Organisations across the world are faced with the same challenges of how to get employees
to be totally immersed in their role at work. People occupy roles at work. There is no sense in
engaging employees if management is not going to invest in the effort of placing these
employees in appropriate roles and supporting them to be engaged in their work. There are
generalised states that employees occupy: people are to some degree job involved, committed
to organisations, or alienated at work in the form of self-estrangement. These concepts
suggest that employees can use varying degrees of themselves, physically, cognitively and
emotionally, in the roles they perform.
The primary objective of this research was to explore the three psychological processes,
meaningfulness, safety and availability to be determinants of work engagement. Another
objective was also to explore the influence of the antecedent conditions, namely work role fit,
co-worker relations, supervisor relations, co-worker norms, self-consciousness and resources
on work engagement. The study also investigated whether the psychological processes
mediate the relationships between antecedent conditions and work engagement.
A survey design was used to reach the research objectives. The specific design used was the
cross-sectional design. Employees across all levels (N=165)i n a chemical industry in the
Vaal Triangle were targeted for this research. Four standardised questionnaires were used in
the empirical study, namely the Psychological Processes Questionnaire, Antecedent
Conditions Questionnaire, Work Engagement Questionnaire as well as a Biographical
Questionnaire.
Multiple regression analyses showed that psychological meaningfulness mediated the
relationship between work role fit and work engagement. A total of 32% of the variance in
psychological meaningfulness was predicted by work role fit. Psychological meaningfulness
predicted 29% of the variance in work engagement. Psychological availability mediated the
relationship between available resources and work engagement. The analysis indicated that 11% of the variance in engagement was predicted by resources. Psychological availability
predicted 3 1 % of the variance in engagement.
Recommendations for future research were made. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/93 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Ras, Dezelle |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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