The Association of Workplace Social Capital With Work Engagement of Employees in Health Care Settings

Abstract

Workplace social capital might exert a positive contextual effect on work engagement of employees in health care settings.

Workplace social capital and the onset of major depressive episode among workers in Japan: a 3-year prospective cohort study

“…It has been considered a protective factor for mental health. In cross-sectional studies, WSC has been associated with good self-rated health5 and work engagement 6. It has also been negatively associated with anxiety,7 psychological distress7–9 and shown to have a moderator effect on the association of adverse work characteristics and psychological distress of employees 10 11.…”

The association between team‐level social capital and individual‐level work engagement: Differences between subtypes of social capital and the impact of intra‐team agreement

“…Nevertheless, our result contrasts with the findings of Fujita et al . () that bonding and bridging social capital had the strongest association with work engagement. It could be argued that cooperation with the overall management is more important for work engagement in a European context where work places may be characterized by less hierarchical organizational structures than in Japan (cf.…”

“…The findings of the present study, therefore, support the multidimensional conceptualization of social capital that was forwarded by Szreter and Woolcock (). Such multi‐dimensional operationalizations of the concept of social capital have also been deployed in other studies (Borg et al ., ; Carmeli et al ., ; Fujita et al ., ; Strömgren et al ., ; Watson & Papamarcos, ). As social capital is understood as the resources that can be found in the relationships between people (cf.…”

“…Our results showed a positive association between social capital at the team level and work engagement at the individual level. This finding provides further support for previous research indicating a positive association between social capital and work engagement (Carmeli et al ., ; Fujita et al ., ; Lehner et al ., ; Strömgren et al ., ). We collected our data among employees in the dairy industry which is characterized by complex production processes requiring high levels of coordination and communication.…”

“…Fujita et al . () found that bonding and bridging social capital (measured at unit level) had stronger associations with work engagement (measured at individual level) than linking social capital (measured at unit level) among employees in a Japanese health care corporation. Additionally, previous studies by Carmeli et al .…”