Do psychological capital and work engagement foster frontline employees’ satisfaction?

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to develop and test a conceptual model that investigates the effect of psychological capital on job, career and life satisfaction, mediated by work engagement, drawing from the conservation of resources theory and the motivational process of the job demands-resources model. Design/methodology/approach – Based on data gathered from frontline employees in the international five- and four-star chain hotels with a time lag of two weeks in three waves in Romania, the relationships in the conceptual model were gauged through structural equation modeling. Self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience were treated as the indicators of psychological capital. Findings – The results suggest that optimism appears to be the best indicator of psychological capital, followed by resilience, self-efficacy and hope. Employees with high psychological capital are engaged in their work at elevated levels. Employees high in psychological capital are more satisfied with their job, career and life. The results reported in this study further suggest that psychological capital boosts work engagement that in turn leads to job, career and life satisfaction. Practical implications – The presence of rigorous selective staffing enables management to select a pool of employees high in psychological capital and work engagement. Inviting applicants to fill out an online questionnaire to identify their knowledge and skills and then using specific experiential exercises or short case studies to understand their tactics for handling service encounters can serve this purpose. Management can utilize the psychological capital questionnaire during and after the selection process. The availability of a resourceful work environment where there are training, empowerment, rewards and career opportunities is likely to stimulate employees’ positive emotions that in turn relate to psychological capital. Originality/value – Very little is known about psychological capital in the hospitality management literature. Therefore, this paper fills in this void by linking psychological capital to employees’ job, career and life satisfaction through work engagement.

The effect of positive psychological capital and Organizational climate on service quality: The mediation role of work engagement of hotel service employees in Ratchaburi province

“…Karatepe & Karadas (2015) study was "Do psychological capital and work engagement foster frontline employees' satisfaction? A study in the hotel industry".…”

Propiedades psicométricas del Instrumento para evaluar capital psicológico en las Organizaciones Ipsicap-24

“…Adicionalmente, para obtener evidencia de validez convergente se trabajó con la segunda muestra de este estudio (N = 428), estos trabajadores respondieron el Ipsicap-24 y el UWES adaptado para población colombiana. Esta última prueba mide engagement, variable en la literatura sobre comportamiento organizacional positivo, que ha mostrado estar relacionada positivamente con capital psicológico (Simons & Buitendach, 2013;De Waal & Pienaar, 2013;Görgens-Ekermans & Herbert, 2013;Paek, Schuckert, Kim & Lee, 2015;Karatepe & Karadas, 2015;Lorenz et al, 2016;Li, Castaño, & Li, 2018). Todas las correlaciones, entre las respectivas dimensiones, y capital psicológico y engagement, son positivas y significativas (p < 0.01), como se indica en la Tabla 6.…”

Otel İşletmesi Çalışanlarında Pozitif Psikolojik Sermaye ile İş Performansı Algısı Arasındaki İlişki (The Relationship Between Positive Psychological Capital and Job Performance Perception on Hotel Employees)

“…Studies on positive psychological capital with job satisfaction, commitment and organizational citizenship (Paek et al 2015;Jung & Yoon, 2015;Kaplan & Biçkes, 2013); emotional labor (Kara & Begenirbaş, 2016); job performance and organizational commitment (Karatepe, 2014;Karatepe & Karadas, 2015), organizational support and burnout (Lin, 2013), leaders' psychological capital and employee engagement (Meng et al, 2011); organizational justice and good mood (Çelik et al, 2014) in tourism industry.…”