Exploring the Engaged Worker over Time—A Week-Level Study of How Positive and Negative Work Events Affect Work Engagement

Oliver Weigelt, Antje Schmitt, Christine J. Syrek and Sandra Ohly
Additional contact information
Oliver Weigelt: Institute of Psychology–Wilhelm Wundt, Leipzig University, D-04109 Leipzig, Germany
Antje Schmitt: Organizational Psychology, University of Groningen, 9712 TS Groningen, The Netherlands
Christine J. Syrek: Business Psychology, University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Von-Liebig-Str. 20, D-53359 Rheinbach, Germany
Sandra Ohly: Business Psychology, University of Kassel, D-34121 Kassel, Germany

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 13, 1-27

Abstract: Although work events can be regarded as pivotal elements of organizational life, only a few studies have examined how positive and negative events relate to and combine to affect work engagement over time. Theory suggests that, to better understand how current events affect work engagement (WE), we have to account for recent events that have preceded these current events. We present competing theoretical views on how recent and current work events may affect employees (e.g., getting used to a high frequency of negative events or becoming more sensitive to negative events). Although the occurrence of events implies discrete changes in the experience of work, prior research has not considered whether work events actually accumulate to sustained mid-term changes in WE. To address these gaps in the literature, we conducted a week-level longitudinal study across a period of 15 consecutive weeks among 135 employees, which yielded 849 weekly observations. While positive events were associated with higher levels of WE within the same week, negative events were not. Our results support neither satiation nor sensitization processes. However, a high frequency of negative events in the preceding week amplified the beneficial effects of positive events on WE in the current week. Growth curve analyses show that the benefits of positive events accumulate to sustain high levels of WE. WE dissipates in the absence of a continuous experience of positive events. Our study adds a temporal component by highlighting that positive events affect work engagement, particularly in light of recent negative events. Our study informs research that has taken a feature-oriented perspective on the dynamic interplay of job demands and resources.

Keywords: affective events; work engagement; sensitization-satiation effects; job demands-resources model; experience sampling; growth curve modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/13/6699/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/13/6699/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:13:p:6699-:d:579483

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().