Toward employee work passion and performance: a validation of the Work Cognition Inventory in Korea

Desired employee performance is achieved, in part, through positive job attitudes such as employee engagement and work passion. Based on social cognitive theory and the theory of planned behaviour, this study aims at validating the factor structure of the Work Cognition Inventory (WCI) data in the Korean public sector in a preliminary effort to improve public employees’ work passion and performance. A sample of 480 public employees was broken into two subsamples for exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The effect of common method variance (CMV) on the factor structure was examined, with the results suggesting that the WCI is valid for use in the Korean public sector but that its factor loadings are biased by the congeneric effects of CMV.