The interactional effects of contextual and individual factors on work–home enrichment

A career is considered sustainable when it evolves over time, shaped by diverse experiences and continuity across different life stages, and offers lasting meaning and fulfillment throughout one’s life (Van der Heijden and De Vos, 2015). Striving for a sustainable career is a common objective for individuals navigating fast-paced, uncertain, and unpredictable economic landscapes. Building on this idea, the sustainable career framework conceptualized by De Vos et al. (2020) emphasizes the dynamic and interdependent relationships among the core career actor’s attributes, contextual conditions, and lifespan stages, aiming to foster three crucial indicators of a sustainable career: health, happiness, and productivity. A recent framework grounded in social exchange theory (Donald et al., 2024) also highlights the importance of the interconnectedness between personal and contextual factors in shaping positive career outcomes. Recent scholarly efforts have examined these dimensions, seeking to offer a comprehensive understanding of sustainable careers (Bhaskar et al., 2023; Dlouhy and Froidevaux, 2024). Despite a consensus on the importance of career sustainability, which encompasses both professional aspects and the mutually beneficial impacts on the individual and their surroundings, significant gaps remain.

Since career and home experiences are inseparably intertwined (Greenhaus and Kossek, 2014), one notable oversight in career literature is the insufficient focus on work-home enrichment (WHE), a crucial component that aligns with the happiness indicator of sustainable careers (Akkermans and Tims, 2017; Koekemoer et al., 2020; Talluri et al., 2024). WHE refers to the positive interactions and mutually beneficial effects between an individual’s work and home experiences (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006). WHE highlights how skills, experiences, and satisfaction gained in one domain can enhance the other, contributing to performance and career success (Baumann and Wilson, 2024; Koekemoer et al., 2020). Despite its importance, current career research on WHE has critical gaps that need addressing.

First, the literature focuses on the negative perspectives of work and home domains, such as work-home conflicts (see for review, Allen and French, 2023; Bhave and Lefter, 2018; Kossek et al., 2021; Malchelosse et al., 2024). This narrow focus has limited our understanding of the positive, intertwined roles that both work and home domains can play meaningfully in an individual’s career and life. By concentrating primarily on conflicts, the research often neglects the potential for these domains to enrich each other and fails to fully capture the diverse home configurations that exist today. The existing research needs to broaden its scope to include a more nuanced understanding of WHE by acknowledging the positive potential of work-home interactions to develop more effective strategies and policies that support sustainable careers (Lapierre et al., 2018; Su et al., 2024).

Second, in career literature, a limited number of studies examined WHE in relation to factors such as career competencies, job crafting, or subjective career success (Akkermans and Tims, 2017; Kossek et al., 2021; Tisu and Vîrgă, 2023). A meta-analysis by Lapierre et al. (2018) highlighted the dearth of examinations on the interconnectedness of contextual characteristics and individual resources in promoting WHE, reflecting the core aspect of resources within the sustainable career framework. WHE research exploring the interactional requirements involving both individual and organizational factors remains scarce, leading to an incomplete picture of the conditions that facilitate positive spillover between work and home domains. Addressing these under-researched areas is crucial for understanding how WHE can be maximized, thereby contributing to the overall sustainability of careers.

Resources are essential for sustaining one’s career (De Vos et al., 2020; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024), particularly WHE (Lapierre et al., 2018). To deepen understanding of how WHE can be fostered in career contexts, this study employs Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, which is a widely recognized theory for explaining career sustainability, which is a process of resource preservation and utilization to achieve positive career outcomes, including WHE (De Vos et al., 2020; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024; Lapierre et al., 2018). COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989) enables us to explore how individuals create a resource caravan that combines workplace contextual conditions and personal attributes to enhance their WHE. As career scholars emphasize (e.g. De Vos et al., 2020; Donald et al., 2024; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024), it is valuable and crucial for individuals to access contextual resources from their environment while actively leveraging personal resources in an interactive and dynamic process, thereby building resource caravans that promote sustainable career development.

We specifically argue for the role of social support, a crucial work-related contextual factor in sustaining a career (De Vos et al., 2020; Greenhaus et al., 2024), and a volatile resource providing practical and emotional aid to help individuals gain positive home outcomes (Chung et al., 2023; Tisu and Vîrgă, 2022a, b). Supportive relationships, as an extrinsic motivator, can foster individuals’ intrinsically autonomous internalization of work, which is harmonious passion, by enhancing their positive perceptions and sustaining enjoyment of their work (Barnes et al., 2023). These relationships provide essential resources to accomplish work tasks and create harmony with multiple work-home roles, thereby fulfilling the psychological needs for relatedness and competence (Jolly et al., 2021; Jung and Sohn, 2022). Social support also bolsters individuals’ confidence in their abilities, promotes self-improvement, and foster enthusiasm for performing well and controlling their work-home circumstances (Birkeland et al., 2018; Pedersen et al., 2019). Understanding how these resource antecedents of WHE are interconnected can enrich our current perspectives on how individuals cultivate contextual and personal resources to facilitate WHE.

