The role of passion for work and need satisfaction in psychological adjustment to retirement

Paradox of life after work: A systematic review and meta-analysis on retirement anxiety and life satisfaction

Retirement is a pivotal life transition that often changes routines, identity, and objectives. With increasing life expectancies and evolving societal norms, examining the interplay between retirement anxiety and life satisfaction is vital. This study delves into this relationship, recognising the complexities of retirement. A systematic review and meta-analysis followed PRISMA guidelines. Research from 2003 to 2023 was sourced from databases like CINAHL, PubMed/Medline, PsycINFO, ERIC, and Google Scholar, focusing on diverse methodologies and outcomes related to retirement registered in Prospero database (CRD42023427949). The quality assessment used an eight-criterion risk of bias scale, and analyses included qualitative and quantitative approaches, such as random-effects meta-analysis and moderator analyses. After reviewing 19 studies with varied geographical and demographic scopes, a mixed relationship between retirement and life satisfaction emerged: 32% of studies reported a positive relationship, 47% were negative, and 21% found no significant correlation. Meta-analysis indicated high heterogeneity and non-significant mean effect size, suggesting no consistent impact of retirement on life satisfaction. Moderator analyses highlighted the influence of measurement tools on outcomes. The findings reveal a complex interplay between retirement anxiety and life satisfaction, stressing the need for holistic retirement policies that encompass mental health, social integration, and adaptability, focusing on cultural sensitivity. Challenges include potential biases in data sources, methodological diversity, the scarcity of longitudinal studies, and difficulties in addressing recent societal shifts, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Variability in measurement tools and possible publication bias may have also influenced results. This study contributes to understanding retirement, emphasising the relationship between retirement anxiety and life satisfaction. It advocates for ongoing, detailed, culturally informed research to grasp retirement's multifaceted aspects fully.

Factors affecting the work passion of physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study in Thailand

PURPOSE

This qualitative study explores the factors influencing physicians' work passion during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Thai medical context.

METHODS

Using an appreciative inquiry (AI) approach, we conducted qualitative interviews with 30 physicians from a public hospital in Thailand to investigate the factors that influence passion for their professional work (work passion).

RESULTS

Our analysis revealed 12 codes influencing physician work passion, which were grouped into four themes: job factors (meaningful work, challenging tasks, task accomplishment, autonomy, work-life balance); organizational factors (fairness, positive environment); relationship factors (having a role model, psychological support, collaboration, recognition and respect); and individual factors (spiritual drive).

CONCLUSION

These findings contribute to developing knowledge about work passion among physicians and provide information to develop effective strategies to harness and manage work passion, thus improving clinical practice and healthcare outcomes. This qualitative study sheds light on the factors that influence physician work passion during the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand, providing valuable information for future research and guiding the development of strategies to optimize work passion and its impact on clinical practice.

Changes in basic psychological needs, passion, and well-being of first-semester graduate students

OBJECTIVE

Examine changes in graduate student health and well-being in the first semester.

PARTICIPANTS

Full-time, first-semester graduate students (N = 74) from a midsized midwestern university.

METHOD

Graduate students were surveyed prior to starting their master's program and 10 weeks later. Passion for academics, basic psychological needs, physical and mental health symptoms, positive and negative affects, and quality of life were assessed.

RESULTS

Need satisfaction, harmonious passion, and indicators of well-being decreased across the first semester, whereas need frustration and indicators of ill-being increased over the first semester. Obsessive passion, harmonious passion, need satisfaction, and need frustration were associated with students' well-being at the end of the semester, with need frustration being the most robust predictor.

CONCLUSIONS

Although most graduate students reported good general health and moderately low mental health symptoms, findings suggest that a need supportive environment may contribute to better health and well-being.

Using resilience and passion to overcome bullying and lack of meaning at work: a pathway to change-oriented citizenship

Purpose

This study adds to human resource management research by addressing relevant questions about how and when employees' suffering from workplace bullying may direct them away from voluntary efforts to improve the organizational status quo. It postulates a mediating role of beliefs about work meaningfulness deprivation, as well as beneficial, moderating roles of two personal resources (resilience and passion for work) in this link.

