Happiness, work engagement and organisational commitment of support staff at a tertiary education institution in South Africa

By Lyndsay K. Field, J. Buitendach. 2011

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Orientation: Support staff members play a vital role in tertiary education institutions. With this in mind, the institutions must address their particular needs. In the context of positive psychology, issues of happiness and work engagement could lead to increased positive organisational outcomes like the commitment of support staff. Research purpose: The purpose of the research was to determine the relationship between happiness, work engagement and organisational commitment and to determine whether happiness and work engagement hold predictive value for the organisational commitment of support staff. Motivation for the study: This study aims to enable the identification of a link between happiness, work engagement and organisational commitment and to identify a predictive value of the model. Research design, approach and method: The researchers used a cross-sectional survey design. They used a sample of 123 ( N = 123) support staff members from a tertiary education institution in South Africa. The researchers used four demographic questionnaires for the research. These were the ‘Satisfaction with Life Scale’ (SWLS), the ‘Well-Being Questionnaire’ (WBQ), the ‘Utrecht Work Engagement Scale’ (UWES) and the ‘Organisational Commitment Questionnaire’ (OCQ). Main findings: The researchers found a significant positive relationship between affective organisational commitment and work engagement, as well as between affective organisational commitment and happiness (as the SWLS and WBQ measure). They found a significant positive relationship between work engagement and happiness. Finally, the results showed that happiness and work engagement have predictive value for affective organisational commitment. Practical/managerial implications: Happiness and work engagement have predictive value for affective organisational commitment. Therefore, institutions should carefully tailor any implementation programme or initiative to address this relationship. Contribution/value-add: The findings will benefit both managers and workers. Institutions should consider evaluating the levels of happiness and work engagement of their support staff to address the issue of the organisational commitment of their employees.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8ca0bc9af27866e33359450c1c0994ecb97c27c5

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

  1. Cornelia Venter
  2. Karolina Łaba
  3. Madelyn Geldenhuys
  4. J. Simons
  5. J. Buitendach

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

  1. Cornelia Venter
  2. Karolina Łaba
  3. Madelyn Geldenhuys
  4. J. Simons
  5. J. Buitendach

In Social Psychology

  1. Cornelia Venter
  2. Karolina Łaba
  3. Madelyn Geldenhuys
  4. J. Simons
  5. J. Buitendach

Citations in the corpus