First Advisor

Charlotte Fritz

Date of Publication

Spring 5-21-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Applied Psychology

Department

Psychology

Language

English

Subjects

Employee motivation -- Psychological aspects, Job stress -- Prevention, Organizational behavior -- Social aspects, Work-life balance

DOI

10.15760/etd.2317

Physical Description

1 online resource (v, 171 pages)

Abstract

Work engagement is an increasingly popular construct in organizational and occupational health psychology. However, despite substantial advances in our understanding of work engagement at the between-person level, scholars have argued for increased investigation into what drives engagement on a daily level for individual employees. In the current study, a within-person, day-level design was employed to examine the relationships between nonwork mastery experiences, job crafting behaviors, and daily work engagement. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (Hobfoll, 1989) theory, nonwork mastery experiences and job crafting were operationalized as employee-driven, resource-building strategies that assist employees in generating important psychological and job resources that can be drawn upon in order to maintain high levels of work engagement during the day. Moreover, a reciprocal relationship between work engagement during the day and nonwork mastery experiences the same evening was tested. Employees from a U.S. technology firm provided responses in the morning, at lunchtime, and after work each day for five working days. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses in the current study. Findings revealed no support for the hypothesized model at the within-person level of analysis; however, ancillary analyses suggested support for an indirect relationship between job crafting and work engagement via increased positive affect. Moreover, nearly all the proposed relationships emerged at the between-person level of analysis providing some insight into the effects of resource building strategies and work engagement across participants. Finally, seeking structural resources was identified as a person-level factor that explained variance in employees' initial levels of work engagement at the start of the week, as well as the trajectory of engagement over the course of the week. The current findings contribute to our understanding of bottom-up, employee-driven behaviors that help to sustain engagement over time. Suggestions for future research and implications for practice are discussed.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/15562

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