Design/methodology/approach

The research hypotheses were tested with survey data collected among employees who work in the construction retail sector.

Findings

A critical reason that bullying victims refuse to exhibit change-oriented voluntarism is that they develop beliefs that their organization deprives them of meaningful work, which, as the authors theorize, enables them to protect their self-esteem resources. The extent to which employees can bounce back from challenging situations or feel passionate about work subdues this detrimental effect.

Practical implications

When employees feel upset about being bullied at work, their adverse work conditions may translate into work-related indifference (tarnished change-oriented citizenship), which then compromises employees' and the organization's ability to overcome the difficult situation. Managers should recognize how employees' personal resources can serve as protective shields against this risk.

Originality/value

This study details the detrimental role of demeaning workplace treatment in relation to employees' change-oriented organizational citizenship, as explained by their convictions that their organization operates in ways that make their work unimportant. It is mitigated by energy-enhancing personal resources.

Does work passion benefit or hinder employee’s career commitment? The mediating role of work–family interface and the moderating role of autonomy support

Based on the dualistic model of passion, this study explored the relationship between distinct types of work passion and career commitment, as well as the mediating role of work–family interface and the moderating role of autonomy support. A two-wave study was conducted among South Korean workers (N = 250) over a 5-month time period. Results showed that harmonious work passion was positively associated with career commitment, whereas obsessive work passion was not significantly associated with career commitment. Moreover, work–family enrichment partially mediated the positive effect of harmonious work passion on career commitment, and work–family conflict fully mediated the negative effect of obsessive work passion on career commitment. Results further indicated that autonomy support strengthens the positive effect of harmonious work passion on work–family enrichment. Furthermore, this study expanded the understanding of the underlying psychological mechanisms of effects of work passion. The implications and limitations of the study and potential topics for future research are discussed.

Let's work together, especially in the pandemic: finding ways to encourage problem-focused voice behavior among passionate employees

Purpose

This study seeks to unravel the relationship between employees' passion for work and their engagement in problem-focused voice behavior by identifying a mediating role of their efforts to promote work-related goal congruence and a moderating role of their perceptions of pandemic threats to the organization.

Design/methodology/approach

The research hypotheses were tested with quantitative data collected through a survey instrument administered among 158 employees in a large Portuguese-based organization that operates in the food sector, in the midst of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The Process macro was applied to assess the moderated mediation dynamic that underpins the proposed theoretical framework.

Findings

Employees' positive work-related energy enhances their propensity to speak up about organizational failures because they seek to find common ground with their colleagues with respect to the organization's goals and future. The mediating role of such congruence-promoting efforts is particularly prominent to the extent that employees dwell on the threats that a pandemic holds for their organization.

Practical implications

The study pinpoints how HR managers can leverage a negative situation—employees who cannot keep the harmful organizational impact of a life-threatening virus out of their minds—into productive outcomes, by channeling positive work energy, derived from their passion for work, toward activities that bring organizational problems into the open.

Originality/value

This study adds to HR management research by unveiling how employees' attempts to gather their coworkers around a shared work-related mindset can explain how their passion might spur reports of problem areas, as well as explicating how perceived pandemic-related threats activate this process.

Perceived overqualification? Examining its nexus with cyberloafing and knowledge hiding behaviour: harmonious passion as a moderator

Purpose

This study aims to assess the nexus between perceived overqualification (POQ), anger, knowledge hiding, cyberloafing and harmonious passion (HP).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors obtained 264 responses from two public traded firms in Pakistan using a supervisor-subordinated nested design and a multi-time data collecting strategy using convenience sampling.

Findings

The study results indicate that POQ positively affects knowledge hiding and cyberloafing. The authors also found anger as a potential mediator in the direct association between POQ and cyberloafing. In addition, the findings suggest that the association between POQ, knowledge hiding and cyberloafing will be weak when individuals exhibit HP towards their job roles. The results of this research, when considered as a whole, provided support for all of the hypothesised direct and indirect linkages, which has important ramifications for both theory and practise.

Research limitations/implications

This study has both theoretical and practical implications. Grounded on equity theory and relative deprivation theory, this paper asserts that HP should be used to decrease POQ affect. According to the authors, pro-environment employee actions may help build a pro-environment workplace culture as well as a pro-environment sense of responsibility, both of which can help to achieve significant pro-environment results.

