The drivers of work engagement: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal evidence

By T. Lesener, B. Gusy, Anna Jochmann, C. Wolter. Work & Stress, 2020

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT Work engagement is currently one of the most popular outcomes in occupational health psychology. According to the motivational process within the job demands-resources (JD-R) framework, job resources stimulate work engagement, which in turn fosters job performance. While the general positive impact of job resources on work engagement is well established, it remains unclear how different types of job resources differentially predict work engagement over time. In our meta-analytic review, we identified 55 longitudinal studies that investigate the impact of various job resources on work engagement. To uncover the drivers of work engagement, we examined the differential impact of job resources on work engagement at group level, leader level, and organisational level via meta-analytic structural equation modelling. The findings suggest that job resources at each of the three levels predict work engagement over time. However, organisational-level resources (reflecting how the work is organised, designed and managed) contribute much more strongly to work engagement than group-level, and leader-level resources. All three levels of job resources and work engagement are highly stable. We advocate for interventions at any of the three levels. However, interventions at the organisational-level are most promising for enhancing work engagement and we thus strongly recommend strengthening those job resources.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/92a4ba52b6cb7e8d91fc4da0c75162d890cc91cc

How researchers see this paper

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

In General Health Professions

1. Andrew Marty
2. Camille R. Green
3. Simon Albrecht

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Andrew Marty
2. Camille R. Green
3. Simon Albrecht
4. Arnold B. Bakker
5. B. Shuck
6. Wilmar B. Schaufeli

In Social Psychology

1. Andrew Marty
2. Camille R. Green
3. Simon Albrecht
4. Arnold B. Bakker
5. B. Shuck

Citations in the corpus

• The relative importance of various job resources for work engagement: A concurrent and follow-up dominance analysis (2021, unknown): “Finally, a recent meta-analysis of the drivers of work engagement concluded that the job resources that are most connected to the individual employee (e.g., job control, development opportunities, i.e., task resources) seem to have the strongest impact on work engagement (Lesener et al., 2020).”
• Meaningful Work, Job Resources, and Employee Engagement (2021, background): “It is well established in the research literature that employee engagement is associated with a number of desirable individual, team, and organizational outcomes [12,17,19,59].”