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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between engaging leadership and open conflict norms in teams, with work engagement. A mediating role of basic needs satisfaction between these relations is proposed based on self-determination theory.

Structural equation modeling was used with 133 employees who rated their leader, their team and their own basic need satisfaction and engagement to analyze the direct and indirect effects simultaneously.

The analysis confirmed that both engaging leadership and open conflict norms had an indirect effect on work engagement through basic needs satisfaction. Furthermore, engaging leadership was positively related with open conflict norms.

The current study adds to the validation of engaging leadership as it confirms that engaging leaders strengthen work engagement through basic need satisfaction. Furthermore, it shows that not only the leader is important, but the team can impact their well-being through the creation of other social resources as open conflict norms.

This paper provides evidence that not only leaders are important to increase work engagement through basic needs satisfaction but also other social resources, such as conflict management. This offers a brand new perspective and opportunities on how to increase work engagement using social resources as conflict management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association of the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness with affective commitment and turnover intentions among retail employees in India while also examining the mediating role of job satisfaction in these associations.

Research hypotheses were tested using a cross-organizational sample of 244 employees. Existing, established scales were used to measure the research constructs.

The results of this study show that the satisfaction of the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness was positively related to affective commitment and negatively related to turnover intentions. Moreover, the results indicate that job satisfaction mediated the association of basic psychological need satisfaction with affective commitment and turnover intentions.

This study highlights the significant role of basic psychological need satisfaction in retaining employees in a rapidly growing economy that is experiencing very high employee turnover. The findings of this study may be helpful for organizational leaders in taking appropriate actions to create working conditions that facilitate the satisfaction of employees’ basic psychological needs. Satisfaction of employees’ basic psychological needs at work may help in retaining them in the current economic scenario, which is witnessing very high employee turnover.

This research tested the applicability of basic psychological need satisfaction to Eastern collectivistic cultures, particularly to India. Recent socio-economic changes, unique workforce demographics and a predominantly collectivistic culture make India distinct from western and European countries, where most of the earlier research on understanding the nature, antecedents, and consequences of basic psychological need satisfaction has been conducted. This research provides an important contribution not only to basic psychological need satisfaction theory, but also to international business literature.

How to foster voice behavior has always been a hot topic in organizational research; however, the mechanism through which performing decent work affects employee voice behavior remains to be fully understood. To address this deficiency, the current study investigates how basic need satisfaction may relate to perceived decent work and voice behavior and the moderating role of gender. Our research draws upon self-determination theory and social information processing theory.

The theoretical model was tested using two-wave investigation data collected from a sample of 349 employees and 85 supervisors in Southwest China.

Decent work perception was positively related to voice behavior, and this relationship was partially mediated by basic need satisfaction. In addition, the relationship between decent work perception and basic need satisfaction as well as the indirect effect of decent work perception on voice behavior via basic need satisfaction was stronger for men than for women.

This study highlights the pivotal roles of basic need satisfaction and gender in the consequences of decent work perception in the workplace. The authors provide new insights into the relationship between decent work perception and voice behavior and inspire scholars to elucidate other explanatory mechanisms in this link.

Based on soft HRM and self‐determination theory, the aim of this paper is to test whether basic need satisfaction mediates the relationship between five HR practices and HRM outcomes. An important distinction (in line with soft HRM and self‐determination theory) is made between the presence of, and the quality of, a practice's implementation (in terms of the degree to which employees' talents, interests and expectations are taken into account).

A theoretically grounded model is developed and tested using survey data from 5,748 Belgian employees.

The results indicate that autonomy and relatedness satisfaction partially mediate the relationship between HR practices and HRM outcomes. Taking into account talents, interests and expectations within HR practices is associated with higher basic need satisfaction and subsequently HRM outcomes in addition to the presence of practices.

Future research could focus on HR practices and job design as both might affect basic need satisfaction and subsequently HRM outcomes. Additionally, behavior of the supervisor when administering HR practices can be further explored as a catalyst of basic need satisfaction.

HR actors should be aware that merely implementing soft HR practices may not suffice. They should also devote attention towards sufficiently taking into account individual talents, interests and expectations of employees when implementing them.

This paper contributes to the HRM literature by integrating soft HRM and self‐determination theory into one model. In doing so, it sheds light on the possible pathways through and conditions under which HR practices lead to favorable outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study in which central propositions from the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory and self-determination theory (SDT) are used to examine the antecedents of performance during practical internships. The central hypothesis of this study was that job resources foster performance through basic need satisfaction and work engagement (sequential mediation).