Originality/value

This study builds on and fills in the gaps left by earlier research to better aid organisational researchers, practitioners and stakeholders in understanding how POQ, rage, information concealing, cyberloafing and harmonic passion interact with one another.

The Self-Regulation of Healthy Aging: Goal-Related Processes in Three Domains

As people age, they experience typical age-graded challenges and opportunities, for example, their own retirement, changes in their social networks, or a decline in health condition. The extent to which people successfully process, respond to, and act on these challenges and opportunities is highly important for their health, at the core of which the WHO sees the possibility of "doing what one has reason to value." In this article, we posit that individuals can play an active role in determining whether they can, in response to these age-graded influences, continue doing what they have reason to value, and that they can do so by deploying the self-regulatory processes of goal setting (including reengagement in new goals after disengaging from a previous goal), goal pursuit, and goal disengagement. We discuss the role of these self-regulatory processes in three important goal domains: work/retirement, interpersonal relationships, and health. Across these domains, we consider typical challenges and opportunities including the increased availability of daily time in old age, the long past that lies behind older adults, and their limited future time perspective. Finally, we derive open research questions that may be studied to better understand how the very old may self-regulate their response to age-graded influences.

Harmonious work passion and work-related internet information seeking among nurses: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation

AIM

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between nurses' harmonious work passion and work-related internet information seeking. In doing so, we examine intrinsic motivation as an underlying mechanism of this relationship.

BACKGROUND

Nurses seek and utilize information to respond effectively to their tasks and to develop their skills and competencies. Internet consists one of the easiest and richest sources of information. Both nurses and organizations need to identify potential antecedents of work-related internet information seeking.

METHODS

Data were collected from 239 nurses and nurse assistants in a Greek University hospital and were analysed using bootstrap analysis with PROCESS macro.

RESULTS

Harmonious work passion was positively related to intrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation related positively to work-related internet information seeking. The mediating role of intrinsic motivation was also supported.

CONCLUSIONS

Nurses with harmonious work passion seek more regularly work-related information on the internet because they experience high levels of intrinsic motivation.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Health care organizations and managers need to recruit passionate nurses and cultivate a workplace culture that will trigger higher levels of harmonious work passion. Recruitment tools and methods such as interviews, situational judgement tests or role playing could be very beneficial towards uncovering potential candidates with an elevated passion for their work.

The role of ego integrity and despair in older adults' well-being during the COVID-19 crisis: the mediating role of need-based experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people across the world, with important heterogeneity among older adults in how they respond to the challenges associated with this crisis. Relying on a cross-fertilization between Erikson's personality theory and self-determination theory, this study aimed to examine possible sources of resilience (i.e., ego integrity and need satisfaction) and vulnerability (i.e., despair) in older adults' (mal) adjustment, thereby additionally considering the role of multiple risk and protective factors (e.g., gender and marital status). During the second month of the lockdown period in Belgium, 693 older adults (M _age = 70.06, SD = 4.48, range: 65-89 years, 62.1% female) filled out online questionnaires concerning the study variables, while also completing assessments of several important sociodemographic factors. Structural equation modeling suggested that both ego integrity and despair related to indicators of well-being and psychological distress through experienced need satisfaction. Additionally, we found several factors to protect (e.g., higher perceived income) or diminish (e.g., being widowed) older adults' well-being during these challenging times, with little evidence for a moderating role of these factors in associations between the psychological variables. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

How Social Media Use at Work Affects Improvement of Older People's Willingness to Delay Retirement During Transfer From Demographic Bonus to Health Bonus: Causal Relationship Empirical Study

Background

With the increased older population in China and the subsequent reduced labor force, the “demographic bonus” is disappearing. The Chinese government proposed a Healthy China strategy in 2017. The transfer of the demographic bonus to a “health bonus” extended the working life of people and reduced the negative impact of the population’s aging on the labor force structure.

Objective

This research focuses on the effect of older workers’ social media usage at work on their work ability (related to both physical and mental health) and thus their willingness to delay retirement.

