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Engagement Intent: Role Theory Perspectives for Balancing Individual and Firm-Level Engagement Outcomes
Abstract
The topic of employee engagement has received tremendous attention. With this large body of work has come numerous definitions, varied measurement systems and diverse employee-based interventions designed to improve engagement. In this article, we suggest that a variant on this work, employee engagement intent, can provide a useful framework for research and practice. Through a review of the evolution of employee engagement, we utilize two unique concepts that have emerged over time. One is that employee engagement is about the individual employee bringing more of himself or herself to work, and the second is that engagement initiatives are focused on encouraging employees to engage in behaviors that go above and beyond the core job at work. To help unify these two concepts and provide a theoretical basis for studying intent, we tap into role theory and specifically five roles at work. Intent is defined as the degree to which employees engage in non–core job roles to bring more of themselves to work (for personal interest) while also helping meet company-specific objectives. We use the model of engagement intent to suggest specific interventions that should help organizations interested in improving individual and business performance through intentional engagement programs.
... engagement arises when people personally connect to their work role performance (Kahn, 1990). the behaviors in roles that employees perceive as important bring about their wholeness in them (Welbourne & schlachter, 2019). a more recent study defined engagement as "a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption" (schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). ...
... the first suggests that engagement is about a higher individual involvement in one's work, whereas the second indicates encouragement for employees to contribute beyond the core work role. employee engagement is described as a label for a range of oeuvres with the aim of ameliorating individual and/or organizational performance initiated by employees' time and effort in their job roles (Welbourne & schlachter, 2019). Benevolent leaders exhibit positivity by emphasizing employees' personal well-being beyond the working context . ...
The hybrid working mode, which has become prevalent post-pandemic, emphasizes a new management style for managing a geographically dispersed workforce. Switching between family and work roles requires additional attention from leaders beyond the workplace to keep the employees engaged. The essential role of leadership in remote office management has been highlighted in the banking industry. Bank managers are expected to intensify their attention to employees’ safety and well-being, as well as their physical and mental conditions, to secure seamless business processes. This study proposes that benevolent leadership, a leadership style that provides holistic care beyond the working context, elevates employee engagement via psychological empowerment as a result of the social exchange process. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a final sample of 280 banking employees in Malaysia. The findings show that psychological empowerment has an indirect mediation effect on the relationship between benevolent leadership and employee engagement. This study provides insights into the indispensable role of empowerment in facilitating benevolent leadership to enhance engagement among the hybrid banking workforce in a multicultural context. A refocus on leadership in consummating existing engagement programs and appropriate task delegation was suggested to effectively promote engagement in the banking environment.
... The first finding of this study suggests that CCMT among marketers is an essential requirement for attaining CM. However, the previous studies have highlighted a series of individual (Welbourne & Schlachter, 2019) and organizational predictors (Aljanabi et al., 2014;Wang et al., 2014). There is scarce research on examining how individual's commitment influences CM. ...
This study investigates the nexus between career commitment, adaptability and motivation, and the mediation role of career adaptability on the relationships between career commitment and motivation. Data were collected randomly from marketers working in the telecommunication sector in the Kurdistan region of Iraq through online questionnaires. There were 121 out of 285 forms received and analyzed using the structural equation modeling approach. The findings indicate that both career commitment and adaptability have direct effects on career motivation. Furthermore, a mediation effect of career adaptability was identified in the relationship between career commitment and motivation. The findings of the study contribute to the career motivation literature by investigating the effects of individual factors, namely career commitment and career adaptability, on career motivation in the context of developing countries. The study also points out the compound effect of these factors on career motivation.
This study performs a comprehensive evaluation of the ISA Engagement Scale within the context of local administration in Suphanburi, Thailand, using Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) via SmartPLS software. The principal aim is to determine the scale’s dimensional structure and reliability, providing insights into its effectiveness for measuring employee engagement in the local government sector. The research involved a sample of 204 officials from local government organizations, selected via simple random sampling. A questionnaire comprising three main dimensions of employee engagement (intellectual, social, and affective engagement) was employed for data collection. The CB-SEM results indicated robust model fit indices: a chi-square (χ²) value of 71.683 (p < 0.001), a chi-square/df ratio of 2.987, a Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI) of 0.930, a Comparative Fit Index (CFI) of 0.948, a Tucker Lewis Index (TLI) of 0.923, a Normed Fit Index (NFI) of 0.925, and a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of 0.099. Despite the chi-square statistic indicating a poor fit, the other indices suggest the model’s robustness and acceptability. The study’s findings confirm the questionnaire’s validity and reliability for the specified population, endorsing its use as a research instrument in this field.
