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Literature summary week 6
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This is an elaborate summary of the literature of week 6.
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W6 Literature – OBSonnentag et al. (2008) Being engaged at work and detached at home: a
week-level study on work engagement, psychological detachment, and
affect. Work & Stress
Work engagement is associated with positive outcomes for organisation and employee,
however employees also need time period of temporarily disengaging (i.e. psychological
detaching) from work. Work influences affective states and well-being. Not only job
stressors, like environmental factors, impact on a person’s affective state, but also the way a
person approaches his/her work (enjoyment/dedication).
Two distinct dimensions of affect
- Positive affect: states of pleasure and activation (i.e. arousal), high positive
activation. Experiences of enthusiasm, alertness and excitement.
- Negative affect: states of displeasure and negative activation, high negative
activation. Experiences such as distress, fear and nervousness.
These two dimensions are very relevant for behavior at work and for experiences at home.
Work engagement’s core features: high involvement, affective energy and self presence at
work. “A positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour,
dedication and absorption”. Vigour: high levels of energy and mental resilience at work,
motivation to invest effort and persist even in case of difficulties. Dedication: to be strongly
involved in one’s work and to experience significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and
challenge. Absorption: full immersion in and concentration one one’s work. When one feels
absorbed in their work, they feel like time goes by quickly and find it difficult to detach
themselves from work. Its not the same as workaholism, in which one works excessively and
compulsively. Engagement is an experience that is relatively durable over time, and work
engagement can be seen as a personal characteristic. Work engagement is a positive
experience if it is characterized by vigour, dedication and absorption. High work
engagement implies to be absorbed in one’s work, which means people should be then less
distracted by negative events (e.g. social conflicts) that might occur during work. High work
engagement may enable successful task completion. And successful performance in turn
enhances positive affect again.
Continued immersion in one’s job might be detrimental for a person’s affective state.
Psychological detachment from work: an individual’s sense of being away from the work
situation. Not engaging in job-related activities during off-job time and refraining from job-
related thoughts and worries while off work. Prolonged activation and continued
preoccupation with job-related problems and thoughts drain energy resources and increase
negative affect. This can also conflict with/spoil family or leisure-time experiences.
Lack of psychological detachment from one’s work seems to be typical for workaholics.
The inability to mentally switch off one’s job is associated with high levels of fatigue, sleep
complaints and other indicators of poor well-being.
Moreover, there is empirical evidence that persons highly engaged at work are more
negatively affected in their well-being by stressors and negative experiences encountered
on
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, the job (Britt et al., 2005), probably because these events at work are more meaningful for
highly engaged persons and because high absorption in one’s work also implies that one is
highly absorbed in stressful situations. Together, these findings suggest that it is particularly
important for highly work-engaged persons to detach themselves psychologically from work
during off-job time.
Work engagement may be draining cognitive and affective resources. To avoid resource
drain continuing during off-job time and maybe eventually resulting in poor affective states,
psychological detachment from work during off-job time is particularly important for
persons experiencing high work engagement. As highly engaged employees generally
experience lower levels of exhaustion, it might be that they have more cognitive and
emotional resources to deal with daily job stressors and maybe also to capitalize on positive
events at work.
Psychological detachment during off-job time throughout the week predicts affective states
at the end of working week. Might also be good to not detach, e.g. when trying to find a
solution to a problem or when engaging in reflection about positive events which happened
at work. To stay alert and interested at the end of the week, employee’s need to mentally
detach from work at home. High levels of work engagement and high levels of psychological
detachment at home is ideal for both employee and organisation well-being.
Ogbonnaya & Messersmith (2017) Employee performance, well-being, and
differential effects of human resource management subdimensions:
Mutual gains or conflicting outcomes? HRMJ
This article suggests that attitudinal or behavioural benefits of HRM systems are realized if
employees hold positive perceptions as to why such systems are being implemented.
Mutual gains perspective: HRM systems (e.g. staff training, selective hiring, performance
appraisal, workplace support, team working and job autonomy) promote performance
benefits by aligning employees’ interests more closely with organizational goals. Shared
benefit for both employees and organization. Win-win situation in which positive employee
attitudes are critical for achieving performance improvements. Employees experience
improved job quality and feel a stronger sense of attachment towards the organization,
which lead to performance benefits. So employee workplace attitudes and behaviours are
important mechanisms for explaining benefits of HRM systems.
Affective commitment – an individual’s strong emotional attachment towards the
organization. This is an important channel through which perceived HRM practices might
influence employee performance. Organisational alliance and willingness to exercise
discretionary effort (like employees’ innovative behaviours, e.g. developing new ideas,
necessary steps to implement this and creative ways of improving ideas).
When employers invest in HRM practices, they send signals that show employees represent
a major source of competitive advantage for the organization. In turn, employees receive
these signals as favourable treatment form the employer and feel a greater organizational
attachment. So bigger attachment (affective commitment) can lead to better/more
innovative performance.
Conflicting outcomes perspective: some argue that any performance benefits of HRM
systems are offset by increased job demands, stress and work intensification. They do
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