Empirical Study On The Influence Of Job Characteristics On Employees’ Work Engagement

As an important concept in the field of organizational behavior and human resource management, work engagement is not only directly and closely related to the job satisfaction and job performance of employees, but also largely determines the achievement of organizational development and strategic objectives. Therefore, how to improve the level of employee’s work engagement has always been one of the important issues in the field of human resource management and enterprise management. Since Winslow Frederic Taylor, the father of scientific management, proposed the " Principles of Scientific Management " in 1911, in twentieth Century for a long period of time, the strict control of the staff occupy the mainstream of management ideas. Managers through the development of a variety of rules and regulations control the staffs thinking and behavior, in order to achieve the intended target of the enterprise. After entering twenty-first Century, with the arrival of knowledge economy, the knowledge experience and potential of employees are becoming more and more important on the enterprise. In the context of knowledge and technology intensive work, because of the great changes in the work content and the way of work, it is very difficult to only rely on the rules and regulations to make the human resource of this "living productive forces" to play the greatest effect.In this case, the academic community and enterprise managers gradually began to focus on a variety of ways to enhance employee motivation, it is not limited to the adoption of the rules and regulations of the ways to enhance the work performance of employees. Among them, an important management idea is to strengthen the psychological motivation of employees. This transformation provides a theoretical basis for the study of psychological well-being and employee work engagement..Specifically, in the theory of research, along with the development of positive psychology, the study of scholars from the perspective of job burnout turned to the work engagement. In 2001, Maslach et al in a more comprehensive review of the previous work burnout research results pointed out that after 30 years of exploration, the definition of job burnout and its quantification has become increasingly mature, including its influence factors, situation improvement and so on. Therefore, to study in depth the future direction of development, we should expand the scope of the study of job burnout, its active opposite-work engagement (work/job engagement) is also included in the study framework.With the rise of positive psychology, people pay more attention to positive subjective experience, positive individual characteristics and positive organization (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi,2000). As an important positive trait, work engagement is bound to become a hot topic and focus of research in the fields of psychology, management, organizational behavior, human resource management, etc.. (Shuck,2011)So how can promote the work of the staff? What are the factors that affect the employee’s work engagement? On this issue, many scholars have entered a lot of research and made a lot of academic value. Some scholars refer to the important condition of work resources, the work and social support of the organization can improve the staffs work investment. The support management style and leadership style can predict the employee’s work engagement. Some scholars have pointed out that, one of the most important antecedents of work engagement is job characteristics. In fact, the study of the relationship between job characteristics and work engagement was first carried out by Hackman and Lawler. Subsequently, Hackman and Oldman proposed the job characteristics model from the perspective of work design, and studied specifically the relationship between job characteristics and work engagement.The scholars in our country have made some useful exploration on the relationship between job characteristics and work engagement. However, the object of the research is mainly focused on civil servants, researchers, clinicians, media workers, sales personnel and so on.In our country, there is still a lack of researches on the different ownership enterprises, different job types, and different work features those have universal and large-scale sample studies. At the same time, it is also very rare to study the mechanism and moderation between the relationships.In an increasingly fierce market competition environment, organizations in order to survive and develop, which the requirements of the staff is more and more high, hope that employees love and devote themselves to work, but unfortunately, some employees are increasingly shown on the work of apathy and alienation, that is, work alienation.Therefore, in the theoretical research, work alienation is a new perspective to explain the psychological and behavior of employees in theory, and in practice, it is helpful for the organization to actively respond.In view of the above reasons, this paper summarizes job characteristics, work engagement, and the relationship between them on the basis of existing research results, through the introduction of mediator variable work alienation, moderator variable of transformational leadership and optimistic personality, constructs the study model, expounds the inherent mechanism of job characteristics affect employee work engagement.I