Finding ways of breaking the gender‐based glass ceiling is an important human resource issue in companies today. Employing a sample of over 200 retail stores, we explore multiple moderating and mediating factors to explain when and why women store leaders perform better, equal to, or worse than men. Results reveal that (a) women are assigned to lead stores that are positioned closer to competitive rivals than men and (b) women receive unfair distributive pay outcomes in that they are generally paid less than their male counterparts. When accounting for these factors, performance (i.e., productivity) differences between stores with men and women leaders diminished. Further, organizational tenure and store‐unit size (i.e., number of employees) were positively associated with sales performance among stores with women leaders. The findings unveil why some store‐units led by women underperform but also offer contingency factors that delineate when women‐led and men‐led stores excel in sales productivity. Implications for recruiting and retaining both women and men in leadership are considered.
We present a self-enhancement model of workplace incivility to account for the effects of exposure to incivility on task performance. In particular, we predict that workplace incivility thwarts the ability to self-enhance at work, resulting in employees' divesting their sense of self from work via disengagement processes. Maintaining high levels of task performance subsequently ceases to be a source of self-enhancement for employees who have disengaged their sense of self from work. We also examined the extent to which the desire for self-enhancement (i.e., narcissism) moderated the effect of incivility on engagement. Using two sets of multiwave, multisource data collected in China, our results provide full support for our hypotheses and provide new theoretical directions for incivility research.
We theorize that engagement, conceptualized as the investment of an individual's complete self into a role, provides a more comprehensive explanation of relationships with performance than do well-known concepts that reflect narrower aspects of the individual's self. Results of a study of 245 firefighters and their supervisors supported our hypotheses that engagement mediates relationships between value congruence, perceived organizational support, and core self-evaluations, and two job performance dimensions: task performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Job involvement, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation were included as mediators but did not exceed engagement in explaining relationships among the antecedents and performance outcomes.
Purpose
– Employee engagement has become a hot topic in recent years among consulting firms and in the popular business press. However, employee engagement has rarely been studied in the academic literature and relatively little is known about its antecedents and consequences. The purpose of this study was to test a model of the antecedents and consequences of job and organization engagements based on social exchange theory.
Design/methodology/approach
– A survey was completed by 102 employees working in a variety of jobs and organizations. The average age was 34 and 60 percent were female. Participants had been in their current job for an average of four years, in their organization an average of five years, and had on average 12 years of work experience. The survey included measures of job and organization engagement as well as the antecedents and consequences of engagement.
Findings
– Results indicate that there is a meaningful difference between job and organization engagements and that perceived organizational support predicts both job and organization engagement; job characteristics predicts job engagement; and procedural justice predicts organization engagement. In addition, job and organization engagement mediated the relationships between the antecedents and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, intentions to quit, and organizational citizenship behavior.
Originality/value
– This is the first study to make a distinction between job and organization engagement and to measure a variety of antecedents and consequences of job and organization engagement. As a result, this study addresses concerns about that lack of academic research on employee engagement and speculation that it might just be the latest management fad.
Although research to date has established the criterion validity of work engagement, little research has examined relevant boundary conditions capable of altering its documented positive effects on important workplace outcomes, despite widespread appeals to do so (e.g. Parker and Griffin, 2011). In the present four-sample investigation, a competing hypotheses format was adopted, pitting against each other perspectives of 'politics as a hindrance stressor' and 'politics as a challenge stressor' as moderators of work engagement-work outcomes relationships (e.g. job tension, job satisfaction, work intensity, job performance). Cross-sample findings demonstrated that organizational politics perceptions strengthened positive work engagement-work outcomes relationships, such that engaged individuals were less stressed, more satisfied, worked with greater intensity and exhibited greater performance when they perceived their job environments to be political. This series of results affirms the challenge/opportunity stressor properties of politics perceptions for individuals more actively involved in their jobs and workplaces. Cross-disciplinary implications of these results for theory and practice, strengths and limitations, and directions for future research are provided.
