A conservation of resources perspective on public sector employee work engagement
基于资源保存理论，通过两项研究分别考察了心理安全感和工作重塑的中介作用以及乐观主义的调节作用，揭示了领导-成员交换影响公共部门员工工作投入的机制与边界条件。
Abstract Research on how and when leader–member exchange (LMX) impacts work engagement in different public sector contexts and categories of employees is scarce. Utilising conservation of resources theory, we advance research on LMX and work engagement in two studies. Study 1 investigates the mediating role of a contextual resource (psychological safety) and an energy resource (job crafting) in a resource‐rich context, and Study 2 investigates the moderating role of a personal resource (optimism) in a resource‐poor context. Study 1 uses a three‐wave research design with employees from the engineering and technical divisions of an Irish public utility operating in the energy market and found that both psychological safety and job crafting functioned as partial mediators. Study 2 uses a sample of teachers and tutors from three Irish local authority education and training organisations and found that subordinate optimism moderated the LMX work engagement relationship. Our study findings highlight that both psychological safety and job crafting operated as important linking mechanisms and shed light on how LMX is linked to work engagement in the case of public utility employees. We also found that employee optimism provided an explanation of when it will impact work engagement with employees working in an education context. We highlight theory and practice implications.