Exploiting Passion: The Demand Side Edge of the Passion Principle

• In Event: 2332 - Jobs, Occupations, and Professions I

Abstract

“Follow your passion” is a ubiquitous cultural narrative around career decision-making in the U.S.—especially among the college-going and college-educated. This belief, which I call the passion principle, is a shared cultural model that elevates self-expression and self-fulfillment as the central guiding principle for career decision-making. In prior work, I demonstrate that the passion principle is not only a dominant cultural frame for how most college students and recent college graduates conceptualize good career choices, but structures the opportunities they pursue or foreclose and the financial risks they are willing to entertain. Although passion-seeking promises to insulate career aspirants from the self-estrangement of paid work, it can help retrench socioeconomic inequality in the aggregate. In this paper, I ask, is there a demand-side edge to this passion principle? Is passion valued by employers, and perhaps even exploited? I draw on interviews, national survey data, and a proportionally representative survey experiment to explore the demand side of the passion principle. First, I find that employers benefit from employees’ passion: passionate employees are more engaged and more willing to put in voluntary effort beyond what is required of their jobs. Second, passionate employees are preferred over employees seeking career advancement or financial reward. Third, I find via a survey experiment, that the passion of applicants might even be exploited by employers. Specifically, I find that passionate fictitious applicants were more likely than others to be offered jobs by respondents, in part because they were seen as more hard-working and more willing to take on additional responsibilities without a pay increase. However, these passionate applicants were not offered higher salaries. These findings raise important questions about the ways the passion of career aspirants and employees for their work may be utilized but uncompensated by their employers.

Author

• Erin A. Cech, University of Michigan