The current paper investigated the longitudinal effects of mass career customization (MCC) on job attitudes and objective career outcomes of employees in a professional service firm in the Netherlands. On the basis of theory on individualization of career trajectories, it was expected that the possibility for employees to customize their careers would be positively related to their job attitudes and subsequent objective career success, as indicated by their levels of affective commitment, work engagement, and received salary and bonuses. However, these effects were expected to occur primarily under the combination of high manager support for implementation of career customization and, on the basis of lifespan theory, older workers, as customization fulfills their increased heterogeneous career preferences. A three-wave longitudinal study largely showed support for the study hypotheses; the relation between MCC use and work engagement and subsequent career success was stronger for older workers who received support for MCC, whereas the relation between MCC use and commitment was negative for older workers who received low support. The study shows the benefits of career customization in organizations by showing the conditions under which these benefits will manifest. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This work studies sales managers’ perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices, and the mediating and moderating processes through which these practices are linked with affective commitment. Specifically, we tested whether work engagement mediated the relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and affective commitment using a sample of 117 sales managers from one large retail store. Furthermore, we tested whether managers’ savoring strategies would moderate the positive relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and work engagement, and if the strength of the hypothesized indirect effects were conditional on the use of savoring strategies. Results showed that the relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and affective commitment was mediated by work engagement. In addition, savoring strategies were found to moderate the relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and work engagement, so that the highest levels of work engagement were found in individuals who reported high perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and high use of savoring strategies. Finally, results support a conditional indirect effect of performance-oriented HR practices on predicting affective commitment via work engagement when levels of savoring strategies were moderate to high, but not when their use was low. Altogether, these results demonstrated that work engagement and savoring strategies represent key elements in explaining how perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices are associated with affective commitment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Employees are motivated intrinsically as well as extrinsically. Intrinsic motivation is crucial when tacit knowledge in and between teams must be transferred. Organizational forms enable different kinds of motivation and have different capacities to generate and transfer tacit knowledge. Since knowledge generation and transfer are essential for a firm's sustainable competitive advantage, we ask specifically what kinds of motivation are needed to generate and transfer tacit knowledge, as opposed to explicit knowledge.
Using data from two experience-sampling studies, this paper investigates the dynamic relationships between discretionary behaviors at work—voluntary tasks that employees perform—and internal somatic complaints, focusing specifically on a person’s pain fluctuations. Integrating theories of human energy with evidence from the organizational, psychological, and medical sciences, we argue that pain both depletes and redirects the allocation of employees’ energy. We hypothesize that somatic pain is associated with depleted resources and lowered work engagement, which in turn are related to ebbs and flows in discretionary behaviors, but that people will habituate to the negative effects of pain over time. Data from the two studies largely support our hypotheses. Study 1 explores the daily experiences of a sample of office workers with chronic pain, while Study 2 extends the findings to a larger non-clinical population and examines the effect of momentary pain during the workday. Our results suggest that pain fluctuations, through their effects on two forms of human energy, potential and in-use energy, are associated with increased withdrawal and a decrease in proactive extra-role behaviors at work. The results also suggest that employees who have experienced chronic pain for a longer time are less affected by the normally depleting effects of pain.
