The relationship between personality and work engagement and work engagement and demographic variables is investigated. The Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) was used to measure personality and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) was used to measure work engagement. In contrast to the literature findings, no significant relations were found between personality and work engagement. An increased sample size per personality type or triad may yield different results. Furthermore, the RHETI operationalising of personality differs from previous research. Gender and job tenure were related to work engagement whilst ethnicity, marital status, job level and age were not. In general, results from this sample recognise that work engagement is stimulated by more than personality type, acknowledging influences of job resources, gender and job tenure. Personality is stable across situations whilst work engagement may fluctuate across employment situations. Relevant recommendations to the organisation and for future research in this regard are highlighted. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.A. (Industrial & Organisational Psychology)

abstract: This study was designed to investigate whether workplace positivity of full-time workers was related to health ratings. Positivity was conceptualized by a high rating of perceived work-performance, and work-engagement as defined by the Utrecht Work-Engagement Scale, including vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli, & Bakker, 2004). Health was measured utilizing the RAND SF-36 health survey including the eight subscales: overall, general health, physical and social functioning, emotional well-being, role limitations due to physical health or emotional problems, energy or fatigue, and bodily pain. All measures were collected simultaneously. It was predicted that perceived work-performance and all measures of work-engagement are positively associated with the aforementioned health ratings. Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher (positive) perception of work-performance and vigor were positively related to health ratings. Absorption was negatively related to health ratings. Dedication was only negatively related to physical functioning. These findings suggest that not all measures of positivity in the workplace are related to better health. Implications and future directions are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Psychology 2014

<p>La presente investigación busca comprender cómo se presenta la autoeficacia general y el <em>engagement </em>laboral en docentes de la carrera de psicología en una universidad particular de Lima Metropolitana. Para alcanzar dicho objetivo se realizaron entrevistas a profundidad a siete docentes: tres mujeres y cuatro varones.  A partir de ellas se comprende qué factores personales les han servido a estos docentes en el ejercicio de su profesión y también con qué se encuentran ellos <em>engaged</em>. Finalmente, las conclusiones a las cuales se llegó es que los docentes son autoeficaces, pues evalúan sus capacidades como su entorno para poder alcanzar el objetivo. Y también se halló que se encuentran <em>engaged </em>con su labor de docencia, esto debido a la interacción que tienen con sus estudiantes pues investigan más y se mantienen actualizados en su campo profesional.</p> / This research aims at understanding general self-efficacy and work engagement of professors of the Psychology Program of a private university in metropolitan Lima. To reach this objective, in-depth interviews with seven professors were conducted: three of them were women and four were men. Based on those interviews, it was possible to understand what personal factors have helped said professors to carry out their work as well as with what they are engaged. Finally, it was concluded that professors have self-efficacy, as they assess their skills and their environment to achieve their goals. Another finding was that they are engaged with their teaching work, and this is based on their interaction with their students, since they do more research and are up-to-date with current practices in their field.

The present study examined the relationship between perceived overqualification and work engagement through basic need satisfaction at work and further incorporated job crafting and nonwork crafting to understand the indirect role of need satisfaction. In study 1, a new measure for targeted nonwork crafting was developed and validated. The final scale provided adequate reliability and validity evidence, and predicted life satisfaction and job satisfaction above and beyond the measures of intrinsic motivation and recovery experiences. The main study included a total of 321 full-time employees who had been working in their current job for at least 3 months and represented diverse occupations and industries. Results indicated that basic need satisfaction at work explains the negative relationship between perceived overqualification and work engagement. However, job crafting and targeted nonwork crafting do not moderate the indirect effect of basic need satisfaction at work. Supplemental analyses revealed that job satisfaction emerges as a reactive response to unmet needs at work while targeted nonwork crafting serves as a buffer for the relationship between perceived overqualification and burnout. These findings underscore the importance of considering motivational implications of overqualification on work outcomes and integrating cross-domain variables to the overqualification research.

In the fast changing and increasingly competitive world market environment, leadership plays a vital role in bringing out the best of employees and steering an organization to success. Among the many leadership theories developed over the years, transformational leadership (TL) has proven among others to have a positive impact on subordinate satisfaction, motivation, and performance of workers. However, the phenomena of transformational leadership and its effect on jobs satisfaction (JB), work engagement (WE) and employees’ performance (EP) as a whole have not received much research attention in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) especially in the European Union (EU). This thesis investigated the impact of TL in selected SMEs in Germany and Sweden. The results of the 73 participants of the survey revealed that TL has a great impact on EP, JS and WE in SMEs. It was also established that there is a positive correlation between WE and EP. However, the research failed to establish a link between JS and WE and also JS and EP. The research also revealed that the most dominant type of TL style in the SMEs investigated was inspirational motivation.

