From passion to exhaustion: why engaged employees need autonomy to survive emotional labor

Purpose To investigate the “engagement paradox,” specifically when and how job engagement leads to exhaustion, this study develops and tests a novel theoretical integration of the self-control resource framework, self-determination theory, and dualistic model of passion. Design/methodology/approach A two-week diary study collected 596 observations from 60 early childhood educators in South Korea. This study measures daily job engagement, deep acting and exhaustion. Job autonomy was assessed at the baseline. The hypotheses were tested using time-lagged multilevel moderated mediation. Findings Daily job engagement predicted subsequent exhaustion via deep acting the next day. This indirect effect was significant only when job autonomy was low and disappeared when it was high. These findings demonstrate that autonomy determines the nature of engagement’s costs, transforming it from a depleting obsessive passion (under low autonomy) into a sustainable harmonious passion (under high autonomy). Originality/value This study contributes to resolving the engagement paradox by integrating the self-control resource framework with self-determination theory and the dualistic model of passion. The findings demonstrate that the energetic cost of engagement is not fixed but contingent on job autonomy, thereby identifying the boundary conditions of the passion-burnout link and advancing the needs-supply fit perspective of engagement literature.