The present study examined the commonly held assumption that a low level of work engagement leads to higher turnover intentions and employee deviant behavior. Employee survey results (n = 175) from a manufacturing organization in the United Kingdom showed that employee work engagement correlates negatively with lagged measures of turnover intentions and deviant work behavior directed toward the organization. The results suggest that perceived organizational support moderates the relationship between work engagement and turnover intentions and deviant behaviors directed toward the organization, such that perceived organizational support compensates for relatively low levels of work engagement. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
This study investigated the effects of flexibility human resource management ( HRM ) on employee outcomes over time, as well as the role of age in these relations. Based on work adjustment theory and AMO theory, it was predicted that availability and use of flexibility HRM would be positively related to employee engagement, as well as higher job performance. Moreover, we postulated different hypotheses regarding the role of employee age. While generation theory predicts that younger generations would react more strongly to flexibility HRM in relation to engagement, selection, optimization, and compensation theory of ageing predicts that older workers respond more strongly in relation to job performance. A longitudinal study among US employees and a study among employees in 11 countries across the world showed that engagement mediated the relationships between availability of flexibility HRM and job performance. Moreover, we found partial support for the moderating role of age in the relations of flexibility HRM with the outcomes: Flexibility HRM was important for younger workers to enhance engagement, while for older workers, it enhanced their job performance. The study shows that the effectiveness of flexibility HRM depends upon employee age and the type of outcome involved, and consequently, theory on flexibility at work should take the age of employees into account.
Practitioner points
Flexibility HRM can be used by organizations to enhance younger workers’ engagement, while it can be used for older workers to enhance their job performance.
It is important for organizations to not only offer flexibility to their employees, but also to make sure that employees take advantage of these HR practices.
Flexibility HRM is important across the world, because it enables people across the world to balance demands from work as well as from private life.
This article examines the role played by line managers in the link between HRM practices and individual performance outcomes. Drawing on social exchange theory, the authors test a mediated model linking perceived line manager behavior and perceived human resource management practices with employee engagement and individual performance. The study focuses on two self-report measures of individual performance; task performance and innovative work behavior. Two studies with a total of 1,796 participants were conducted in service-sector organizations in the United Kingdom and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The data reveal that perceived line manager behavior and perceived HRM practices are linked with employee engagement. In turn, employee engagement is strongly linked to individual performance and fully mediates the link between both perceived HRM practices and perceived line manager behavior and self-report task performance (study 1), as well as self-report innovative work behavior (study 2). The findings show the significance of the line manager in the HRM-performance link, and the mediating role played by employee engagement.
The article examines the role of proactive personality in predicting work engagement and job performance. On the basis of the literature on proactive personality and the job demands–resources model, we hypothesized that employees with a proactive personality would be most likely to craft their own jobs, in order to stay engaged and perform well. Data were collected among 95 dyads of employees (N = 190), who were working in various organizations. The results of structural equation modeling analyses offered strong support for the proposed model. Employees who were characterized by a proactive personality were most likely to craft their jobs (increase their structural and social job resources, and increase their job challenges); job crafting, in turn, was predictive of work engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption) and colleague-ratings of in-role performance. These findings suggest that, to the extent that employees proactively adjust their work environment, they manage to stay engaged and perform well.
This research proposes a two-dimensional measure of engagement for professionals in technically-oriented workgroups. It examines the relationship of their engagement to five workgroup outcomes: innovation, performance, satisfaction with the organization, career success, and intentions to stay. Three studies are reported involving: (1) a random sample of 123 workgroups and 1351 self and reports by others of professionals employed by a Fortune 100 company, (2) a panel study of 1024 of the study one professionals four months later, and (3) the replication of results with 827 professionals across three cultures. The results support felt engagement and behavioral engagement as distinct constructs that can be measured by both a self-report and assessments by others of workgroup engagement. The relationship of engagement to workgroup innovation, performance, satisfaction with the organization, career success, and intentions to stay generalized across four countries and cultures: U.S./North America, The Netherlands/Europe, Argentina, and India. Felt engagement was the best predictor of affective outcomes and intentions to stay when all variables were measured concurrently. Behavioral engagement was the best predictor of workgroup performance concurrently and over time. This research indicates that the two dimensions of engagement are important aspects of vocational adjustment for the success of professionals in technically-oriented workgroups. Implications for future research are to consider multiple dimensions of engagement, clearly define the population and setting for engagement, and to study engagement as a dynamic experience that warrants ongoing management and workgroup attention.
We theorized that absence from work is a resource-based process that is related to perceived meaningfulness of work, well-being, and engagement. Broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) and engagement theory (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008; Kahn, 1990) were used to develop a framework for explaining absence. Results of a study of 625 employees and human resource records of subsequent absenteeism data for a three-month period supported our hypotheses that meaningful work increases engagement with work, and that engagement is associated with low levels of absenteeism. Furthermore, data showed that engagement fully mediated the relationship between meaningfulness and absence, and that well-being strengthened the relationship between meaningfulness and engagement. The results have implications
for understanding the role of individual-level resources in the workplace, and how meaningfulness, well-being, and engagement influence absence.
