Organizational support and employee thriving at work: exploring the underlying mechanisms

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether perceived organizational support for strength use (POSSU) predicts employee thriving at work and the underlying mechanisms that explain this relationship. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on data from an online, time-lagged survey of 209 employees. Latent moderated structural equations (LMS) method was used to test the mediating role of job crafting and meaningfulness and the moderating role of core self-evaluation (CSE) in the organizational support-employee thriving relationship. Findings POSSU has a direct, positive relationship with employee thriving at work. Moreover, this relationship is fully mediated by employees' job crafting (as an agentic work behavior) and meaningfulness (as a resource produced at work). In addition, contextual factor of POSSU synergistically interacts with individual characteristic of CSE to foster thriving at work. Research limitations/implications Based on a time-lagged survey, causal relationships cannot be drawn from this study. Results point to future research that can incorporate specific types of work climate and organizational practices in a multilevel design to investigate how context at team, unit and organizational levels impact employee thriving. Practical implications The study results highlight the importance of fostering employee thriving at work by implementing organizational practices that create supportive, innovative and meaningful workplaces. Management needs to pay close attention to develop a supportive organizational climate geared to identifying, developing and utilizing employees' strengths. Originality/value This study provides theoretical explanations and empirical tests on the mechanisms linking organization support and employee thriving based on the socially embedded model of thriving.