Passion ignites: Effect of expert worker passion on employee performance in knowledge worker teams

Yipeng Tang, Xiaoping Pu, Erica Xu, Xu Huang, Guanglei Zhang and Jialing Xiao

Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 188, issue C

Abstract: Previous studies have shown that employees perform better by acquiring knowledge and skills from domain-specific experts. In this research, we depart from this perspective to focus on expert workers, who possess a high level of domain-general and task-related competencies, and draw on role modeling theory to propose that expert workers’ passion can inspire employees’ passion and thus contribute to employee performance in knowledge worker teams. We conducted three studies to test our research model. The results consistently showed the positive effects of expert workers’ harmonious passion on employees’ harmonious passion, which in turn increased employees’ task performance and taking charge behavior; these effects were stronger when employees and expert workers had similar expertise and demographic backgrounds. In contrast, expert workers’ obsessive passion had no significant effect on employees’ passion and performance. Overall, the study advances the understanding of passion in knowledge worker teams and provides important insight into the managerial practice of presenting outstanding employees as role models.

Keywords: Expert worker; Harmonious passion; Obsessive passion; Similarity; Task performance; Taking charge behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:188:y:2025:i:c:s0148296324005563

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.115052

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