Comparing Work Engagement in People-Changing and People-Processing Service Providers: A Mediation Model With Red Tape, Autonomy, Dimensions of PSM, and Performance

Abstract

Due to the increasing demanding work environment, public managers need their employees to be proactive and dedicated and feel energetic in their work to reach high performance—that is, public organizations need engaged workers. However, there is a dearth of research examining work engagement in the public sector context in general and in different institutional contexts (e.g., education vis-à-vis central government) in particular. The goal of this study is to examine the relationship between antecedents and outcomes of work engagement in the public sector in general and the within-public sector differences including institutional contexts in particular. Based on the analysis of a large data set, it can be concluded that public servants have different personalities and work in different institutional contexts, and these differences influence their work engagement. The importance of work engagement research in public administration is further confirmed because it leads to higher performance and job satisfaction across sectors.

Challenged by Great Expectations? Examining Cross-Level Moderations and Curvilinearity in the Public Sector Job Demands–Resources Model

“…Rather, they are the result of more global public personnel reforms toward a more performance-driven and demand-intensive public employment relationship (Audenaert et al, 2019;Bach & Bordogna, 2011). Furthermore, our findings closely follow those in other national and cultural contexts (e.g., Borst et al, 2018;Crawford et al, 2010;Quratulain & Khan, 2015;Sawang, 2012). Fourth, our study is limited by its focus on developmental rewards in a team context.…”

The effectiveness of role autonomy in influencing job pursuit intentions of customer‐oriented frontline job seekers

“…Significantly, self‐efficacy influences the extent to which an employee believes they are capable of serving customers adequately and is one of the required markers necessary to provide excellent customer service (Xanthopoulou et al, 2012). The benefits accruing from role autonomy for FLEs are numerous and important and include job satisfaction, altruism and intention to stay (Barken et al, 2018; Borst, 2018; Brekke & Nyborg, 2008; Seitz & Rigotti, 2018). Therefore autonomy plays an important role in the war for talent (Dwesini, 2019; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2019).…”

‘Through the looking-glass’: addressing methodological issues in analyzing within- and between-sector differences in employee attitudes and behaviors

“…Recently, scholars have focused on a more conscientious sampling strategy by selecting similar types of jobs or occupational groups across sectors (Andersen, Pallesen, and Pedersen 2011;Hansen and Kjeldsen 2018;Kjeldsen and Hansen 2018). Others have taken a different perspective by comparing sectors based on a normative distinction of people-processing and people-changing organizations (Borst 2018;Van Loon 2017), with their classification of people-changing organizations showing great overlap with the semipublic or hybrid sector used in other comparative studies (Blom et al 2020;Lan and Rainey 1992;Wittmer 1991). Altogether, these recent developments show that scholars have become aware of the limitations in sample classification in earlier research and, as a result, have called for more research aimed at providing greater insights into differences in employee attitudes and behaviors across sectors.…”

“…Whereas controlling for measurement invariance is common practice in research fields such as psychology, sociology, and management (Byrne, Shavelson, and Muth en 1989;Davidov et al 2014;Steenkamp and Baumgartner 1998;Vandenberg and Lance 2000), this is certainly not the case for the field of public administration (Jilke et al 2015). In fact, in recent years, only a few comparative studies have tested for measurement invariance (Borst 2018;Van Loon 2017). As a comprehensive and technical examination of measurement invariance in public administration is beyond the scope of this study, and as it has already been thoroughly discussed by Jilke et al (2015), we will only describe the three major hierarchical forms of measurement invarianceconfigural, metric, and scalarthat are needed before means can be accurately compared across groups.…”

“…Unfortunately, this practice does not seem to be common in public administration literature yet (for recent exceptions. see Borst 2018;Hansen and Kjeldsen 2018;Van Loon 2017).…”