Methods

The questionnaire respondents were older than 55 years, and they obtained the questionnaire from social media, from June to July 2018. A total of 1020 valid questionnaires were collected, and SmartPLS 3.28 (SmartPLS GmbH) was used to analyze the data. Effects were analyzed using 2-tailed t tests.

Results

(1) Use of social media at work can improve information support (t₁₄=13.318, P<.001), emotional support (t₁₄=13.184, P<.001), and self-efficacy (t₁₄=6.364, P<.001) for older people; (2) information support is the main factor affecting the self-efficacy of older workers (t₁₄=23.304, P<.001), as compared with emotional support (t₁₄=1.799, P=0.07); (3) the impacts of emotional support on work ability (t₁₄=8.876, P<.001) and work stress (t₁₄=9.545, P<.001) are generally higher than those of information support (t₁₄=4.394, P<.001; t₁₄=5.002, P<.001); (4) self-efficacy has an impact on work ability (t₁₄=5.658, P<.001) and work stress (t₁₄=4.717, P<.001); and (5) the impacts of work ability (t₁₄=8.586, P<.001) and work stress (t₁₄=8.579, P<.001) on retirement willingness are greater than those of emotional support (t₁₄=2.112, P=.04) and information support (t₁₄=4.314, P<.001).

Conclusions

Our study confirms that the use of social media at work has a positive impact on older workers. Based on the findings, we have put forward proposals to extend people’s working lives and help governments implement health bonus policies. In the future, we will compare the different values of willingness to delay retirement among older people in different occupations and different cultures.

Basic psychological need satisfaction across the retirement transition: Changes and longitudinal associations with depressive symptoms

Drawing on self-determination theory, the present study examined how satisfaction of the basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) changes across the retirement transition and how need satisfaction was related to depressive symptoms across the retirement transition. Participants (N = 2655) were drawn from the HEalth, Ageing and Retirement Transitions in Sweden (HEARTS) study. Latent growth curve modeling showed that autonomy need satisfaction increased across the retirement transition, whereas competence and relatedness remained relatively stable. Higher need satisfaction was related to less depressive symptoms at baseline, however, pre-retirement need satisfaction was not a statistically significant predictor of subsequent changes in depressive symptoms (or vice versa) across the retirement transition. At the within-person level, higher than usual need satisfaction at a specific time point was related to less than usual depressive symptoms. Need satisfaction may be an important factor to consider across the retirement transition and need satisfying activities prior, during, and after the transition may ease peoples’ adjustment to retirement.

Live well and die with inner peace: The importance of retrospective need-based experiences, ego integrity and despair for late adults' death attitudes

Given that prior research has provided evidence for the role of late adults' attitudes towards death in their mental health, we sought to understand its underlying sources. Guided by Self-Determination Theory and Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, two cross-sectional studies examined whether older individuals' psychological need-based experiences, as accumulated during life, relate to their death attitudes and whether their experienced ego integrity and despair play an intervening role in these associations. Whereas Study 1 (N = 394 late adults; Mage = 75.14; SD = 6.52; 62.9 % female) involved an assessment of need satisfaction only, in Study 2 (N = 126 late adults; Mage = 78.09; SD = 7.17; 61.9 % female) both need satisfaction and need frustration were assessed. Structural equation modeling showed that, across studies, experienced need satisfaction related positively to ego integrity and negatively to despair. Need frustration was related to despair only. In turn, ego integrity related positively to death acceptance and negatively to death anxiety, while despair related positively to death anxiety. Finally, the contribution of need satisfaction to death attitudes was mostly mediated by individuals' ego integrity. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

To Be Happy: A Case Study of Entrepreneurial Motivation and Entrepreneurial Process from the Perspective of Positive Psychology

