (see Table 5). The AVE for each factor was found to be more than 0.5 (see Table 5) suggesting that the work passion scale shows convergent validity. Discriminant validity refers to the degree to which measures of different constructs are distinct (Bagozzi, Yi & Phillips, 1991). We followed the recommendations of Hair et al. (2010) to measure the discriminant validity mentioned above. The results show evidence of discriminant validity as well as where MSV and ASV were found lesser than AVE, similarly, square root of AVE was found greater than inter-construct correlations (see Table 5).

Is Work Passion Different from Other Related Constructs?

Work passion is a different concept displaying a particular human experience at work. We distinguish it from the other related constructs of thriving at work, work engagement and workaholism. Thriving at work refers to the psychological state in which individuals experience both a sense of vitality and a sense of learning at work (Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein & Grant, 2005). Where, vitality refers to feeling of energy and aliveness at work and learning refers to sense that one is acquiring knowledge and skills. Moreover, thriving refers to co-existence of sense of vitality and learning, which converses a sense of advancement in one’s self-development (Spreitzer et al., 2005). Here, work passion is similar to thriving as both constructs share vitality (feeling of aliveness) and learning component. However, thriving does not include sense of SI and joy captured by emotional and cognitive dimensions of work passion. People can experience vigour at work due to an opportunity to perform a challenging task (Roberts, Dutton, Spreitzer, Heaphy & Quinn, 2005) but that does not imply that they love their work or feel a sense of personal identity or connectedness with work as in the case of work passion. We assume that passionate employees strive to learn new things because they truly love their work and they see their identity in terms of their work.

Employee engagement is a widely used and popular term these days. Such a growing interest in the concept of engagement has encouraged researchers to study this concept with respect to student engagement (Sharma & Bhaumik, 2013; Singh & Srivastava, 2014). Here, we define work engagement as ‘a positive, fulfilling, work related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption’ (Schaufeli, Salanova, González-Romá & Bakker, 2002). Where, vigour denotes high levels of energy and mental resilience at work; dedication denotes being strongly involved in one’s work, and experiencing a sense of importance; and absorption refers to being fully focused and happily immersed in one’s work. Similar to work passion, engagement also involves a positive state of human functioning as both shares a common component of vitality. However, work passion is different from work engagement in various ways. First, work engagement does not capture employees feeling of connectedness with his or her work which is captured by the SI dimension of work passion in our definition. An employee might feel energetic, dedicated and absorbed in his work because of the challenging and rewarding nature of his work or due to the context (Gubman, 2004) in which that work is embedded but not because he love his work or feels a sense of personal identity. While passionate employees love their work and perceive their work as their identity that makes them enjoy their work. Second, while work engagement also captures the behavioural component in the form of absorption it does not specify the learning intention of an employee which has emerged from our definition of work passion.

The term ‘workaholism’ was first introduced by Oates (1971). He defined workaholism as an ‘addiction to work, the compulsion or the uncontrollable need to work incessantly’. While the concept of workaholism has received a good deal of attention among practitioners but organizational researchers lack agreement on its definition. To our knowledge Ng, Sorensen and Feldman (2007) have provided the most comprehensive definition of workaholism till date. They defined workaholics as ‘someone who enjoy the act of working, who are obsessed with working, and who devote long hours and personal time to work’. This notion of workaholism shares some similarities with the concept of Vallerand’s OP (Vallerand et al., 2003) as they both involve compulsive behaviour towards work and a sense of guilt while not working as their lives are dominated by work only. Our conceptualization of work passion is similar to workaholism in the way that they both share enjoyment as an emotional component but also differs in several ways. First, passionate workers are not obsessed with working and they do not have to think about their work all the time, rather, passionate employees work to derive meaning in what they do by connecting their work to their inner self (Perttula, 2010). Second, unlike workaholics passionate workers do not experience guilt when they are not working. Past literatures as well as our interviews provide support to this notion that passionate workers did not experience any kind of negative emotions while not working. Finally, Ng et al. (2007) have captured the behavioural dimension of workaholism in the form of devoting long hours and personal time to work while passionate workers does not show such behaviour. However, passionate workers are more likely to invest a large portion of their time to perform their work but not at the cost of their personal life as they are not obsessed with their work. Moreover, our findings also confirm that work passion also encompasses of behavioural dimension in the form of their desire to learn new things and improve continuously which is not reflected by Ng et al. (2007) in their description of workaholics.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Literature study revealed that there is no valid measure of work passion in India so far. However, numerous researches report about the importance of passion in workplace for enhancing employee effectiveness, creativity (Perttula, 2004), employee well-being (Carpentier, Mageau & Vallerand, 2012) and organizational performance (Hagel et al., 2010). This newly developed and validated work passion scale (WPS) will help researchers to empirically examine this phenomenon and to gain further awareness about its antecedents and consequences. The findings of this study suggest that work passion is a multidimensional construct comprising of four different dimensions: WE, SI, SM and SoL. These four dimensions are further classified into three major components: emotional, cognitive and behavioural. Our findings are coherent with the past researches, where passion was considered to consist of all the three components but in the work domain behavioural aspect did not received much attention till date. Thus, our study provides initial evidence to the fact that behavioural aspect of work passion cannot be ignored while defining and measuring the construct. Clearly, more research is needed to explore this behavioural dimension of ‘work passion’ as our work is limited to the service sector only, which may limit the generalizability of our findings regarding WPS to specific group of workers. Future research should therefore examine whether the WPS is equally applicable to other samples of employees (e.g., manufacturing, health and education).

Further, nomological validity of ‘work passion’ needs to be established in future. Nomological validity shows the ability of a scale to behave as expected with respect to some other related constructs. It examines whether the correlations between the constructs in the measurement theory makes sense (Hair et al., 2010). Future research should focus on empirically testing the relationship between work passion and its possible outcomes such as employee well-being, turnover intentions, career success, etc. In addition, an attempt can be made in future to build and test a conceptual framework of work passion by identifying the antecedents and outcomes of work passion.

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