We then explore the conditional mechanism through which social support and harmonious passion contribute to WHE by emphasizing the moderating role of strengths use – a crucial personal resource. Strengths use, which encompasses an individual’s personal strengths (Govindji and Linley, 2007; van Woerkom et al., 2016), is proposed to enhance the impact of social support and harmonious passion. We focus on strengths use because it limited research has shown that strengths use could help individuals effectively manage work and home responsibilities by increasing a sense of work meaningfulness and personal development and improving positive affect at work that could positively spill over the energy and engagement in the home domain (Liu et al., 2022; Pattnaik and Jena, 2020). Additionally, strengths use is vital in the workplace, directly enhancing performance, career satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction (Ding et al., 2024; Matsuo, 2020, 2022; Pap et al., 2023; Tisu and Vîrgă, 2022a, b). Nonetheless, while research has highlighted the role of strengths use in contributing to life and career satisfaction, there is limited understanding of whether strengths use also enhances WHE by intensifying the positive flow-on effects of social support on WHE through harmonious passion.

Theoretical models of sustainable careers (De Vos et al., 2020; Donald et al., 2024; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024) emphasize the crucial roles of both contextual and personal resources, drawing from COR theory to explain how these factors collectively and interactively contribute to sustainable career outcomes. This study offers three key contributions. First, it expands the sustainable career literature by highlighting the positive dimensions of work-home perspectives, specifically through exploring how individuals can enhance WHE, which is a vital component of the happiness aspect within the sustainable career framework (De Vos et al., 2020; Greenhaus et al., 2024) but remains under-researched in career studies. Second, it empirically investigates the interaction between contextual factors and personal attributes that enable WHE. While previous research has identified a direct link between harmonious passion and WHE as a positive outcome (Jung and Sohn, 2022; Malchelosse et al., 2024; Wan et al., 2022), these studies often overlook how harmonious passion is cultivated, leaving a gap in our understanding of the drivers of passion and career outcomes. Our study addresses this gap by examining how social support can nurture harmonious passion to enhance WHE, emphasizing the process of how resources are intertwined and utilized. Finally, we explore the moderating role of strengths use, which acts as a boundary condition in the relationships between social support, harmonious passion, and WHE. By investigating this moderating effect, we contribute to career literature by showing how strengths use can amplify the impacts of both contextual factors (like social support) and individual attributes (such as harmonious passion) on WHE. These personal attributes enable individuals to make optimal use of both contextual and personal resources, allowing a caravan of resources are more easily acquired and transferrable to the home domain. This approach emphasizes the importance of strengths use in enhancing work-home and shows how it connects external and internal factors, offering a more comprehensive understanding of sustainable career development.

Contextual and personal resources contribute to career sustainability in general (De Vos et al., 2020; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024) and specifically to WHE (Lapierre et al., 2018). COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989) provides a valuable theoretical perspective for understanding how individuals navigate their career sustainability by acquiring, managing, utilizing a caravan of resources drawn from both work environments and personal attributes. This theory suggests that individuals are motivated to acquire, protect, and conserve several resources, such as organizational support, personal skills and knowledge, and work motivation, to cope with demands and challenges, ultimately leading to positive outcomes. In this context, we argue that individuals seek to acquire contextual resources, such as workplace support, social networks, or job autonomy, which help them gain additional personal resources (e.g. perceived employability, job crafting, skills and knowledge). These efforts contribute to career longevity and fulfillment (De Vos et al., 2020; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024). By applying COR theory, we gain a deeper understanding of how the dynamic interaction between contextual and personal resources influences sustainable career trajectories, particularly in relation to WHE.

A supportive environment is widely acknowledged as a promising enabler of the enrichment process, which occurs when individuals utilize skills gained at work to manage and control home situations with energy and positive emotions (Bhave and Lefter, 2018; Greenhaus et al., 2024). In this situation, the caring atmosphere and positive social relations at work endorsed by social support help maintain vitality and positivity that facilitate the functioning of individuals and work accomplishment. Specifically, supportive colleagues can increase positive emotions through the feeling of being loved and strengthen social bonds by providing accessible and available constructive feedback and invaluable assistance. Their support enhances work performance and helps individuals manage and cope with stressful situations at work, allowing individuals to cultivate positive synergies originated at work to spill over positive experiences at home (Carmeli and Russo, 2016; Greenhaus et al., 2024).