This is a story of how work gets done. It is also a study of how field service technicians talk about their work and how that talk is instrumental in their success. In his innovative ethnography, Julian E. Orr studies the people who repair photocopiers and shares vignettes from their daily lives. He characterizes their work as a continuous highly skilled improvisation within a triangular relationship of technician, customer, and machine. The work technicians do encompasses elements not contained in the official definition of the job yet vital to its success. Orr's analysis of the way repair people talk about their work reveals that talk is, in fact, a crucial dimension of their practice. Diagnosis happens through a narrative process, the creation of a coherent description of the troubled machine. The descriptions become the basis for technicians' discourse about their experience, and the circulation of stories among the technicians is the principal means by which they stay informed of the developing subtleties of machine behavior. Orr demonstrates that technical knowledge is a socially distributed resource stored and diffused primarily through an oral culture. Based on participant observation with copier repair technicians in the field and strengthened by Orr's own years as a technician, this book explodes numerous myths about technicians and suggests how technical work differs from other kinds of employment.
The authors propose that adaptive selling is influenced by salespeople's knowledge of customer types and sales strategies as well as their motivation to alter the direction of their behavior. Pertinent research in psychology and personal selling is reviewed and specific propositions relating to knowledge, motivation, and adaptive behavior are advanced. On the basis of these propositions, suggestions are made for selecting, training, managing, and compensating salespeople.
The Handbook presents comprehensive and global perspectives to help researchers and practitioners identify, understand, evaluate and apply the key theories, models, measures and interventions associated with employee engagement. It provides many new insights, practical applications and areas for future research. It will serve as an important platform for ongoing research and practice on employee engagement.
Identity has been studied extensively in several fields including organizational behavior, sociology, and psychology. Even though there have been significant advances, two areas of work deserve more attention. First, most empirical investigations have looked only at one or two identities at a time despite theoretical perspectives that indicate a need to address multiple identities simultaneously. Second, limited work using identity theory has been done in the human resource management (HRM) domain. The purpose of our research is to serve as a catalyst for future work by identifying five work-relevant role-based identities and creating a parsimonious measure for each. These metrics were tested, and initial evidence of their validity is provided using six independent samples. The empirical results suggest that the new measures in the role-based identity scale can be useful in representing a more realistic and richer view of identity at work by simultaneously assessing five distinct role-based identities. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
link to the full paper:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/job.2037/abstract
Employee engagement has recently been introduced as a concept advantageous to organizations. However, little is known about the value of employee engagement in explaining work performance behaviors compared with similar concepts. The learning climate, defined as the organization's beneficial activities in helping employees create, acquire, and transfer knowledge, has also been proposed as an antecedent of employee engagement. Using data from a sample of 625 employees and their supervisors in various occupations and organizations throughout Israel, we investigated employee engagement as a key mechanism for explaining the relationship between perceptions of the organization's learning climate and employees' proactivity, knowledge sharing, creativity, and adaptivity. We also tested whether employee engagement explained the relationship more thoroughly than similar concepts such as job satisfaction and job involvement. Multilevel regression analyses supported our hypotheses that employee engagement mediates the relationship between the perceived learning climate and these extra-role behaviors. Moreover, engagement provides a more thorough explanation than job satisfaction or job involvement for these relationships. The implications for organizational theory, research, and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Link to the full paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/job.2037/abstract
Transformational leadership is associated with a range of positive outcomes. Yet, according to substitutes for leadership theory, there may be circumstances under which it is difficult, if not impossible, for leaders to inspire and challenge their employees. Therefore, we hypothesize that transformational leadership behaviors as well as employee self-leadership strategies contribute to employee work engagement and job performance. Furthermore, we hypothesize that transformational leadership behaviors are more effective when employees have a high need for leadership, whereas self-leadership strategies are more effective when employees have a low need for leadership. A sample of 57 unique leader–employee dyads filled out a quantitative diary survey at the end of each week, for a period of five weeks. The results of multilevel structural equation modeling showed that employees were more engaged in their work and received higher performance ratings from their leader when leaders used more transformational leadership behaviors, and when employees used more self-leadership strategies. Furthermore, we showed that transformational leadership behaviors were more effective when employees had a high (vs. low) need for leadership and that the opposite was true for employee self-leadership. These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of employees in the transformational leadership process. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The present five-wave longitudinal study examined the parallel development of career engage- ment and satisfaction among young adults over an eight-year period starting from the last stages of their secondary education and ending after the transition to higher education or working life. The research questions were analyzed with parallel process latent growth curve (LGC) modeling and growth mixture modeling (GMM). The study is part of the ongoing longitudinal Finnish Educational Transitions (FinEdu) study, and followed 826 participants from ages 17 to 25. The developmental dynamics showed that career engagement and satisfaction developed parallel, each predicting the changes in the other. Towards the end of secondary education, career engage- ment increased and career satisfaction decreased on the mean level; however, later on, after the transition to higher education/work, both processes leveled off. The GMM results also revealed the existence of two latent trajectory groups, one representing a high transitional and the other a low increasing trajectory of career engagement and satisfaction.