Magister Commercii - MCom / The costs of occupational health and well-being are increasingly being considered as sound ‘investments’ as healthy and engaged employees yield direct economic benefits to the company.The concept of Work engagement plays a vital role in this endeavour because engagement entails positive definitions of employee health and promotes the optimal functioning of employees within an organisational setting. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between work engagement, self-efficacy and optimism amongst call centre employees in a retail organisation in the Western Cape. Over the last several years, most call centre research has predominately been focused on the aspects and causes of stress, burnout, and the deterrents of employee’s well-being. In response to the prevailing preoccupation with negative aspects, the research focused on more positive aspects of human functioning and experiences. The sample comprised of ninety three call centre employees who are employed in the customer service department in a major retail organisation in the Western Cape. Convenience sampling was utilised. The measuring instruments included the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, The Life Orientation Test-Revised and The General Self-Efficacy Scale. Statistically significant relationships were found between work engagement, self-efficacy and optimism. It was found that call centre agents displayed average levels of work engagement and optimism however they displayed high levels of self-efficacy. It was furthermore found that a moderate percentage of the variance in work engagement can be explained by self-efficacy and optimism. The implication of the results is that interventions that focus on the personal resources (viz. efficacy beliefs,optimism, hope and resiliency) and job resources (viz. physical, social or organizational aspects of the job) will contribute to increasing levels of work engagement.

Cette recherche s’inscrit dans le domaine du management interculturel et du comportementorganisationnel. Plus précisément, elle examine la relation et les interactions entre cultureet engagement au travail, voire le sur-engagement ou addiction au travail. Dans cette perspective,nous tentrons d’analyser l’influence de la culture sur l’engament au travail et d’identifier,à partir du modèle de G. Hofstede. Les dimensions qui prédisposent à l’addiction au travail.Nous essayons également, pour les diverses variables culturelles (démographiques et autres),de déterminer également le niveau de leur impact en situation de travail. Nous étudierons parexemple les variables du genre, statut familial, générationnelle, le niveau d’éducation, d’expérienceet l’ancienneté (dans l’entreprise et dans le poste actuel), la position hiérarchique, ledegré d’autonomie.Par conséquent, cette étude va s’attacher à :1) Examiner les dimensions culturelles, l’engagement et l’addiction au travail, etleur interaction.2) Démontrer le poids de la culture sur ces derniers ; comparé aux variables évoquéessupra (genre, statut familial, génération, etc.).3) Modéliser le type de relations existantes entre les dimensions culturelles deHofstede, avec l’engagement au travail et de l’addiction au travail.4) Démontrer l’influence de l’engagement au travail sur l’addiction au travail.L’étude a été réalisée dans 48 entreprises dans les secteurs de l’automobile, de l’électroniqueet de l’électrique, et du secteur hôtelier en Thaïlande, avec 403 participants.Les résultats montrent que trois des dimensions culturelles d’Hofstede, à savoir la distancehiérarchique, la dimension masculinité/féminité, et l’orientation sur le long-terme obtiennentun score plutôt élevé, l’individualisme et le collectivisme ont un score modéré à bas, et lecontrôle de l’incertitude obtient un score basL’influence de la dimension masculine a été observée pour l’engagement au travail. Parailleurs, l’engagement au travail parmi les participants va de modéré à haut, alors que le niveaud’addiction au travail va de modérer à bas, et les niveaux d’engagements au travail sont différentsentre les groupes de gens célibataires et le groupe de gens mariés. Il sens ce qu’il n’yavoir ait pas de lien entre l’engagement au travail et l’addiction au travail. Pour de futuresétudes, ces résultats donnent un modèle pour l’engagement au travail motivé par la culture, ens’orientant sur l’addiction au travail. / This present study aims at the influence of culture by applying five cultural dimensions:power distance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, uncertaintyavoidance, and long-term orientation, to study their relationships with work engagement inorder to create the work engagement model driven by culture and orientation to workaholism.The study had been done in 48 companies in automobile, electronic and electronic, and hotelsectors in Thailand, with 403 participants. The result shows the score of three cultural dimensionsinclude power distance, masculinity, and long-term orientation are moderate to high, individualismis moderate to low, and uncertain voidance score is low. In addition to the powerdistance and individualism levels are varied according to educational levels. Furthermore, thework engagement level among participants is moderate to high, while workaholism level ismoderate to low, and the work engagement levels are difference between single and marriedgroup. The influence of masculinity had been found in work engagement and workaholism,thus masculinity culture can drive work engagement and workaholism. In addition to, there isno relationship between work engagement and workaholism.