A supportive work environment nurtures a sense of respect, social dignity, and self-worth, promoting self-confidence, energy, and dedication in fulfilling home responsibilities. Mounting evidence supports the notion that social support of a work environment contributes to the goal of self-determination by increasing a sense of self-confidence in managing multiple work responsibilities and controlling work situations that could adversely impact the home domain (Lapierre et al., 2018; Tisu and Vîrgă, 2023). The enrichment process occurs when individuals utilize the interpersonal skills gained from social support at work and transfer resources from the work to the home domain. Social support at work facilitates various supportive forms, such as emotional support, helpful information, and tangible resources, to help individuals complete work-related tasks (Jolly et al., 2021), thereby encouraging individuals to expand their abilities (e.g. planning and priority strategizing) to grasp more resources and invest adequate time and liveliness in fulfilling home activities that require significant efforts (Bhave and Lefter, 2018; Greenhaus and Powell, 2006). Based on literature, we expect that:

Harmonious passion, as a key motivational resource, is an important concept in career literature that needs greater attention as it is closely associated with career satisfaction, career decision-making, or career commitment (Coetzee and Bester, 2019; Jung and Sohn, 2022; Luksyte and Carpini, 2024). It highlights human motivation that encourages individuals to autonomously pursue self-defining careers without feeling destined or obligated to do like career calling (Dalla Rosa and Vianello, 2020). Harmonious passion relates to autonomous internalization, where individuals incorporate work characteristics into self-identities while harmonizing work significance with other crucial parts of their lives to form their identities (Vallerand et al., 2003). Compared to intrinsic motivation, harmonious passion is internalized and embedded into self-concept, allowing individuals to autonomously engage in meaningful activities that significantly define themselves rather than simply liking activities that stem from pleasure and enjoyment from doing (Vallerand and Houlfort, 2019).

Harmonious passion can arise from the characteristics of a workplace environment, such as organizational support or a motivational climate (Zhang et al., 2022, 2023). Accordingly, a supportive and motivational work environment where employees receive support, care, and love increases positive perceptions of work activities by allowing employees to gain autonomy, control, and social bonds. These positives nurture the passion for work by giving opportunities to individuals to enhance their competencies and recognize the importance and significance of work harmonized with their life values (Zhang et al., 2022, 2023).

Social support is a crucial and effective element of the motivational path that provides emotional and psychological aid to make individuals feel passionate about work (Bhave and Lefter, 2018; Lapierre et al., 2018). Social support helps individuals lessen the likelihood of tiredness and energy loss caused by work by providing a supportive context for the congruence between work activities and self-identity that motivates them to be engaged and enthusiastic (Bhave and Lefter, 2018). Social support bolsters confidence and self-worth through work involvement, recognition, appreciation, and care by others (Lapierre et al., 2018; Tisu and Vîrgă, 2023). Social support also comprises practical help given to individuals to improve their knowledge and skills and make the tasks fit their competencies via constructive and candid feedback and comments on job performance (Hu et al., 2024; Liu et al., 2011). Social support at work enables the internalization of work into self-identification process through feelings of connection to others, increasing the attachment to their work. Therefore, individuals are encouraged to devote their efforts and competencies to their work (Vallerand et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2023).

In line with the literature, we hypothesize that:

Individuals tend to commit to a compromise between one domain and another to accommodate demands (Rothbard, 2001). However, recent studies suggest that individuals with harmonious passion are internally motivated to be proactive and capable of switching between work and home domains with fewer difficulties (Luksyte and Carpini, 2024; Pollack et al., 2020; Vallerand et al., 2014). A handful of studies provided empirical evidence showing that individuals can utilize their harmonious passion to enrich their home domain (Bourdeau et al., 2015; Chummar et al., 2019; Malchelosse et al., 2024; Wan et al., 2022). Passionate individuals can acquire skill mastery and personal development to stay focused and committed to completing their tasks while minimizing overwork or high demands (Bourdeau et al., 2015; Chummar et al., 2019). They can be flexible and autonomous to engage in activities significant to their identities with positive affect, high dedication, and vitality (Jung and Sohn, 2022; Wan et al., 2022). Therefore, they are confident in elevating and fulfilling home activities as they can maintain their work under controllable and acceptable degrees (Malchelosse et al., 2024).

Indeed, passionate individuals are likely to have high energy and independence to avoid unnecessary work activities and choose the amount of time and effort spent on those that are imperative to self-identity and harmony between work and life activities (Bourdeau et al., 2015; Chummar et al., 2019; Wan et al., 2022). Harmoniously passionate individuals are willing to learn from constructive feedback to improve their capability. Therefore, they are open to suggestions and recommendations from supervisors and colleagues to enhance their job performance. These improved capabilities can be transmitted to facilitate a pleasant home role as they do not overpower home activities, thereby enriching their experiences of the home domain. We content that individuals with harmonious passion can achieve WHE with the spillover effect of positive affect and energy from work to home domain. Driven by literature, we expect that:

COR theory, which supports the career sustainable framework, posits how individuals create a resource caravan of positive contextual resources and personal qualities to effectively function, maximize their potential, and maintain employability, thus sustaining their careers (De Vos et al., 2020; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024). This approach supports the examination of strengths use as an indispensable personal resource, where individuals exert personal knowledge and skills as their strengths at work (Govindji and Linley, 2007). Drawing on COR theory, strengths use can enhance positive emotions and energy (Douglass and Duffy, 2015; van Woerkom et al., 2022) while fostering the congruence between work and personal characteristics (Liu et al., 2022). Wielding strengths could help individuals perform their tasks, handle work challenges and difficulties well, and become engaged and immersed in their work with enjoyable feelings (Dubreuil et al., 2014; Littman-Ovadia et al., 2017). Empirical evidence supports the idea that using strengths at work can increase job performance (Miglianico et al., 2020), generate energy, vigor, and resilience to optimize functioning (Dubreuil et al., 2014), and increase the likelihood of staying focused, which aids task accomplishment (van Woerkom et al., 2016). A meta-analytical study provided evidence for the positive effects of strengths use on work engagement, job satisfaction, and job performance (Miglianico et al., 2020).