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This study tests the job demands–resources model's proposal that the prediction of well-being at work is improved by identifying the most salient cohort-specific resources. Spiritual resources, conceptualized as a subcategory of personal resources, are identified as a salient resource for clergy, and their longitudinal influence on the occupational well-being of clergy (n = 399) is examined in three waves of data collection over an 18-month period. Results supported the antecedent role of spiritual resources in relation to well-being at work. Spiritual resources positively predicted future work engagement, which in turn predicted reduced turnover intention. The negative indirect effect of spiritual resources on turnover intention was fully mediated by work engagement. The findings support the need to identify relevant resources for specific work cohorts. For clergy, spiritual resources are important for motivation and vocational longevity, suggesting the need for spiritual interventions among this at-risk and under-researched population.
This dissertation explores job crafting, or the processes through which individuals conceptualize and carry out tasks, enact relationships with others to get work done, and ascribe meaning and significance to their jobs. Previous literature in this area has remained relatively silent about the work context factors shaping job crafting. Thus, the research conducted in this dissertation addresses three primary questions: (1) What does it mean to craft a job?; (2) What are the effects of the structural and relational context of work on job crafting?; and (3) What are the outcomes of job crafting? A model of individual job crafting and its antecedents and consequences is proposed, to describe how the structural and relational contexts of work shape opportunities and motivations to engage in job crafting. The research model explores the influence of discretion in work, task complexity, and task interdependence with others, as well as the influence of workgroup psychological safety and occupational community of practice, on how individuals craft their jobs. Further, outcomes of job crafting for individuals as well as the collective (workgroup and organization) are also explored. Job crafting is examined empirically in two settings that facilitate observation of job crafting because they offer individuals high opportunities to craft work (Eisenhardt, 1989), and provide different lenses that complement each other in enriching our understanding of job crafting. Study one (manufacturing work) preliminarily explores job crafting in autonomous teams in a manufacturing organization - the Volvo Uddevalla car factory in Sweden, where considerable room is deliberately left for individual input. Study two (service work) affords a richer context to explore the content of job crafting and in particular, the organizational and collective influences on job crafting. This study surveyed special education professionals - an occupation where there is no "right way" to do the work - in a sample of 200 schools from a large urban public school district in the U.S. Based on extensive qualitative work, a rich measure of job crafting was developed. The findings suggest that work discretion, task complexity, and interdependence with others enable job crafting behaviors. The positive effect of work discretion on task crafting is stronger for individuals with broader skills than for those with narrower skills. With regard to collective influences, team psychological safety inhibits individuals' job crafting. Further, the positive effects of the occupational community of practice on job crafting are stronger in organizational settings emphasizing collaborative work than in those emphasizing isolated work. With regard to outcomes, individual job crafting enhances employees' job satisfaction and commitment levels, while increasing individual performance and reducing absenteeism levels. In addition, the effects of individual job crafting extend beyond the individual and positively impact team outcomes. Finally, implications of findings for researchers and practitioners are also discussed.