Employees maintain a personal view toward their work, which can be referred to as their work orientation. Some employees view their work as their life’s purpose (i.e., calling work orientation) and they tend to be 1) prosocially motivated, 2) derive meaning from work, and 3) feel that their purpose is from beyond the self. The purpose of the current dissertation was to differentiate calling work orientation from other similar workplace constructs, to investigate the most common covariates of calling work orientation, and to empirically test two possible moderators of the relationship between calling work orientation and work-related outcomes of job satisfaction, job performance, and work engagement. Two independent samples were collected for the purpose of testing hypotheses: data were collected from 520 working students and from 520 non-student employees. Participants from the student sample were recruited at Florida International University, and participants from the employee sample were recruited via the Amazon Mechanical Turk website. Participants from the student sample answered demographic questions and responded to self-report measures of job satisfaction, job performance, work engagement, spirituality, meaningful work, prosocial motivation, and work orientation. The procedure was similar for the employee sample, but their survey also included measures of counterproductive work behaviors, organizational citizenship behaviors, conscientiousness, and numerical ability. Additionally, employees were asked whether they would be willing to have a direct supervisor, peer, co-worker, client, or subordinate rate their job performance. Hierarchical regression findings suggest calling work orientation was predictive of overall job performance above and beyond two common predictors of performance, conscientiousness and numerical ability. The results for the covariate analyses provided evidence that prosocial motivation, meaningful work, and spirituality do play a significant role in the development of an employees’ work orientation. Perceived career opportunities moderated the relationship between calling work orientation and job performance for the employee sample. Core self-evaluations moderated the relationship between calling work orientation and job performance, and core self-evaluations moderated the relationship between calling work orientation and work engagement. Collectively, findings from the current study highlight the benefits of examining work orientation in the prediction of workplace outcomes.

Background. Career success can be examined from an objective perspective by assessing tangible measures of success, such as salary, or from a subjective perspective by examining an individual’s reflections of their own career. While previous literature has identified characteristics of pharmacists that contribute to professional success, there is a lack in literature regarding whether certain traits or job-related characteristics may predict success. Purpose and Objectives. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of grit and work engagement on career success among practicing pharmacists in the United States (U.S.). A secondary objective is to identify how pharmacists describe career success. Methods. This cross-sectional study was conducted through an anonymous, online survey distributed to pharmacists throughout the U.S. The 65-question survey included the Grit-S, UWES-9, and SCSI scales to measure grit (goal-oriented resilience), work engagement with positive emotions, and subjective career success, respectively. The survey captured demographics, included validity questions, and asked open-ended questions to describe career success. After validity testing, multiple regression analysis was performed using SPSS® to examine the impact of grit and work engagement on subjective career success. Open-ended responses underwent conventional content analysis. Results. 586 survey responses were included in the data analysis. Multiple regression analysis revealed that both work engagement (p < 0.001, β = 0.52) and grit (p < 0.001, β = 0.18) uniquely accounted for variation in subjective career success, with the variables collectively explaining 36.7% of the variation (R = 0.6060, p < 0.001). Work engagement is a stronger predictor than grit, supported by the comparison of the standardized coefficient. However, grit is not a significant moderator of the relationship between work engagement and success (ΔR2 = 0.001, p = 0.437). Qualitative analysis indicated that the three most common themes pharmacists employed to describe career success included “satisfaction” (29.1%), “impact on patient care” (22.7%), and “impact on students” (16.7%), while “financial compensation” (4.2%) and “leadership” (1.1%) were among the least common themes utilized to describe success. Conclusion. The findings indicate that cultivating grit and encouraging a positive work-related mindset among pharmacists may lead to their potential career success. By identifying factors or concepts that can be predictors of professional success among pharmacists, we may provide pharmacy practice sites with information to spark conversations between pharmacists and management leaders regarding long-term planning and career goals.

The aim of this study was to test the applicability of a replication through a publishedresearch article choosing constructs that were of interest to the authors. The one chosen wasa 2020 article from Orgambídez et al., which investigated a model derived from the jobdemands and resources model (JD-R) and Quality of Working Life (QWL) in Spain with a sample of nurses. Our study followed the principles of Orgambídez et al. (2020) of a cross-sectional correlational design but with a Swedish sample in the IT, software and technology field, with 101 participants. Correlational analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and pathanalysis were utilized to test four hypotheses and the mediation effect of work engagementbetween self-efficacy and job satisfaction. Results confirmed all four hypotheses includingthe mediation effect. Opposite to the findings of Orgambídez et al. (2020) though, there wasno direct effect found of self-efficacy on job satisfaction.