Work engagement and psychological capital in the Italian public administration: A new resource-based intervention programme

Abstract

Orientation: Organisations need energetic and dedicated employees to enhance the quality of their services and products continuously. According to the Conservation of Resources Theory, it is possible to increase work engagement of employees by improving their personal resources.Research purpose: The main aim of this study was to examine the extent to which an improvement in psychological capital, as a personal resource, might enhance work engagement of employees in the public sector.Motivation for the study: This study was developed to investigate how and to what extent interventions aiming at fostering higher work engagement through the enhancement of psychological capital were certainly effective.Research design, approach and method: To improve psychological capital, a new resource-based intervention programme (FAMILY intervention) was developed and applied, in which six dimensions – namely framing, attitudes, meaningfulness, identity, leading self and yoked together – were improved. A semi-experimental research design (pre-test and post-test) was used to conduct this study. Participants were 54 employees working in an Italian public health administration. In the pre-test and post-test stages, data were collected by using the psychological capital and work engagement scales.Main findings: Results showed that there is a positive relationship between psychological capital and work engagement in the pre-test and post-test stages, considered separately. In addition, comparing pre-test and post-test results revealed that the intervention programme significantly improved both psychological capital and work engagement. This shows that an improvement in psychological capital is consistent with an increase in work engagement.Conclusion: Together, these findings prove that psychological capital can be considered as a set of personal resources which lead to increased work engagement.Contribution/value-add: This study bridged the gap found in the literature between the role of psychological capital in fostering higher work engagement and the extent to which interventions are effective among employees working in public administration.

An Investigation into the Mediating Effects of Organizational Commitment Between Psychological Capital and Work Engagement

“…The results of the studies show that PsychCap is highly related to WE. These results are also similar to the previous studies like Costantini et al (2017). The study`s results further explain that OC is also related to psychological capital.…”

“…No doubt the importance of PsyCap in the positive organizational behavior (POB) has widely been acclaimed conceptually and empirically, it does not warrant that all organizations would accrue its benefits. Public sector organizations, famous for negative connotations like stagnancy and inefficiency (Goodsell, 2003), and suffering from structural weaknesses (Costantini et al, 2017), which have been dubbed organizations with 'human capital crisis' (Jacobson, 2011), appear to be out of the spectrum of Global Social Sciences Review (GSSR) benefits attached with it. In countries where the public sector is more dominant, health would definitely be the public-sector domain.…”

The Relationship Between Psychological Contract Breach and Employees’ Counterproductive Work Behaviors: The Mediating Effect of Organizational Cynicism and Work Alienation

“…In this case, organizations can perform some interventions and remedies. For example, it has been shown that resource-based intervention programs that build the psychological capital of employees help to improve employees’ work engagement and to build strong relationships between employees and the organization (Costantini et al, 2017). In addition, the organization can obtain the employees’ understanding by explaining the reason for the breach and compensating the employees in other ways (Morrison and Robinson, 1997).…”

Can you buy work engagement? The relationship between pay, fringe benefits, financial bonuses and work engagement

“…Our results appear to indicate that if HRM specialists wish to enhance employee work engagement, more attention should be paid to building supportive and resourceful job environments, e.g. by JD-R intervention aimed at increasing personal and job resources (Wingerden et al 2016;Costantini et al 2017) Finally, it must be remembered that financial rewards are a vital and significant part of every job and, as such, have a tremendous role to play as HRM tools, especially in fulfilling employees' basic needs, attracting and retaining the best employees, increasing performance, or showing appreciation towards teams and individuals (Shaw and Gupta 2015). However, though remuneration packages might be useful tools, they might not be a onesize-fits-all solution for the purposes of HRM, and here our study seems to suggest that financial rewards are weakly related to work engagement.…”