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Organizational support and employee thriving at work: exploring the underlying mechanisms

Xiaoyu Guan (School of Government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China)
Stephen Frenkel (UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia)

Personnel Review

ISSN: 0048-3486

Article publication date: 13 August 2020

Issue publication date: 10 March 2021

1408

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether perceived organizational support for strength use (POSSU) predicts employee thriving at work and the underlying mechanisms that explain this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis is based on data from an online, time-lagged survey of 209 employees. Latent moderated structural equations (LMS) method was used to test the mediating role of job crafting and meaningfulness and the moderating role of core self-evaluation (CSE) in the organizational support-employee thriving relationship.

Findings

POSSU has a direct, positive relationship with employee thriving at work. Moreover, this relationship is fully mediated by employees' job crafting (as an agentic work behavior) and meaningfulness (as a resource produced at work). In addition, contextual factor of POSSU synergistically interacts with individual characteristic of CSE to foster thriving at work.

Research limitations/implications

Based on a time-lagged survey, causal relationships cannot be drawn from this study. Results point to future research that can incorporate specific types of work climate and organizational practices in a multilevel design to investigate how context at team, unit and organizational levels impact employee thriving.

Practical implications

The study results highlight the importance of fostering employee thriving at work by implementing organizational practices that create supportive, innovative and meaningful workplaces. Management needs to pay close attention to develop a supportive organizational climate geared to identifying, developing and utilizing employees' strengths.

Originality/value

This study provides theoretical explanations and empirical tests on the mechanisms linking organization support and employee thriving based on the socially embedded model of thriving.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Funding: The research is supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos 71802023 and 71871025) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Project No 2018NTSS58).

Citation

Guan, X. and Frenkel, S. (2020), "Organizational support and employee thriving at work: exploring the underlying mechanisms", Personnel Review, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 935-953. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-10-2019-0569

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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