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The objectives of this study are twofold: firstly, to examine the effect of job variety on employee engagement and job burnout, and the effect of employee engagement and job burnout on employee happiness and job stress, respectively. Secondly, it examines the mediating role of employee engagement between job variety and employee happiness, as well as the mediating role of job burnout between job variety and job stress.

Data were collected from front-line nurses working in the health sector in Pakistan's major cities. A total of 169 samples were collected using online and face-to-face data collection approaches. The theoretical model was tested using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 4.0.

The findings of this study highlight that job variety has a positive impact on employee engagement, which in turn leads to employee happiness among professional frontline nurses. Additionally, job variety as a demand increases employee burnout, which subsequently increases frontline nurses' job stress. The results also indicate that employee engagement mediates the relationship between job variety and employee happiness, while burnout mediates the relationship between job variety and job stress.

To date, there has been little research investigating the dual impact of job variety, leaving a significant gap in the existing literature. This study aims to address this gap and provide implications for both academics and HR managers by challenging the misconception that job variety is always a positive job resource.

The literature on job crafting has paid scant attention to the role of skill variety, one dimension of job characteristics, as a predictor of employee job crafting. By integrating regulatory focus and social exchange perspectives with job crafting literature, the authors investigate how skill variety promotes employee job crafting and the moderating roles of employee's promotion focus and procedural justice climate.

The authors conducted two questionnaire surveys, one with a sample of 205 employees from a variety of organizations in China, and the other one with a sample of 265 employees within 44 work groups at a state-owned enterprise in China, to examine the hypotheses.

Results suggest that a high level of skill variety within a job promotes employee job crafting, that such an effect is stronger when the employee's promotion focus is high rather than low, and that procedural justice climate mitigates the negative influence of a low level of promotion focus.

The authors' findings suggest that both self-regulatory and social exchange mechanisms play a critical role in promoting employee job crafting when individuals are engaged in jobs that entail a high level of skill variety.

– While researchers have discussed the association between career change to self-employment and job satisfaction, few have considered how the association is achieved. Therefore, in this study, the authors aim to explain this relationship from the perspective of job quality. The authors build on job design theory to propose and empirically test how fluctuations in job satisfaction as associated with the transition to self-employment can be explained by changes in job quality.

– The authors tested their propositions using a longitudinal, nationally representative database from Australia for the 2005–2019 period. The final sample included 108,384 observations from 18,755 employees.

– In line with the literature, the authors found that job incumbents experienced low job satisfaction in the years prior to their career change to self-employment and that their job satisfaction improved after the transition. More importantly, the authors found the same change pattern for job quality – measured as job autonomy and skill variety – and the statistical results demonstrated that job quality was the key determinant of job satisfaction during the process.

– This study advocates the importance of job quality in managing employee wellbeing and facilitating retention.

– The authors contribute to the literature by uncovering how job quality, represented by skill variety and job autonomy, can explain fluctuations in job satisfaction during individuals’ career change from paid employment to self-employment.

Although a substantial body of research has examined the effects of job characteristics on job attitudes, there is a paucity of work on individual difference moderators of these relationships. Based in selective optimization with compensation theory and socio-emotional selectivity theory, the purpose of this paper is to show that age moderated the relationship between task variety and two key job attitudes, job satisfaction and engagement.

Data were collected through self-report questionnaires (n=152), using a time-lagged design with two waves (two to three weeks between T ₁ and T ₂).

The authors found that task variety had a stronger relationship with job satisfaction and work engagement for younger workers compared to older workers.

Although there was good age variance in the sample, it had fewer late-career workers and more workers who are in their early and mid-career.

To have workers of all ages satisfied and engaged at work, we need to understand which work characteristics are the best for them. For example, it may be a competitive gain for organizations to challenge younger workers with different tasks, and to challenge older workers in ways that utilize their experience.

The study addresses a societal issue related to profound demographic changes in the age composition of the workforce, gaining a better knowledge of differences between workers of different ages to promote effective interventions and policies.

This is the first study to show that task variety differentially affects worker satisfaction and engagement depending on the age of the worker.

The increased expectations regarding job performance accompanied by changes in employment relationships in public organizations require special concern for the employability enhancement of their workers. Literature on the subject points out the importance of job content in the context of employability enhancement. The purpose of this paper is to answer the following question: what are the relationships between job variety, the learning value of the job, employability and job performance?

The paper presents the results of a survey which was carried out in 2016. The sample consisted of 566 pairs, i.e. employees and their immediate supervisors in 147 public organizations which provide key public services in Poland. A model of the relationships between job variety, the learning value of the job, employability and job performance was proposed and tested using path analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM).

It was found that both job variety and the learning value of the job were positively connected to employability, which mediated their relationships with job performance. However, the analysis revealed that the examined predictors not only affected employee work outcomes indirectly, through their impact on employability, but also directly influenced the quality of job performance.

The study has provided empirical evidence regarding the relationships between job content, employability and job performance, which was hitherto absent from public organizations. An original conclusion from the research is that employability enhancement brings positive results for both employees and organizations.