Regarding the career realm, strengths use remains in its infancy despite its positive association with employability and career satisfaction (Ding et al., 2024; Matsuo, 2020, 2022). More importantly, individuals using strengths as career competencies tend to be more proactive to reveal their true self and persistently pursue their work and life preferences with confident strategies and plans for taking opportunities to satisfy and sustain their careers (De Vos et al., 2020; Matsuo, 2022). This explanation is closely related to harmonious passion, which highlights proactivity, tendency, and autonomous choice of activities individuals love and reflect their self-identity. Limited research has provided evidence regarding the connection between strengths use and harmonious passion.

Driven by positive psychology, Forest et al. (2012) argue that strengths use as a personal resource could amplify harmonious passion as proactive individuals have confidence in their abilities and freedom to perform and achieve enjoyable activities that are important and meaningful to themselves (Vallerand et al., 2014). Therefore, individuals who leverage their strengths tend to be more engaged, happy, and love their work (Michel et al., 2021; van Woerkom et al., 2016), increasing the willingness to dedicate time and energy to internalize work to self-identification (Forest et al., 2012). Dubreuil et al. (2014) also found that individuals wield their strengths to optimize their performance and full potential to be engaged in and love their work. As social support can make individuals more passionate about work through emotional and psychological aid, strengths use as personal qualities can strengthen the impact of social support on harmonious passion by entailing knowledge and skills in controlling over work environment and harmonizing work and home roles (van Woerkom et al., 2022). In this instance, individuals can utilize their strengths, such as knowledge, technical and interpersonal skills to select and engage in meaningful activities they enjoy. By aligning these activities with their competencies, they can bring authentic value to their work and careers. In line with the literature, we hypothesize the following:

Strengths use is crucial in fostering energy and the functioning that facilitates personal development by assisting individuals to understand the meaning of their work through engagement in activities that are important to their identity (van Woerkom et al., 2016; van Woerkom and Meyers, 2019). Individuals utilize strengths to bolster their authenticity and perform all the activities at their best with adequate resource acquisition (Govindji and Linley, 2007; van Woerkom et al., 2016). Individuals capitalize on their strengths to utilize work resources to increase proficiency at work with confidence and a positive psychological state (van Woerkom et al., 2016; van Woerkom and Meyers, 2019). Individuals use strengths to be more proactive in initiating ideas and solutions to resolve work problems with self-efficacy and positive affect (van Woerkom et al., 2022). Individuals with low strengths utilization will struggle with work incompletion while overpowering their time and energy (van Woerkom et al., 2016; van Woerkom and Meyers, 2019).

Due to limited empirical evidence directly linking strengths use to WHE, we suggest that the positive effect of strengths utilization can enable individuals to manage and control home activities better. Individuals leveraging their strengths can build energy and motivation, helping avoid role overload and manage their time more effectively in the home domain. Their strengths also help minimize the detrimental effects of work and family demands, allowing individuals to transition smoothly from one role to another by acquiring the necessary resources to fulfill dual responsibilities. When individuals fail to use their strengths, they are unlikely to develop necessary skills to manage their personal lives, as they spend excessive time grappling with work challenges. Individuals with low strengths use will struggle to capacitate themselves to harness work resources that limit their ability to enhance work passion, which has a spill-over impact on WHE. In line with this reasoning, we hypothesize that:

Vietnam’s culture is rooted in the ideologies of Confucianism, which highlight collectivism and harmony on community, family, and interpersonal relationships (Hofstede, 1980). The culture of Vietnam emphasizes social support from friends, work colleagues, and family to harmonize various aspects of career and personal life. Additionally, Confucian values underscore the importance of dual responsibilities in work and home domains that Vietnamese must fulfill and perform well, leading to challenges in managing and controlling work and home activities effectively (Mai and Thuy, 2015). Also, the cultural values reflect the intertwined and interdependent relationship between work and family when Vietnamese individuals could draw on social support at work to gain assistance in sustaining careers and fulfilling home responsibilities (Giao et al., 2020). Therefore, social support at work plays a key role in the experiences of Vietnamese employees regarding career outcomes (Nguyen-Hoang et al., 2022). As Vietnam’s social support context is in line with the literature regarding instrumental, emotional, psychological, and mutual aids (Hofstede, 1980), there remains limited research on work-home domains the context of Vietnam (Le et al., 2020). We argue that the context of Vietnam is relevant to test our hypotheses.

