Good employees through good jobs: A latent profile analysis of job types and employee outcomes in the Belgian electricity sector

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify different job types in the Belgian electricity sector and their relations with employee outcomes such as work engagement and innovative work behaviour (IWB).

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses a combination of latent profile analysis and relative operating characteristics (ROC) analysis.

Findings

Depending on the job resources and demands, five different job types are identified corresponding largely to the Karasek and Theorell (1990) job types. Their relation with the outcomes is not parallel with low-strain jobs performing best for work engagement, and active jobs for IWB.

Research limitations/implications

The combination of methods used in this study increases significantly the ease of communication of the findings, yet an external benchmark for the ROC analysis would be preferable.

Practical implications

To foster engagement and IWB with employees one should focus on the job content and only increase demands if they are combined with sufficient resources.

Originality/value

This research is the first in its kind that relates latent job types with different employee outcomes using a combination of latent profile and ROC analysis.

Citation

De Spiegelaere, S., Ramioul, M. and Van Gyes, G. (2017), "Good employees through good jobs: A latent profile analysis of job types and employee outcomes in the Belgian electricity sector", Employee Relations, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 503-522. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-02-2016-0034