The influence of purpose in work-life, job engagement, and meaningfulness on cognitive, affective, and behavioral well-being: A regulatory focus theory approach

While interest in employee well-being has existed in the literature for decades, little is known about the effects of purpose in work-life, job meaningfulness, and job engagement on employee cognitive, affective, and behavioral well-being. Current literature is clear in that work-life purpose is considered an antecedent to job meaningfulness because it provides an employee with a sense of meaning and purpose in his or her work (Hirschi et al., 2012; Rosso et al., 2010; Wrzesniewski, 2003) and thus enhances the perception of the job as meaningful (Hirschi, 2012). However the effects on how job engagement impacts employee well-being are largely unknown. The purpose of this study was to assess the moderating influence of promotion and prevention self-regulation focus on the influence of job engagement on cognitive, affective, and behavioral well-being. The study had four main purposes: (a) to better understand the significance of job-engagement's effect on cognitive, affective, and behavioral well-being; (b) to explore the effect of job meaningfulness and purpose in work-life on job engagement; (c) to assess whether well-being operates as two constructs or one construct with two dimensions (cognitive and affective); and (d) to assess the moderating influence of promotion and prevention self-regulation focus (Higgins, 2001) on the influence of job engagement on cognitive, affective, and behavioral well-being. Self-regulation theory (Higgins, 1997) was applied in this study, and the data were collected via two surveys of company employees in the United States. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was the methodology used for the analysis leveraging both SAS JMP and M-Plus. The results from the study reveal that prevention self-regulation weakens the relationship between employee job engagement and cognitive employee well-being, in support of self-regulation theory. The results also suggest that job engagement has a positive effect on cognitive, affective, and behavioral well-being. Management researchers and human resource professionals may benefit from the results of this study by providing early leadership training programs that develop employee engagement and self-regulation capabilities that impact employee cognitive, affective, and behavioral well-being. Well-being has been established as a lead indicator for stress reduction, improves heart health, and promotes overall healthfulness of an employee.