We obtained ethics approval ^[1] from the institution prior to the data collection process. We tested hypotheses through a sample of academic staff from public universities in Vietnam in 2018. Prior to the data collection, we acquired ethics approval from the first author’s institution to guarantee the voluntary and confidential participation of the respondents. We followed the guidance from Podsakoff et al. (2012) by collecting data on two occasions, separated by four weeks, to minimize the possibility of common method variance (CMV). After the participants completed two waves of data collection, we held a lucky draw to incentivize their completion. Ten prizes for research methodology textbooks were awarded randomly to those who registered for the draw.

We distributed an online survey to 700 academic staff on the first occasion. Five hundred and eighty-seven respondents completed the first survey (a response rate of 81%). Four weeks later, we invited the respondents who completed the Wave 1 survey to answer the Wave 2 survey. After two waves, we obtained the final sample of 357 respondents (a response rate of 63%). This sample included 54.1% women and 45.9% men. More than two-thirds (68.4%) were aged between 31 to 50 years. Of the respondents, 32.8% reported having at least 3–10 years of tenure with their current employer, while more than 60% had more than ten years of tenure. More than three-quarters (78%) were married, while others reported other marital situations. Finally, our respondents had at least master’s degrees.

As the respondents were Vietnamese, we followed the back-translation process suggested by Brislin (1970) to ensure the face and content validity of the constructs. Following Podsakoff et al. (2012), we used different endpoints of scales to lessen the potential of CMV caused by commonalities in scale endpoints and protected effects (Podsakoff et al., 2012). We used a seven-point Likert scale of agreement ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) to measure social support, harmonious passion, and strengths use in Wave 1. We measured WHE in Wave 2 using a seven-point Likert scale anchored by 1 (never) and 7 (always).

Based on previous research, we included gender, age, work tenure, marital status, and education as control variables, as these factors are most used in empirical management research (Bernerth and Aguinis, 2016) and prior related studies on the work-home interface (e.g. Agrawal and Mahajan, 2021; Bhave and Lefter, 2018; Jung and Sohn, 2022; Malchelosse et al., 2024; Tisu and Vîrgă, 2023).

Social support was measured using a six-item scale from Schaufeli and Bakker (2004). Sample items included “My co-workers support me”. This scale had a satisfactory internal reliability value of 0.92 and the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) value of 0.66.

Harmonious passion was assessed using a six-item scale from Vallerand et al. (2003). Sample items included “My work is in harmony with other activities in my life”. This scale had good internal reliability of 0.89 and AVE of 0.58.

Strengths use was measured by adopting seven items from the scale developed by Govindji and Linley (2007). Sample items included “I always play to my strengths at work”. This scale had an acceptable reliability value of 0.88 and an AVE value of 0.51.

WHE was assessed on a five-item scale by Geurts et al. (2005). Sample items included “After a pleasant working day/working week, you feel more in the mood to engage in activities with your spouse/family/friends”. This scale had a satisfactory reliability value of 0.90 and an AVE value of 0.65.

We performed descriptive statistics and measurement model estimation using SPSS and AMOS version 27. As reported above, the four latent variables had satisfactory internal reliability values ranging from 0.88 to 0.92 and acceptable convergent validity values ranging from 0.51 to 0.66 (Hair et al., 2010). The measurement model comprising the latent variables had a superior goodness of fit to the data (χ²[224] = 498.51, CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMR = 0.06), compared to those of alternative models in a series of Chi-square difference tests (e.g. a five-factor model [combined harmonious passion and strengths use] showed χ²[227] = 673.20, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.07, SRMR = 0.07). Table 1 shows that the square root of the AVE value for each construct was higher than its inter-construct correlation coefficients (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). Additionally, Maximum Shared Variance (MSV) for each variable was lower than its AVE (Hair et al., 2010). These tests affirmed that the latent variables had convergent and discriminant validity. The imputation of these measures was performed based on the parameter estimates from the measurement model on AMOS.

We operated remedies recommended by Podsakoff et al. (2012) to mitigate the potential of CMV. First, we adopted procedural solutions in the data collection phase (i.e. anonymity and confidentiality of the participation, a randomized item order in the survey, different scale endpoints, and a two-wave design). Second, we executed statistical checks to detect the possibility of CMV. The single-factor model had the worst fit to the data (χ²[230] = 1988.54, CFI = 0.73, TLI = 0.67, RMSEA = 0.15, SRMR = 0.12). Harman’s single factor test with an unrotated solution revealed a single factor with initial eigenvalues of greater than 1.0, accounting for 38.37% of the variance in exogenous and endogenous constructs. We included a marker variable, social desirability, in the measurement model to discover the potential of CMV. Following Lindell and Whitney (2001), the average difference in inter-construct correlations between before and after, including the market variable, was 0.08, below the threshold value of 0.20. Finally, the tolerance values (ranging from 0.33 to 0.72) were higher than 0.10 (Kock, 2015). The VIF values (ranging from 1.38 to 3.06) were below 3.3 (Kock, 2015). These results showed that multicollinearity was not an issue in this study. To sum up, these statistical checks signified that CMV was not a major issue that could distort the findings of hypothesis testing.