hope to further research and explore the following issues. Mainly in different organizations, the job characteristics of the various dimensions to the staff will have a kind of impact? Is work alienation play an intermediary role in the direct effect of job characteristics and work engagement? Whether transformational leadership and optimistic personality between work alienation and work engagement plays a regulatory role? The answer to these questions and test, it is undoubtedly to expand the field of human resources related research has important theoretical significance and guiding practical value.For the above considerations, this paper is based on 852 valid questionnaires from more than 30 enterprises in Beijing, Shanghai, Anhui, Yunnan, Xinjiang, Qinhuangdao, Shandong, Shenyang, Dalian, Anshan, Benxi, Yingkou, and other cities. This research is divided into 8 chapters, the specific content is as follows:Chapter 1, introduction. This chapter introduces the background, meaning, content, framework as well as the technical route and structural arrangements. The research methods and possible innovations are also discussed.Chapter 2, literature review. This chapter respectively reviews the related literature about job characteristics, work engagement, work alienation, transformational leadership as well as dispositional optimism. Their definitions, measures,antecedents and consequences have been reviewed deeply.Chapter 3, the related scales test in Chinese scenarios. This chapter does the EFA and CFA of job diagnostic survey(JDS-R), work alienation scale, transformational leadership scale, dispositional optimism scale as well as work engagement scale by the software of AMOS and SPSS.Chapter 4, research on the direct effect of job characteristics on employees’work engagement. This chapter firstly builds a conceptual model of the direct effect and put forward the research hypothesis, and then in the above based on the survey data, does the SEM analysis respectively on the direct effect between job characteristics and work engagement by use of the AMOS 20.0 software.Chapter 5, research on the mediation effect of work alienation on the relationship between job characteristics and employees’work engagement. This chapter first constructs the corresponding mediation conceptual models and put forward the research hypothesis, and then in the above based on the survey data, use the AMOS software to do the SEM analysis of the mediation of work alienation in the relationship between job characteristics and employees’work engagement from their different dimensions.Chapter 6, research on the moderation effect of transformational leadership and dispositional optimism on the relationship between work alienation and employees’ work engagement. This chapter first constructs the moderating conceptual model and put forward the research hypotheses, and then in the above based on the survey data, use SPSS20.0 software to do the analysis of the moderation effect of transformational leadership and dispositional optimism on the relationship between work alienation and employees’ work engagement.Chapter 7,the comprehensive model research on mechanism the job characteristics on work engagement. This chapter first constructs, the moderating conceptual model and put forward the research hypotheses, and then in the above based on the survey data, use SPSS20.0 software to do the analysis of the moderate effect that transformational leadership and dispositional optimism imposed on job characteristics and work engagement which are mediated by work alienation.Chapter 8, conclusions and enlightenments. This chapter summarizes the main conclusions of this thesis, expounds the theoretical contributions and practical significance, analyzes the limitations and prospects the future research direction.The main conclusions:First, job characteristics have significant influence on work engagement; second, work alienation play a partial and full mediation effect on the relationship between job characteristics and work engagement of different dimensions; third, transformational leadership and dispositional optimism has the moderation effect between work alienation and vigor, dedication dimensions of work engagement, but not between work alienation and absorption dimension of work engagement.The main innovation of this paper:First, clarify and reveal the working mechanism which job characteristics on work engagement. In this paper, we discuss the direct impact of the job characteristics of the various dimensions on work engagement, and find that the relationship between job characteristics and work engagement is mediated by work alienation.This is not only the application of the Chinese data and the empirical research method to validate Hackman and oldman’s classic job characteristics model in the context of China, more important, clarifies and reveals the mechanism between job characteristic and work engagement for the classical job characteristics model proposed by Hackman and oldman,Second, find that transformational leadership and dispositional optimism have a moderating effect on work alienation and work engagement. This new discovery can be a basic principle of various types of ownership in our country. According to the basic principle of positive organizational behavior, develop management methods that can effectively promote the staff to improve the level of work engagement, respectively from the view of management ways, leadership style and staff individuals.