Building on the premise of conservation of resources theory (COR) that people protect their knowledge as a resource, the authors questioned whether the contextual nature of job resources buffers the counterintuitive positive relationship between evasive knowledge hiding (KH) and task performance.

Two multisource field survey studies were conducted to examine the moderating influence of task-job resources on the knowledge hiders' task performance. Hierarchical regression analyses tested the main effect of evasive KH on task performance. In addition, conditional process analyses were applied to examine two-way and three-way interactions of evasive KH, job autonomy and task variety.

The data analysis showed a positive relationship between evasive KH and task performance. Moreover, the authors found that employees receiving accumulative task-job resources continued to hide knowledge and used abundant resources to increase their task performance further. However, contrary to expectations, for employees—who received partial task-job resources—their task performance deteriorated when evasively hiding knowledge.

Managers and human resource practitioners should acknowledge that employees' evasive KH to co-workers is not always wrong and should not be treated like it is. Moreover, they are endorsed to pay attention and invest in job resources since job autonomy and task variety create a beneficial context for knowledge holders' task performance.

The authors provided novel theoretical (the gain-loss perspective of COR theory) and consistent empirical (confirmed by two field-study evidence) arguments for an important contextual role of an HRM practice of job design in shaping the underrepresented knowledge behavior–task performance relationship.

Previous studies on job characteristics have been performed mainly in Western contexts. More empirical evidence is needed to understand the important job characteristics of positive job outcomes in a non‐Western context. Therefore, this research has two objectives: to assess the impact of five job characteristics on work attitudes and behaviors in the UAE, and to test the mediating impact of distributive justice on the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship.

The study reports responses of 350 employees from five large organizations operating in Dubai. Data were collected on a structured questionnaire containing standards scales of job characteristics, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, distributive justice, and some demographic variables. After testing scales reliability and validity, the proposed linear relationships were tested using a series of separate hierarchical regression analyses. Proposed mediation hypotheses were tested using Baron and Kenny's recommendations.

Consistent with studies conducted in a Western context, the study showed that skill variety and feedback have functional impacts on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Contrary to Western studies, the study reported that task identity and task significance have functional effects on work attitudes and behaviors. Autonomy also showed unexpected positive relationship with turnover intentions. Additionally, distributive justice mediates some of the relationships between job characteristics and work outcomes.

The limitations of common method bias and cross‐sectional data are discussed in the light of implications for future research. Nevertheless, the results provide new insights on the influence of job characteristics on work outcomes in a non‐Western context of the UAE. Also, the study reported evidence for the mediating impact of distributive justice on the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship.

The study has implications for enhancing work behaviors and attitudes. In general, enhancing certain job characteristics can result in higher‐level employee outcomes. Also, managers should improve some of the contextual factor (i.e. distributive justice) in order to enhance the impact of job characteristics on work outcomes.

The study is considered to be one of the first to examine the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship in a non‐western context of the UAE. Also, it is among the first studies to test the role of distributive justice as a mediator for the job characteristics‐work outcome relationship.

In 2006, Saks (2006) published one of the first empirical studies of the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Since then dozens of studies on engagement have been published and most of them have used the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to measure work engagement. The purpose of this paper is to revisit Saks (2006) to try and address some issues that have arisen during the last ten years and to assess the generalizability of his findings and model using the UWES measure of work engagement and single-item measures of job and organization engagement.

Additional analyses was conducted using the data from Saks (2006) including measures of each job characteristic, the use of the UWES measure of work engagement, and single-item general measures of job engagement and organization engagement. In addition, a review of engagement research was conducted as well as research that used Saks’ (2006) measures of job engagement and organization engagement.

The results indicate that skill variety is the main job characteristic that predicts job engagement. The results of the analysis using the UWES measure of work engagement found that job characteristics and perceived organizational support are significant predictors of work engagement, and work engagement predicts job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior and intentions to quit and mediates the relationship between the antecedents and the consequences. Similar results were found using the single-item measures of job engagement and organization engagement. A review of the engagement literature indicates general support for the Saks (2006) model of the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement and for his measures of job and organization engagement. A revised and updated model is provided with additional antecedents and consequences.

The results indicate that organizations can drive employee engagement by focusing on skill variety as well as providing social support, rewards and recognition, procedural and distributive fairness, and opportunities for learning and development. In addition, organizations can assess employee engagement more frequently and easily by using single-item measures of job and organization engagement.

This paper provides an update and revision of the Saks (2006) model of employee engagement and suggests that the main findings are similar when using the UWES measure of work engagement and single-item general measures of job engagement and organization engagement.

Like all social institutions, work undergoes periodic redefinition. The definitive features of early industrial conceptions of work were

The authors explore the nature of commitment, job satisfaction and job characteristics, and the nature of the interrelationships among these variables concerning expatriate employees in Saudi Arabia. An examination of a sample of 504 expatriate employees reveals that these employees are, by and large, indifferent with respect to their perceptions of commitment, job satisfaction, and job characteristics. In addition, the results provide strong support for (1) the influence of job satisfaction on commitment, (2) the influence of job variety on commitment, and (3) the influence of job autonomy, identity, and feedback on job satisfaction.