Work Engagement: Organizational Attribute or Personality Trait?

Introduction

Work engagement reflects how involved people are in the tasks that they have to do as part of their jobs and is closely related to their job performance (Bakker et al., 2011; Bakker & Oerlemans, 2019; Laguna et al., 2017; Martínez et al., 2020). The concepts of employee engagement and work engagement have usually been used interchangeably (Guest, 2014); however, work engagement refers to an employee’s relationship to their work at the individual level, whereas employee engagement is about the relationship between the employee and their organization (Salanova et al., 2005; Tisu et al., 2020). Most researchers consider work engagement to be the effective involvement and participation of people in their work, which produces a positive affect associated with the job and the workplace environment (Castellano et al., 2019; Maslach et al., 2001; Rothbard & Patil, 2012; Salanova & Llorens, 2008). Despite the widespread use of the term, work engagement does not have a single definition, nor a uniform conceptualization, and different approaches suggest differentiation of engagement as a trait, as a psychological state, or as a behavior (Macey & Schneider, 2008; Solomon & Sridevi, 2010).

Work engagement is an important factor in the management of organizations due to its influence on companies’ efficiency and competitiveness, along with its links to higher levels of both individual and organizational performance (Barría-González et al., 2021; Halbesleben, 2010; Lesener et al., 2020; Martínez et al., 2020). Employees who are engaged within the organization have been shown to be more proactive, to encourage innovation, and to make efforts to improve the organization’s results (Harter et al., 2002; Ruiz-Zorrilla et al., 2020). The higher levels of energy, responsibility, enthusiasm, and effective connection to the job associated with work engagement underscore why companies are interested in understanding the factors that determine it.

How engaged employees are with their work is determined by both personal characteristics and factors related to the organizational climate (García-Arroyo & Segovia, 2021). There is no unequivocal answer about the extent to which one predominates over the other, which is one of the main objectives of the present study. When workers develop and use their personal resources, they tend to exhibit greater work engagement (Airilia et al., 2014; Bhatti et al., 2018; Schaufeli & Taris, 2014). Emotional intelligence demonstrates a positive effect on work engagement (Barreiro & Treglown, 2020; Brunetto et al., 2012; Extremera et al., 2018; Ravichandran et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2015), as does a positive affective experience in the workplace (Fisher, 2010; Martos Martínez et al., 2021; Salas-Vallina et al., 2017). Emotional intelligence and personal happiness may act as resources that allow employees to enthusiastically deal with the demands of work and encourage work engagement (Cohn et al., 2009). The connection between personality characteristics and work engagement has been widely studied (Bakker & Leiter, 2010; Lisbona et al., 2018). Personality traits can be measured at different levels of conceptual breadth (Soto & John, 2017). A broad character trait can summarize a large amount of behavioral information and predict a wide range of important criteria, whereas more restricted trait measures more accurately express a specific behavioral description and can predict criteria that are closely linked to that description (John et al., 2008; Postigo et al., 2021). This is why it is important to distinguish between studies focusing on broad, Big Five-type, personality traits and those which use more specific personality traits. Various studies have found positive relationships between work engagement and general personality traits (Bakker et al., 2012; Bhatti et al., 2018; Hau & Bing, 2018; Martos Martínez et al., 2021; Zaidi et al., 2013), with agreeableness being the trait with the weakest relationship to work engagement (Janssens et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2009). Other authors have used specific personality traits to examine the relationship with work engagement. Traits such as self-efficacy, proactivity, innovation, stress-tolerance, and optimism have been positively related to employees’ work engagement (Bhatti et al., 2018; Contreras et al., 2020; Li et al., 2017; Lisbona et al., 2018; Perera et al., 2018; Ocampo-Álvarez et al., 2021).

With regard to the organizational attributes that affect work engagement, studies have found clear connections between both physical and organizational characteristics of a job (Saks, 2019; Xanthopoulou et al., 2007). Saks (2019) suggested that giving employees opportunities to put diverse skills into practice in an interesting, challenging job is likely to lead to high work engagement. Employees’ perceptions and opinions about the psychosocial context and the specific characteristics of the organization they work for influence their behavior and affect work engagement (Bartram et al., 2002; Basinska & Rozkwitalska, 2020; DeCottis & Summers, 1987; Dessler, 2008; González-Verde et al., 2015; Quiñones et al., 2013; Tandler et al., 2020). The various facets that may comprise a good organizational climate, such as organizational trust, the absence of workplace tension, social support, remuneration, and job satisfaction, lead an employee to be engaged with their work (Barría-González et al., 2021).

In this context, the present study has two objectives. Firstly, it aims to assess the weight of personal characteristics and organizational attributes in predicting the levels of employees work engagement. Personal characteristics include both general and specific personality traits, emotional intelligence, and personal happiness. The organizational attributes cover workplace happiness and organizational climate. Secondly, given that previous research has shown that people’s perceptions of the psychosocial context and the specific characteristics of the organization influence behavior and impact their engagement with their work (Barría-González et al., 2021; Hermosa-Rodríguez, 2018; Murphy & Reeves, 2019), the study aims to assess the possible moderating effect of work-context variables (happiness and organizational climate) on the personal variables that are most important in predicting work engagement.

Method

Participants

The final sample comprised 286 employees and 17 cases were removed for giving insufficiently rigorous answers according to the attentional control scale. The majority (83.5%) were Spanish nationals and 16.6% were from other Spanish-speaking countries. The mean age of the sample was 44.51 years old (SD = 8.76), with a range between 24 and 67. Just over half (55.2%) were women and 73.8% had university-level qualifications. Just under a quarter (23.8%) had higher level management jobs, 33.6% were middle managers, 24.5% were technical-level employees, and 18.1% were skilled workers.

Instruments

Work Engagement Scale (ESCOLA; Prieto-Díez et al., 2021).

ESCOLA is a scale with 10 items that evaluates work engagement. The responses are given on a Likert-type scale from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates complete disagreement and 5 indicates complete agreement. The scale has a reliability (α) coefficient of .92 and evidence of convergent validity (Prieto-Díez et al. 2021). The reliability in the present study was excellent: α = .92.

Battery for the Evaluation of Enterprising Personality (BEPE; Cuesta et al., 2018).

The BEPE is an 80-item questionnaire which evaluates eight dimensions of enterprising personality: self-efficacy, autonomy, innovation, internal locus of control, a