Table 1 reports positive associations between age and the following variables: social support (b = 0.17, p < 0.01), harmonious passion (b = 0.24, p < 0.001), strengths use (b = 0.21, p < 0.001), and WHE (b = 0.22, p < 0.001). These associations indicated that older respondents reported much more social support, harmonious passion, strengths use, and WHE than younger respondents. Education was positively related to harmonious passion (b = 0.12, p < 0.05) and WHE (b = 0.17, p < 0.01). These findings indicated that respondents with higher degrees perceived more work passion and WHE than those having lower-level degrees. Gender did not have any significant relationship with any of the latent variables. Work tenure was positively related to strengths use (b = 0.11, p < 0.05) and WHE (b = 0.18, p < 0.001), indicating that more experienced respondents perceived high strengths use and WHE. Finally, marital status was positively associated with social support (b = 0.12, p < 0.05), suggesting that single-status respondents did not perceive high social support compared to those having other marital statuses. These variables were included in the hypothesis testing.

Results of hypothesis testing using Model 58 on Process Macro (Hayes, 2018) are reported in Table 2. Education was positively related to harmonious passion (unstandardized β = 0.08, t = 2.47, p < 0.05). Other control variables were not significantly associated with harmonious passion. Work tenure (unstandardized β = 0.19, t = 3.22, p < 0.01) and education (unstandardized β = 0.193, t = 2.05, p < 0.05) were found to be positively related to WHE. As we expected, social support was significantly and positively related to harmonious passion (unstandardized β = 0.23, t = 9.39, p < 0.001), supporting H1. We found a positive relationship between social support and WHE (unstandardized β = 0.13, t = 2.39, p < 0.05), corroborating H2. H3 was supported by a significant and positive association between harmonious passion and WHE (unstandardized β = 0.88, t = 8.21, p < 0.001).

Strengths use was directly and positively associated with harmonious passion (unstandardized β = 0.78, t = 19.63, p < 0.001). A 95% confidence interval based on 10,000 bootstrap samples did not include zero (CI: −0.18, −0.03) and showed a significant interaction effect of social support and strengths use on harmonious passion (unstandardized β = −0.11, t = −2.73, p < 0.01). When we examined further, the conditional impacts of social support on harmonious passion at different levels of strengths use were significant but likely to be decreased. These findings indicated that the moderation effect was stronger at the low level of strengths use (−1SD, effect = 0.30, t = 8.72, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.23, 0.36]) than that at a higher level (+1SD, effect = 0.16, t = 4.72, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.10, 0.23]). We followed Aiken et al. (1991) to generate a simple plot for the moderation effect of strengths use shown in Figure 1. We observed that the linear relationship between social support and harmonious passion was higher due to high use of strengths than when it was low in both situations of low and high social support, partially accepting H4. However, the slope representing the linear relationship between social support and harmonious passion was steeper and significantly increased when strengths use was low.

We found significant evidence to support H5. A 95% confidence interval based on 10,000 bootstrap samples that did not include zero (CI: 0.21, 0.55) showed a significant and positive interaction effect of harmonious passion and strengths use on WHE (unstandardized β = 0.38, t = 4.39, p < 0.001). The conditional impacts of harmonious passion on WHE at different levels of strengths use were significant and likely to be increased. Specifically, the moderation effect was higher at the high level of strengths use (+1SD, effect = 1.12, t = 8.82, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.87, 1.37]) than that at a lower level (−1SD, effect = 0.64, t = 5.66, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.42, 0.86]). Figure 2 shows that the slope representing the linear relationship between harmonious passion and WHE was sharper and positive when strengths use was high, supporting H5.

The primary objective of this study is to explore the motional pathway of WHE, one of the crucial elements embedded in the sustainable career model (Baumann and Wilson, 2024; Talluri et al., 2024; Su et al., 2024). We found significant and direct relationships between social support, harmonious passion, and WHE, supporting H1, H2 and H3. H4 was partially supported when strengths use was found to significantly moderate the relationship between social support and harmonious passion. Specifically, their positive relationship was significantly stronger at a low level of strengths use. As we expected in H5, high strengths use was found to intensify the positive association between harmonious passion and WHE. These results emphasized the prominent role of this emerging concept in understanding the positive transmission from work experiences to the home domain. The findings offer the implications on the interplay of contextual and personal resources in enhancing WHE through the lens of COR theory.

Our study contributes to sustainable career research by using COR theory to explore the interconnected relationships of resources that foster the experience of WHE, a crucial but under-researched concept in career literature. Within a collectivist cultural context, we drew upon COR theory to argue that social support at work, a key contextual resource, significantly influences WHE. By creating a supportive work environment, social support helps cultivate harmonious passion, a critical motivational resource for individuals (Vallerand et al., 2014; van den Broeck et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2022), ultimately enhancing their experiences of WHE (Tisu and Vîrgă, 2023).

