The trickle-down of work engagement from leader to follower: The roles of optimism and self-efficacy
Xinxin Lu,
Baoguo Xie and
Yongxing Guo
Journal of Business Research, 2018, vol. 84, issue C, 186-195
Abstract:
The present research seeks to explore how and when leader work engagement trickles down to the follower. Relying on social learning theory, we hypothesize that optimism mediates the relationship between leader work engagement and follower work engagement. Follower self-efficacy is supposed to strengthen the effect of follower optimism on work engagement. In a sample of 707 employees from 72 teams in Chinese enterprises, we tested the hypotheses using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The results suggest that leader work engagement is positively related to follower work engagement and that follower optimism significantly mediates the relationship. Moreover, follower self-efficacy strengthens the positive relationship between follower optimism and work engagement as well as the indirect effect of leader work engagement on follower work engagement via follower optimism. Theoretical and practical implications are further discussed.
Keywords: Work engagement; Optimism; Self-efficacy; Trickle-down; Social learning theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296317304605
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:84:y:2018:i:c:p:186-195
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.11.014
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside
More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().