The gain spiral of resources and work engagement: Sustaining a positive worklife

By Marisa Salanova, Wilmar B. Schaufeli, Despoina Xanthopoulou, Arnold B. Bakker. 2010

282 citations recorded by the source corpus.

People try to acquire resources at work which they value such as autonomy, social relationships, and feedback about their performance. These job resources are functional in achieving work goals and may stimulate personal growth, learning, and development. As such, job resources initiate a motivational process that may lead to work engagement and positive organizational outcomes, including enhanced performance (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). This premise is consistent with traditional motivational approaches such as job characteristics theory (Hackman & Oldham, 1980) and self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000). According to the former approach, particular job characteristics such as skill variety, autonomy, and feedback have motivating potential and indirectly predict positive outcomes like intrinsic motivation (a concept closely related to work engagement), through the activation of positive psychological states. In a somewhat similar vein, self-determination theory posits that job resources are motivating because they fulfill basic human needs, such as the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Consequently, work contexts that provide resources such as job control (autonomy), feedback (competence), and social support (relatedness) would enhance well-being and increase intrinsic satisfaction at work (Ryan & Frederick, 1997).

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2f04d62ef04fe747654effdb0a9569b0e39f0fcd

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In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

A three-wave study of job resources, self-efficacy, and work engagement among Italian schoolteachers (2011, background): “Viewed in this light, work engagement is a distinct positive affective-motivational state that may broaden employees’ thought-action repertoires and build their enduring personal resources (Salanova et al., 2010).”
A Critical Review of the Job Demands-Resources Model: Implications for Improving Work and Health (2014, background): “For such a spiral to exist, there should not only be reciprocal causation but one variable (e.g., a specifi c job demand) should also increase the level of another variable (work engagement), and vice versa (Salanova et al., 2010 ).”
Performance expectations, personal resources, and job resources: How do they predict work engagement? (2013, background): “According to Salanova et al. (2010), two conditions are essential for gain spirals to exist, namely the coexistence of normal and reverse causation, and an increase in construct levels over time.”
Employee engagement, human resource management practices and competitive advantage (2015, background): “As Macey, Schneider et al. (2009) suggested, a climate of trust and fairness is necessary for employees to feel and act engaged.”
Creativity and charisma among female leaders: the role of resources and work engagement (2013, background): “Sonnentag et al. (2010) and Salanova et al. (2010) have argued that engagement is not just ‘happening’ to employees, but rather that employees can actively create their own engagement experiences.”
The drivers of work engagement: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal evidence (2020, background): “Taris and Schaufeli (2016) propose to examine the across-time development of mean levels of job resources and work engagement for several groups (e.”
Self-Efficacy and Workaholism as Initiators of the Job Demands-Resources Model. (2012, background): “, 2006), less attention has been paid to its relationship with positive states such as work engagement (Salanova et al., 2010).”
The job demands–resources model and counterproductive work behaviour: The role of job-related affect (2011, background): “In line with the Broaden-and-Build theory proposed by Fredrickson (1998, 2001), Salanova et al. (2010) have theorized that the frequent experience of positive affect in the workplace may promote more stable positive psychological states like work engagement.”
Employee intrapreneurship and work engagement: A latent change score approach (2017, background): “Subsequently, we provide additional support for the premise that psychological mechanisms underlying behavior, personal resources, and work engagement are not one-directional but have a dynamic and reciprocal nature (Salanova et al., 2010).”
Testing a dynamic model of the impact of psychological capital on work engagement and job performance (2018, background): “Increases in the total availability of PsyCap are expected to be refreshing and revitalizing, providing individuals with more resources to invest at work and triggering a spiral of positive gain (Hakanen et al., 2008; Salanova et al., 2010).”
Relationships between occupational self efficacy, human resource development climate, and work engagement (2012, background): “Thus, individuals with high self efficacy are likely to perceive job-demands as challenging and job resources as abundant (Salanova et al., 2010).”