Social support, characterized by a caring and supportive workplace atmosphere, plays a crucial role in increasing individuals’ self-confidence in their autonomy and competence. By providing instrumental, emotional, and psychological aid from colleagues at work (Barnes et al., 2023; Jolly et al., 2021; Lapierre et al., 2018), such social support helps individuals find meaning and significance in their work. This experience fosters a sense of attachment, engagement, and belonging within the workplace (Zhang et al., 2022, 2023). As a valuable resource rooted in the workplace environment, social support encourages energize individuals and fuel their enthusiasm and vitality in work activities (Barnes et al., 2023). This positive energy seamlessly transfers to the home domain (Baumann and Wilson, 2024; Bhave and Lefter, 2018), empowering individuals with self-fulfillment ability and confidence to guarantee that work cannot override the home role (Jung and Sohn, 2022; Malchelosse et al., 2024; Wan et al., 2022). The findings in our study align with the principles of a resource caravan, emphasizing the accumulation of constructive contextual characteristics (e.g. social support) and personal resources (e.g. harmonious passion). This dynamic process cultivates the enrichment process and supports individuals in achieving career sustainability (De Vos et al., 2020; Donald and Manville, 2023; Greenhaus et al., 2024).

Considering the findings of this study, we provided empirical evidence about the positive, mutually reinforcing relationships between contextual and personal resources in leveraging the home lives of individuals in pursuing sustainable careers. This perspective is particularly relevant in collectivist cultures, like Vietnam, where supportive and caring environments and interdependence are central to managing work-home responsibilities (Giao et al., 2020; Nguyen-Hoang et al., 2022). This study shows that the transferability of work-related resources, such as interpersonal skills and emotional aid, from the work domain to home domain is facilitated by the strong bonds of interpersonal relationships that are characteristics of a collectivist workplace culture.

In Western contexts, the implications of these findings, which are often characterized by individualism and self-reliance, extend theoretical understanding by demonstrating that resource dynamics transcend cultural differences. While Western workplace contexts may not always emphasize interdependence to the same extent, the mutual reinforcement of contextual and personal resources remains critical. This study offers new theoretical insights into how interpersonal relationships and social support at work can play a role even in individualistic cultures, provided they are aligned with cultural values such as autonomy and personal choice. Future research exploring cultural values or conducting cross-cultural comparisons could enhance our understanding of how contextual and personal resource caravans adapt and function across cultural settings.

This study contributes to a dearth of evidence of how contextual and dispositional characteristics interacting in a caravan of resources can enrich work and home domains and show new insights towards the fulfillment of a sustainable career. Specifically, a novel contribution of this study is the moderating role of strengths use in the relationships between social support, harmonious passion, and WHE. Although previous research has examined this concept to understand the pathways to career success (Ding et al., 2024; Matsuo, 2022), these studies overlooked how the ability of individuals to deploy their personal strengths of knowledge and skills can foster and enrich their experiences in work and home lives. The significant findings underscore the importance of developing and utilizing individual strengths as a prominent strategy for optimizing positive work-family outcomes.

As shown by the sharper gradient of the low use of strengths provided an indication that social support is the critical supplement resource that affects harmonious passion when individuals have low use of strengths rather than a high level of strengths use. One possible explanation is that individuals who do not exert knowledge and skills adequately rely much on positive social relations to facilitate and foster autonomous internalization of work into self-identity. This finding reflects the culturally collective characteristic of social relationships in economies that promote a strong sense of familiarity, togetherness, and support (Hofstede, 1980), like in Vietnam. In these circumstances, individuals value and appreciate the availability of supportive connections at work that are salient to provide prompt solutions and facilitate punctual help for work accomplishments. Support from workplace environments helps increase self-confidence, concentration, and affiliation because individuals are cared for, recognized, and included. The execution of more strengths use could degrade the role of social support despite its positive impact on enhancing harmonious passion. In this situation, individuals can use their strengths to focus on meaningful activities in their work and personal lives, thereby increasing harmonious passion. Our findings provide additional evidence of the boundary conditions for the influences of workplace characteristics on work passion that need more attention in future studies (Luksyte and Carpini, 2024; Pollack et al., 2020; Vallerand et al., 2014).

Finally, we found significant support for the heightening role of individuals’ strengths use in increasing the positive influence of harmonious passion on WHE. Our findings indicate that passionate individuals are better at managing and handling the home role with strengths use because these strengths bolster identity, energy, and functioning throughout the performance of work and home activities that are prominent to them (Dubreuil et al., 2014; van Woerkom and Meyers, 2019). Individuals without executing strengths are likely to lack engagement, aliveness, energy, authenticity, and concentration on critical activities. Our findings seem plausible that passionate individuals who exert strengths at work could enrich their home roles through the heightened energy and vitality that enable them to pay attention to detail and function and engage well in home activities. These findings have a relevant implication for individuals and organizations when we show evidence about using strengths as a booster for passionate individuals to enrich their work and home lives.