Work in our modern society that is facilitated by communication technology involves connectivity, immediacy, and a blurring of boundaries between work and non‐work domains. This 4‐day quantitative diary study ( N = 100 employees, N = 367–400 data points) aims to shed light on the relationship between daily smartphone use and daily work–home interference ( WHI ). Two potential moderators of this relationship are examined: (1) (strong) social norms represented by the influence of colleagues and supervisors regarding availability after work hours and (2) work engagement. Overall, the results of multilevel analyses were in line with the hypotheses. The findings suggest that supervisors should be clear about their expectations regarding smartphone use in private hours in that they should not expect employees to be always available. In addition we conclude that engaged workers can prevent work from interfering too much with their private lives, even when they use their smartphones during evening hours.
Practitioner points
Employees working in an ‘always‐on’ culture experience more WHI.
Important role models, such as supervisors, should be aware that the emails they send during evening hours and weekends also have recipients.
Supervisors should be careful in creating expectations regarding availability when they decide to provide smartphones to their employees.
Job crafting research has typically examined the antecedents and outcomes of individual‐level crafting. In this study, we test a model of team‐level or collaborative job crafting using data collected from 242 call centre teams and supervisors' ratings of team performance. The focus on teams with narrowly defined tasks and limited decision‐making responsibility are unique features of this study. As predicted, collaborative crafting was found to relate positively to team efficacy, team control, and team interdependence, which in turn were found to relate positively to work engagement and team performance. The implications for theory development, future research, and practice are discussed.
Practitioner points
Even in a work environment characterized by low control, there remain opportunities for collaborative job crafting.
Collaborative crafting is associated with higher employee engagement and team performance.
Call centre supervisors and managers need to be aware of the potential benefits of collaborative crafting to ensure it is not inhibited by their behaviours (such as enhanced monitoring).
As positive consequences are associated with collaborative crafting, organizations should consider team training to enhance the collaborative crafting capability of teams.
This study explores relationships between spiritual resources, job resources, and work engagement among 496 Australian religious workers at three time points over a period of 18 months. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources theory and Job Demands‐Resources model, spiritual resources are conceptualized as a distinct category of personal resources significant for this occupational cohort. Results of structural equation modelling analysis did not support the hypothesis of reciprocal relationships between spiritual and job resources and work engagement. Instead, spiritual resources had a positive cross‐lagged effect on work engagement, and work engagement had a positive cross‐lagged effect on job resources. When the high stability of spiritual resources over time was accounted for, work engagement had a negative indirect effect on spiritual resources over time mediated by a negative effect of job resources on spiritual resources (suppression effect). Spiritual resources emerge as an important category of antecedent resources for work engagement among religious workers. However, it appears that motivated religious workers may prioritize energy investments into increasing job resources at the expense of maintaining and developing spiritual resources. Practically, this research provides evidence for the promotion of initiatives to foster spiritual resources that enhance resilience and well‐being among religious workers.
Practitioner points
Spiritual resources are an under‐researched category of personal resources that positively predict work engagement among religious workers.
Religious organizations and individual religious workers need to invest energy in the ongoing development of spiritual resources to maintain motivation for this unique type of work.
Managers need to be aware that a focus on enhancing job resources and work engagement can have deleterious effects on religious workers' spiritual resources and so threaten their ongoing work engagement.
The present study utilized sexual harassment, organizational climate, and engagement theories to articulate a process model of how perceived anti–sexual harassment practices and sexual harassment incidents relate to affective commitment and intentions to stay. The authors hypothesized that perceived anti–sexual harassment practices and sexual harassment incidents would relate to employee engagement, both directly and indirectly through psychological distress. Moreover, psychological distress and employee engagement were hypothesized to mediate the relationships of perceived anti–sexual harassment practices and sexual harassment incidents with affective commitment and intentions to stay. Study findings supported these hypotheses within two subsamples of female (N = 3,283 and 3,207) and male (N = 3,460 and 3,300) military personnel. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Interactions between work and identities are an important topic as a result of their influence on both employees' well-being and organizational performance. However, there is a lack of theorizing that comprehensively charts the processes and outcomes of work and identity interactions. In this paper, we formulate an integrated conceptual model of interactions between work and identities, employee reactions to them, and subsequent outcomes. In our model, we bring together well-known and under-examined aspects of work and identity interactions. The model explains how such varied outcomes as employee thriving and withering, and both subjugated and empowered identities derive from encounters between work and identities. The model makes it possible to assess the possible benefits and side-effects of human resource management practices that seek to align work with the worker, and supports human resource managers in distinguishing the positive potential in situations where employees find their work misaligning with their identities.
