There is an increasingly prevalent expectation in contemporary society that employees be passionate for their work. Here, we suggest that employers and employees can have different understandings of passion that potentially conflict. More specifically, we argue that although employers may often be well-intentioned, their emphasis on employee passion may at times amount to normative control and reflect a means to attain valued work outcomes. In contrast, employees may primarily view their pursuit of passion as an opportunity to self-actualize, and thereby, view passion as an end in itself. We propose that when employees notice that these two understandings of passion diverge, they experience uncertainty in adjudicating which understanding of passion—their own or their employer’s—to privilege. Critically, employees may feel responsible for and subsequently seek ways to reduce this uncertainty, and doing so places added demands that impedes employees’ ability to perform. We discuss why employers may not necessarily recognize how their understanding of passion can create challenges for employees, and examine the difficulties employers face in attempting to resolve the tensions employees experience. Subsequently, we develop an agenda for future research that highlights how individual, organizational, and cultural differences may lead to variation in divergent understandings of passion, and the critical role managers could play in helping address employees’ uncertainty.

当今社会越来越普遍期望员工对工作充满热情。在这里，我们建议雇主和雇员可以对激情有不同的理解，这可能会发生冲突。更具体地说，我们认为，尽管雇主通常可能是善意的，但他们对员工热情的强调有时可能相当于规范控制，并反映出获得有价值的工作成果的一种手段。相比之下，员工可能主要将他们对激情的追求视为自我实现的机会，从而将激情本身视为目的. 我们建议，当员工注意到这两种对激情的理解存在分歧时，他们在判断对激情的理解——他们自己的还是他们雇主的——优先考虑时会遇到不确定性。至关重要的是，员工可能会感到有责任并随后寻求减少这种不确定性的方法，而这样做会增加阻碍员工执行能力的要求。我们讨论了为什么雇主可能不一定认识到他们对激情的理解如何给员工带来挑战，并研究雇主在试图解决员工所经历的紧张局势时所面临的困难。随后，我们制定了未来研究的议程，强调个人、组织和文化差异如何导致对激情的不同理解的变化，