Familie Mehdorn Stiftung

Drawing from conservation of resources theory, this study examines the curvilinear relationship between of employees’ work engagement, and job performance. We also hypothesized employees’ feedback-seeking behavior as a pertinent boundary condition that mitigates this curvilinear relationship. Finally, we suggest personal resources to mediate the work engagement-job performance relationship. Data were gathered from 190 employees and their supervisors in Ukraine (study 1) and 171 employees and their supervisors in Pakistan (study 2). The results show that while work engagement enhances job performance, this effect occurs at a declining rate as work engagement increases. Feedback-seeking behavior moderates this curvilinear relationship, such that the decline in the rate at which work engagement enhances job performance is mitigated by higher levels of feedback-seeking behavior. Furthermore, after controlling for the role of feedback-seeking behavior, the curvilinear effect of work engagement on job performance is mediated by personal resources (i.e., self-efficacy, optimism and resilience). These findings have significant implications for research and practice.

Based on the assumptions of moral disengagement theory, we hypothesized that under despotic leadership employees tend to engage in moral disengagement it in turn fosters employee outcomes (unethical work behaviour, negative workplace gossip and retaliation). Moreover, we hypothesized that moral identity affects the despotic leadership and moral disengagement relationship; we also hypothesized that moral identity moderates the mediated relationship. Employing a multi-wave and two-source sample, data was collected from employees and their peers (n=255) in the services sector of Pakistan. We validated the proposed framework using the moderated-mediation technique. Results supported the mediating effect between despotic leadership and employee outcomes using moral disengagement. The results revealed that the impact of despotic leadership on moral disengagement was weaker under high moral identity and vice versa. Furthermore, it was revealed that moral identity moderates the mediated relationship. The study concludes with implications, limitations and directions for future research.