Date of Award

Winter 3-20-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial/Organizational Psychology (PhD)

Department

Industrial/Organizational Psychology

First Advisor/Committee Member

Paul R. Yost

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Scott Campanario

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Daniel Hallack

Keywords

employee engagement, employee wellbeing, dispositional employee engagement, autotelic personality, positive affectivity, proactive personality

Abstract

The increasing focus on employee well-being and its organizational implications has shifted scholarly attention towards the dynamics of employee engagement. Prevailing research largely concentrates on the influence of the work environment in fostering engagement. However, the role of individual predispositions remains insufficiently explored. This study seeks to address this gap by evaluating the predictive capacity of specific individual traits – autotelic personality, proactive personality, and positive affectivity – on the innate tendency towards employee engagement. It also examines the extent to which an organization’s climate for engagement can enhance these individual characteristics’ impact. A survey was conducted with 403 adult participants in the United States, using the Prolific Academic platform. Structural regression analyses were utilized to evaluate the proposed relationships. The analysis revealed that all three personality variables significantly predict dispositional employee engagement, and that autotelic personality significantly influences all three subdimensions of dispositional employee engagement (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral), positioning it as a key predictor in its development. Proactive personality was particularly influential in behavioral engagement, whereas positive affectivity strongly predicted all subdimensions, especially emotional engagement. Furthermore, climate for engagement was found to buffer the relationship between dispositional and state employee engagement, particularly for those lower in dispositional engagement. These findings not only enrich our understanding of the multifaceted nature of dispositional employee engagement but also provides strategic direction for organizations aiming to cultivate specific facets of employee engagement.

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