Building on COR theory, our practical implications emphasize the significance of providing support and opportunities to individuals to develop their resource caravans, which are essential for increasing WHE and ensuring career sustainability. First, human resource management (HRM) can take strategic and proactive approaches to nurture a caring and supportive work environment that enhances autonomy, competence, and social bonds among individuals. The culture of mutual support helps individuals have better work performance and manage home responsibilities with positive affect, vitality, and energy. Within a collectivist context, HRM practices can promote team collaboration, cooperation, and effective communication to reinforce support systems in the academic institution. Second, HR and line managers in organizations can pay more attention to encouraging employees to develop harmonious passion, which allows them to internalize work into their personal lives. Apart from social support systems, flexible work arrangements and available opportunities assist individuals in engaging in meaningful activities aligned with their self-identification. These practices can help sustain work passion and career satisfaction.

Third, we encourage individuals to focus on using their personal strengths at work to transmit positive effects into the home domain. Organizations can assist employees in identifying, recognizing, and utilizing their strengths via effective personal development programs and strength-based interventions. Designing work tasks and systems aligning with individual strengths is another implication for employees to fulfill work and home responsibilities. For instance, individuals with strong interpersonal skills could be given to mentorship, teamwork, or front-line duties interacting directly with customers. HR managers can implement effective feedback or self-reflection systems, allowing individuals to identify and understand their personal strengths through supervisors’ evaluation, peer feedback, or self-awareness. Additional approaches can include opportunities given to individuals to exercise job crafting in autonomously modifying their daily tasks that resonate their skills and values to leverage person-job fit and work motivation (Slemp and Vella-Brodrick, 2013). Organizations and HR implications can also include career crafting programs helping individuals shape their career trajectories through strategic choices, goal-setting, and personal growth (Akkermans and Tims, 2017).

HR managers can introduce and implement policies and practices for life crafting, such as flexible work arrangements and family-friendly policies (De Jong et al., 2020) to enhance WHE, helping individuals navigate and develop skills transferable between work and home domains while aiding programs that address home-related issues. These initiatives will help individuals define their boundaries and prioritize what is most important to them. In collectivist cultures, where family obligations are central to individuals’ responsibilities, organizations should consider the cultural context when designing these supportive practices. Organizational commitment to WHE and sustainable careers for employees is crucial and beneficial for a more passionate, engaged, and productive workforce. As a result, organizations can position themselves as the employers of choice.

In Western workplace settings, resource transfer from work to home is contingent upon creating meaningful and supportive work conditions that foster self-determination, individual development, and self-reliance. HR programs, such as mentorship or teamwork initiatives, and recognition systems that align in the connection between interpersonal support and personal growth would be beneficial for individuals’ sustainable careers. These mechanisms can enhance transferability of skills, emotional stability, and work motivation, even in individualistic settings.

We performed several approaches in this study to detect the potential of CMV in a cross-sectional design (Podsakoff et al., 2012). Along with these remedies, the significant findings of the moderation effect give us the confidence to confirm that CMV was not an issue. Also, the two-way data collection approach is sufficient and relevant to show initial evidence for an understudied phenomenon (Spector, 2019), which is whether strengths use can reinforce the influences of social support and harmonious passion on WHE.

While we performed several checks for potential CMV, we acknowledge limitations of these methods. For instance, relying solely on VIF values does not fully address the risk of multicollinearity issues (Kalnins and Praitis Hill, 2023). Therefore, future studies should incorporate additional checks, such as using instrumental variables as recommended by Kalnins and Praitis Hill (2023), to minimize endogeneity-induced bias. Longitudinal design or research with multiple data sources of spouses or partners of the respondents would be beneficial to verify the causality of variables in this study and explore broader scopes of the work-life interface. We also recommend experiments and interventions that measure causality and minimize the potential of enduring CMV arising from the qualities of respondents in studies using time separation or multiple sources of respondents (Spector, 2019).

We urge an extension to other contexts and different occupations to generalize the research findings and explore additional potential boundary conditions (e.g. cultural values, organizational climates, other personal characteristics, and job characteristics) for the underlying mechanisms of WHE. Such research would be insightful in guarding the epistemic diversity of the scholarship on contextual conditions, individual factors, and the work-life interface. The consideration of more substantive control variables may also contribute to explaining the distinctions in WHE experiences between non-Western and Western contexts. A combination with other aspects of work and workplaces, such as leadership or social rewards (e.g. serious leisure, Nimmi and Donald, 2023), might be worthwhile to advance our knowledge of their similar or distinctive related processes underlying the drivers of WHE and sustainable career in general.

This study provides new insights into understanding how contextual conditions of work (social support) and personal qualities (harmonious passion and strengths use) impact WHE through a lens of COR theory. We found the moderation effects of strengths use on the social support-harmonious passion-WHE relationships. The findings help to outline a new nuanced avenue toward the motivational pathway of WHE through the interactions between work characteristics and personal motives.