The pursuit of wealth maximization is considered to be the greatest driving force of entrepreneurship. However, this economic rational perspective cannot sufficiently answer why potential or continuous entrepreneurs still choose entrepreneurship or even continuous entrepreneurship in the face of high failure rate and tremendous uncertainty. On the basis of the dynamic process of entrepreneurship and the perspective of positive psychology, this study attempts to interpret the sustained motivation mechanism of entrepreneurs. This study uses multiple cases to investigate the emotion, cognition, and behavior of entrepreneurial process. Through NVivo software and emotion dictionary, more than 27,000 micro blogs (Weibo) of six entrepreneurs were analyzed, and the model of positive emotion in entrepreneurial process was constructed. The findings are as follows. (1) In the process of establishing a business, entrepreneurs can persist in a highly uncertain environment by acquiring positive emotions. That is, the motivation of sustainable entrepreneurship originates from the emotion of happiness and satisfaction that entrepreneurs obtain. (2) Positive emotions affect the formation and expansion of key activities of entrepreneurship through cognition and then persist with entrepreneurship. Specifically, positive emotion promotes the formation of entrepreneurial intention by expanding cognitive structure, intuitive processing, and analytical processing to promote the acquisition of entrepreneurial resources and the expansion of entrepreneurial ability. (3) In the process of entrepreneurship, emotional return is a performance dimension parallel to economic return. This conclusion provides a new perspective towards revealing the entrepreneurial motivation of entrepreneurs in highly ambiguous environments.

Profession Loss Crisis at an Old Age: Specific Features, Factors, and Mechanisms of Coping

This article discusses the specific characteristics of profession loss crisis at an old age. Profession loss crisis is the last normative crisis of personal professional development that is caused by the completion of one's professional biography after reaching a certain age. The research employs a psychobiographic method and a critical events method. These methods are based on the use of a formalized biographical questionnaire worked out by Norakidze V.G. and reconstructed by Zeer E.F. The authors have identified and provided a detailed description of the main factors that cause profession loss crisis: random events, adverse circumstances while implementing professional plans, etc. The article outlines the main strategies for coping with this crisis: changing jobs, re-training, the assistance of colleagues and administration, etc. The authors suggest technologies to minimize the effects of these factors and overcome profession loss crisis effectively.

Paving the Path Toward Retirement for Assistance Animals: Transitioning Lives

Assistance animals play significant roles in human therapy and well-being and represent a rapidly growing demographic of animals in society. Most research in the field of assistance animals has been focused on the effect of these animals on people. Only recently has there been a growing interest in the welfare and well-being of these animals and the effect of the work on the animals themselves. The concept of retirement, or withdrawing the animal from its working life, is an important welfare consideration that has received minimal discussion in the scientific literature. The notion of retirement is typically regarded as a reward earned after a lifetime of work, but this inevitable phase of an animal's working life has positive and negative implications for both animal and handler. Some of these implications include recognizing the emotional impact of this life-altering event on both animal and handler. The decisions of when and how to appropriately retire an animal are typically made at the discretion of the assistance animal agencies and handlers, but standard evidence-based guidelines for the proper retirement of assistance animals are currently unavailable. This review will provide considerations and recommendations for the retirement that assistance animals deserve.

Entrepreneurial Passion and Personality: The Case of Academic Entrepreneurship

Since entrepreneurial thinking and acting within organizations is increasingly important for the success of organizations, entrepreneurial passion is an emerging key construct in the study of organizational behavior. Here we quantify effects of personality traits on entrepreneurial passion in organizations, thereby comparing a person- vs. variable-oriented trait approach and testing such effects against alternative explanation models (rational choice approach, social learning approach, and social identity approach). Analyzing data from N = 137 German scientists across two measurement occasions, structural equation modeling revealed that an entrepreneurial Big Five profile (person-oriented approach), but none of the single Big Five traits (variable-oriented approach), predicted entrepreneurial passion (which in turn mediated the link between this domain-specific personality profile and entrepreneurial behavior). Likewise, the entrepreneurial personality profile, but not the single Big Five traits, predicted the simultaneous occurrence of entrepreneurial passion and behavior (passionate entrepreneurial behavior). Interestingly, the alternative explanation models (rational choice approach, social learning approach, and social identity approach) failed to predict entrepreneurial passion and passionate entrepreneurial behavior. The results suggest that the basic entrepreneurial personality character of a person contributes to the shaping of his or her entrepreneurial passion, which is relevant for actual entrepreneurial activity. The results thus illustrate how a person-oriented trait approach can inform the study, and concepts of, entrepreneurial passion.

How do passion for video games and needs frustration explain time spent gaming?

