Focus on opportunities as a boundary condition of the relationship between job control and work engagement: A multi-sample, multi-method study

Abstract The concept of focus on opportunities describes how many new goals, options, and possibilities employees believe to have in their personal future at work. In this multi-sample, multi-method study, the authors investigated relationships between focus on opportunities and general and daily work engagement and the moderating role of focus on opportunities on between- and within-person relationships between job control and work engagement. Based on a social cognitive theory framework on the motivating potential of a future temporal focus, it was hypothesized that focus on opportunities is positively related to work engagement. Further, consistent with the notion of compensatory resources, it was expected that job control is not related to work engagement among employees with a high focus on opportunities, whereas job control, as an external resource of the work environment, is positively related to work engagement among employees with a low focus on opportunities. Both a cross-sectional survey study (N=174) and a daily diary study (N=64) supported the hypotheses. The study contributes to research on the job demands-resources model as it emphasizes the role of focus on opportunities as a motivational factor in the relationship between job control and work engagement. Keywords: Work engagementFocus on opportunitiesJob controlDaily diary study Notes 1Schaufeli et al. (2002) suggested that vigour, dedication, and absorption represent three distinct dimensions of work engagement. Although we were primarily interested in work engagement as a composite score (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, Citation2006; Sonnentag, Citation2003), we conducted additional analyses in order to test our hypotheses for the three dimensions separately. With regard to Hypothesis 1, the relationship between job control and work engagement was significant for all three dimensions, β=.28, p < .01 for dedication; β=.21, p < .01 for vigour; β=.29, p < .01 for absorption. Further, Hypothesis 2 was also supported for the three dimensions respectively, β=.43, p < .01 for dedication; β=.37, p < .01 for vigour; β=.38, p < .01 for absorption. Supporting Hypothesis 3, focus on opportunities moderated the relationship of job control with dedication, β=−.23, p < .01, vigour, β=−.21, p < .01, and absorption, β=−.18, p < .05.