Although work engagement has been shown to be associated with positive job attitudes and behaviors, no research has investigated its relationship with work-family issues. To address this, the current longitudinal, experience-sampling study aimed to determine the relationship between daily work engagement and work-to-family facilitation. A total of 52 extension agents responded to two daily surveys for two weeks. Results indicate that both work engagement and work-to-family facilitation vary considerably from day to day. Daily work engagement had a positive effect on family life. The effect of daily engagement in facilitating work-family relations was partially mediated by positive mood, and the relationship between work engagement and facilitation of work-family relations was moderated by work-family capitalization, or the sharing of positive work experiences at home. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
We conducted a meta-analysis of correlations between role ambiguity and job performance and role conflict and job performance. Previous meta-analyses of these role constructs and performance relationships (e.g., Jackson & Schuler, 1985) were limited by small sample sizes and sparse reporting of reliability estimates in primary studies. The present study used a comprehensive database with a larger sample size and a distribution of interrater reliabilities to extend the previous findings. We also tested moderator hypotheses proposed but not conducted by Jackson and Schuler. Results revealed a negative relationship (ρ = −.21) between role ambiguity and job performance with moderating influences due to job type and rating source. A negligible relationship (ρ = −.07) was observed for role conflict and job performance, a finding consistent across job types and rating sources. Conclusions were that role ambiguity ought not to be dismissed as an unimportant variable in the job performance domain.
Managers can and do behave differently in similar organizations and within similar jobs. Role theory is proposed to be useful in understanding and determining how managers' perceptions of the organizational setting influence their leadership behaviors. This paper seeks to: (1) introduce role theory as a mechanism for explaining the relationship between organizational context and leadership behavior; (2) integrate transformational and transactional leadership theories with research on organizational context and role theory; and (3) identify organizational contextual and personality variables that influence transformational and transactional leadership behaviors.
As a complement to the familiar idea of self-conception, the concept of role-person merger is proposed as a more behavioral approach to understanding the social construction of personality than has been taken previously. Person and role are said to be merged when there is a systematic pattern involving failure of role compartmentalization, resistance to abandoning a role in the face of advantageous alternative roles, and the acquisition of role-appropriate attitudes. Three principles concerning appearance, effect, and consistency provide the basis for a series of propositions concerning interactive determinants of merger. Three other principles-consensual frames of reference, autonomy and favorable evaluation, and investment-provide the basis for propositions concerning individual determinants of roleperson merger. By each individual, some roles are put on and taken off like clothing without lasting personal effect. Other roles are difficult to put aside when a situation is changed and continue to color the way in which many of the individual's roles are performed. The question is not whether the role is played well or poorly or whether it is played with zest or quite casually. Role embracement (Goffman 1961b, p. 106) can coexist with strict role compartmentalization. An accomplished thespian can give himself unreservedly to a role and take great pride in producing a convincing portrayal of the part but return to being a very different kind of person when the play is over. The question is whether the attitudes and behavior developed as an expression of one role carry over into other situations. To the extent that they do, we shall speak of a merger of role with person. Many of the discrepahcies between role prescription and role behavior in organizations can be explained by the individual's inability to shed roles that are grounded in other settings and other stages of the life cycle. Merger of role with person is often the source of role conflict, as Killian (1952) demonstrated for emergency workers whose more deeply merged family roles infringed on the performance of their rescue roles in a disaster situation. When a role is deeply merged with the person, socialization in that role has pervasive effects in personality formation. When there is little 11 am grateful for support from the National Institute of Mental Health (grants USPHS MH 16505 and MH 26243) and comments from Steve Gordon, Sheldon Messinger, Jerald Schutte, Stephen Spitzer, Thomas Tyler, and Lewis Zurcher.
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