The influence of job, team and organizational level resources on employee well‐being, engagement, commitment and extra‐role performance

Abstract

PurposeWorker well‐being continues to be fundamental to the study of work and a primary consideration for how organizations can achieve competitive advantage and sustainable and ethical work practices (Cartwright and Holmes; Harter, Schmidt and Keyes; Wright and Cropanzano). The science and practice of employee engagement, a key indicator of employee well‐being, continues to evolve with ongoing incremental refinements to existing models and measures. This study aims to elaborate the Job Demands‐Resources model of work engagement (Bakker and Demerouti) by examining how organizational, team and job level factors interrelate to influence engagement and well‐being and downstream outcome variables such as affective commitment and extra‐role behaviour.Design/methodology/approachStructural equations modelling of survey data obtained from 3,437 employees of a large multi‐national mining company was used to test the important direct and indirect influence of organizational focused resources (a culture of fairness and support), team focused resources (team climate) and job level resources (career development, autonomy, supervisor support, and role clarity) on employee well‐being, engagement, extra‐role behaviour and organizational commitment.FindingsThe fit of the proposed measurement and structural models met criterion levels and the structural model accounted for sizable proportions of the variance in engagement/wellbeing (66 percent), extra‐role‐behaviour (52 percent) and commitment (69 percent).Research limitations/implicationsStudy limitations (e.g. cross‐sectional research design) and future opportunities are outlined.Originality/valueThe study demonstrates important extensions to the Job Demands‐Resources model and provides researchers and practitioners with a simple but powerful motivational framework, a suite of measures, and a map of their inter‐relationships which can be used to help understand, develop and manage employee well‐being and engagement and their outcomes.