Research applying self-determination theory and the dualistic model of passion (DMP) has shown video games may satisfy basic psychological needs (i.e., competence, autonomy, and relatedness) and be identified as a passion. The DMP distinguishes between healthy or harmonious passion and problematic or obsessive passion (OP), with the latter reflecting an overreliance towards one's passion to obtain needs satisfaction. The experience of daily obstructions to needs satisfaction, or needs frustration (NF), may facilitate such an overreliance. This study explored how NF and both types of passion explain the amount of time that university students spend gaming. The overall association between NF and time spent gaming was not significant. However, for video game users with low levels of OP for gaming, there was a significant negative association between NF and time spent gaming. Additionally, evidence of a mutually reinforcing association between NF and OP for gaming indicates that a vicious cycle exists, whereby a strong OP for gaming predicts and is reinforced by greater NF. The theoretical implications are discussed.

Influence of Goal Contents on Exercise Addiction: Analysing the Mediating Effect of Passion for Exercise

Based on the self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000), the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of exercise goal contents on exercise addiction, taking into account the mediating effects of passion for exercise. A total of 384 university students (284 men and 100 women; M_age = 20.31, SD = 3.10) completed a questionnaire that measured exercise frequency and intensity, exercise goal contents (e.g. intrinsic: social affiliation, health management, skill development; extrinsic: image and social recognition), passion for exercise (e.g. harmonious and obsessive), and exercise addiction. After controlling the exercise frequency and intensity effects, results showed that goal contents did not directly predict exercise addiction. However, mediation analysis showed that goal contents predicted addiction through passion for exercise. These results support a motivational sequence in which extrinsic versus intrinsic goals influence exercise addiction because such goals are positively associated with obsessive passion for exercise and negatively associated with harmonious passion.

Job Satisfaction, Retirement Attitude and Intended Retirement Age: A Conditional Process Analysis across Workers' Level of Household Income

In the contemporary workplace, insight into retirement behaviors is of crucial importance. Previous empirical evidence has found mixed results regarding the relationship between work attitudes, such as job satisfaction, and retirement behaviors, suggesting that further scholarly examination incorporating moderating and mediating variables into retirement models is needed. Drawing on comparative models of attitude to retirement, we hypothesized a direct relationship between job satisfaction and intended retirement age for workers with a high household income and an indirect relationship between job satisfaction and intended retirement age, via retirement attitude, for workers with a low or mean household income. We collected data from a sample of 590 United Kingdom workers aged 50+. Using conditional process analysis, we found that the underlying mechanisms in our research model differ according to socio-economic status. We found no direct effect between job satisfaction and intended retirement age. However, an indirect effect was observed between job satisfaction and intended retirement age, via retirement attitude, for both low- and mean-household income individuals. Specifically, the relationship between job satisfaction and retirement attitude differed according to socio-economic group: for high-household income older workers, there was no relationship between job satisfaction and retirement attitude. However, for low- and mean-household income older workers, we observed a negative relationship between job satisfaction and retirement attitude. Otherwise stated, increases in job satisfaction for mean and low household income workers are likely to make the prospect of retirement less attractive. Therefore, we argue that utmost care must be taken around the conditions under which lower income employees will continue their work when getting older in order to protect their sustainable employability.

Active Interest Mentorship for Soon-to-Retire People: A Self-Sustaining Retirement Preparation Program

Retirement is a major life transition that often leads to maladjustments and mental health hazards. In this study, we developed an innovative retirement preparation program, the Active Interest Mentorship Scheme (AIMS), which utilized active interest development as a positive entry point through which to engage soon-to-retire people. Each retiree received a 1-year mentorship 6 months before retirement. Adopting a quasi-experimental design, the study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the AIMS in protecting retirees' well-being. The well-being status of 161 retirees was assessed at 4-month intervals. Measures included self-esteem, life satisfaction, positive affect, depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms. Serial trend analysis revealed a general improvement in well-being at 4 months after mentorship, followed by a mark reversion in some variables at 2 months after retirement. Upon completion of the program, participants generally returned to a level of well-being that was comparable with or better than preretirement levels. The first 2 months after retirement appeared to be the most distressing. The findings support the efficacy, as well as feasibility of the innovative retirement preparation program.