Research On The Relationship Between Employees' Self-control Needs And Work Engagement

As a so far neglected job stress,self-control demands could cause fatigue(need for recovery)in the service staff.If this recovery was not met or slowed,the individual's fatigue would grow.Long-term fatigue could affect the individual's working state and reduce the individual's work behavior(i.e.,work engagement).Resource theory believed that the self-control demands could cause the consumption of individual resources and generate the state that needs for recovery.If this state was not alleviated,the job burnout would be increased.The theory suggested that need for recovery may act as a mediating role in the relationship between self-control demands and long-term job performance.However,there was no empirical study to confirm the mediating role about need for recovery.In addition,need for recovery and work engagement and job burnout as a psychological pressure index in past research to study the relationship between self-control demands and these,not explored related mechanism yet(such as mediation and moderation mechanism),especially the mechanism of organizational level.This research aimed to study the mechanism relationship between self-control demands and the work behavior of individuals from the perspective of organization and individual.In particular,because there was no publicly published Chinese version of the self-control demands scale,need for recovery scale and supervisory-support scale,therefore,the first research aimed to adapt into the Chinese version based on the publicly published English version and preliminarily verified their reliability and validity.The result of the first research indicated:(1)Self-control demands conformed to the three-dimensional theoretical structure of Schmidt and Neubach(2007).The modified three factor model the fitting index was satisfactory.The internal consistency of the questionnaire was 0.85.This scale also had significant correlation with the scales involved workload and work stress state.(2)The need for recovery conformed to the single-dimensional theoretical structure of van Veldhoven and Broersen(2003).The modified single-factor model the fitting index was satisfactory.The internal consistency of the questionnaire was 0.90.This scale had a significant correlation with the scales involved self-control resource status and emotional exhaustion and deindividuation.(3)The supervisory-support conformed to the single-dimensional theoretical structure of O'Driscoll,Brough and Kalliath(2004).The modified single-factor model the fitting index was satisfactory.The internal consistency of the questionnaire was 0.93.This scale had a significant correlation with support1 and 2,respectively.Based on the first research,the second research used the cross-sectional research thought to verify the mediator role of need for recovery in the relation between self-control demands and work engagement,and the moderating role of supervisory-support in the above relationship.The result of the second research indicated:(1)Self-control demands,need for recovery,supervisory-support and work engagement all reached the theoretical mean,at the middle level.(2)There were gender differences in supervisory-support.Specifically,women experienced higher levels of supervisory-support than men.There were differences in age groups between need for recovery and supervisory-support.Compared with under the age of 35 of the teachers,36-45 teachers experienced the higher degree of need for recovery.Teachers under the age of 35 experienced more supervisory-support than teachers 36 and older.(3)The self-control demands contributed a negative influence on worker's work engagement.Self-control demands had a significant indirect effect on work engagement through need for recovery,a mediating effect made by need for recovery counted 41.67% of the total effect(confidence interval of 95%:-0.096,-0.009).The supervisory-support only moderated the relationship between self-control demands and work engagement.The specific performance was that,regardless of the level of supervisory-support,the negative impact of self-control demands on work engagement could be alleviated by the existence of superior support.According to the results,the conclusions of this research were as follows:(1)The reliability and validity of the Chinese version of “self-control demands scale” and “need for recovery scale” and “supervisory-support scale” all met the requirements of psychometrics.(2)Compared with male teachers,female teachers experienced a higher supervisorysupport.Teachers under the age of 35 experienced more supervisory-support than teachers 36 and older.Compared with under the age of 35 of the teachers,36-45 teachers experienced the higher degree of need for recovery.(3)The self-control demands contributed a negative influence on worker's work engagement.Need for recovery played a partial mediating role between self-control demands and work engagement.The supervisory-support only moderated the relationship between self-control demands and work engagement.The specific performance was that,regardless of the level of supervisory-support,the negative impact of self-control demands on work engagement could be alleviated by the existence of superior support.