Harmonious Work Passion and Innovative Work Behavior: The Serial Mediation Roles of Work-Family Facilitation and Thriving at Work

Enhancing an organization’s performance, growth, and survival requires innovation and encouraging workers to adopt innovative work behavior. However, the role of employees’ motivation, emotion, cognition, personality traits, and psychological capital in fostering innovation has received less attention in the innovation behavior literature. Since knowledge workers predominantly champion innovation, assessing how they harmonize their passion and spillover effects in their innovative work behavior is of great interest. Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study hypothesized and examined how harmonious work passion influences innovative work behavior through work-family facilitation and thriving at work. Using structural equation modeling, our results showed that harmonious work passion significantly and positively influenced innovative work behavior, based on empirical data from 555 knowledge workers in Ghana at two time points. Moreover, harmonious work passion directly and positively influenced work-family facilitation. Also, thriving at work positively and significantly influences innovative work behavior. Besides, harmonious work passion exerted a significant, indirect, positive influence on innovative work behavior through the serial mediating effects of work-family facilitation and thriving at work. These findings highlight the spillover effect of harmonious work passion in fostering knowledge workers’ innovative behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.