An empirical multi-source study among Dutch interns and their supervisors in various occupational sectors. The interns reported their level of resources, basic needs satisfaction and work engagement, whereas supervisors rated interns’ task performance (n=1,188 unique supervisor–intern dyads).

This study integrates insights of the JD-R theory – by examining the relations between job resources, work engagement and performance – with a central premise of the SDT – which maintains that basic need satisfaction is the fundamental process through which employees’ optimal functioning can be understood. The outcomes of the path analyses revealed that satisfaction of needs indeed accounted for the relationship between job resources and work engagement as supposed in the SDT (Deci and Ryan, 2000). Further, the sequential mediated relation between job resources and performance through basic need satisfaction and work engagement corroborates the JD-R theory (Bakker and Demerouti, 2014).

As far as the authors know, this is the first study that examined the sequential mediation from job resources to performance via basic need satisfaction and work engagement, among a large sample of intern–supervisor dyads, including the objective performance rating of their (internship) supervisors.

This paper aims to investigate the relationships between empowering leadership, basic psychological needs satisfaction, work-related well-being, and project citizenship behavior.

Drawing upon the self-determination theory (SDT), a conceptual model was developed and then empirically tested using a cross-sectional survey of 435 project members in Chinese construction projects.

The results fully support the research hypotheses proposed in the study, illustrating the positive impacts of empowering leadership on work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior, the mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction, and the positive association between work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior.

This research determines the utility of empowering leadership in the context of construction projects, especially in enhancing individual outcomes (i.e. work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior). Therefore, construction project managers can apply empowering leadership to meet the basic psychological needs of subordinates to increase project members' work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior.

To our knowledge, the present study first explores the micro-level impacts of empowering leadership in the construction context. Additionally, this study enriches the understanding of the mediating mechanism between empowering leadership and individual outcomes from a self-determination perspective.

Cognitive evaluation theory (CET; Deci, 1975), SDT's first mini-theory, was built from research on the dynamic interplay between external events (e.g., rewards, choice) and people's task interest or enjoyment – that is, intrinsic motivation (IM). At the time, this research was quite controversial, as operant theory (Skinner, 1971) had dominated the psychological landscape. The central assumption of operant theory was that reinforcement contingencies in the environment control behavior, which precluded the existence of inherently satisfying activities performed for non-separable outcomes. During this time, Deci proposed that people – by nature – possess intrinsic motivation (IM), which can manifest as engagement in curiosity-based behaviors, discovery of new perspectives, and seeking out optimal challenges (see also Harlow, 1953; White, 1959). IM thus represents a manifestation of the organismic growth tendency and is readily observed in infants' and toddlers' exploratory behavior and play. Operationally, an intrinsically motivated activity is performed for its own sake – that is, the behavior is experienced as inherently satisfying. From an attributional perspective (deCharms, 1968), such behaviors have an internal perceived locus of causality, as people perceive their behavior as emanating from their sense of self, rather than from experiences of control or coercion.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the associations between students' basic psychological needs satisfaction, including novelty satisfaction, and the four aspects of student engagement.

Data were collected from a total sample of 743 undergraduate students from three public universities in northern Malaysia. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data.

Competence and relatedness were positively related to the four aspects of student engagement, while autonomy satisfaction was found to relate to agentic engagement. Novelty satisfaction, on the other hand, is related positively with behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement.

The results provide a new understanding on the importance of novelty satisfaction alongside existing needs in self-determination theory (SDT) in enhancing student engagement.

Educators are encouraged to develop strategies to provide novelty support and facilitate students' basic needs satisfaction in order to establish a motivational learning environment that vitalises students' engagement.

This study breaks new ground by testing the unique relationships of novelty satisfaction along with the psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, with the four aspects of student engagement in higher education.

This paper aims to investigate whether and how enterprise social media (ESM) affordances affect employee agility.

Adopting self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines a model in which the four ESM affordances (i.e. visibility, association, editability and persistence) impact employee agility through the three basic psychological needs satisfaction (i.e. perceived autonomy, perceived relatedness and perceived competence) of employees. Mplus 7.4 was used to analyze survey data gathered from 304 employees who used ESM in the workplace.

The authors’ findings show that all four ESM affordances contribute to perceived relatedness and perceived competence; visibility and association affordances also have positive impacts on perceived autonomy; and all three psychological needs satisfaction positively impact employee agility.

First, this study adapted SDT to explore how ESM influences employee agility. Second, this study enriches the relevant research on the antecedents of employee agility and also provides new evidence and theoretical support for employee agility. Third, this study effectively expands the antecedents and outcomes of employee basic psychological needs satisfaction in the domain of ESM and agility.

The purpose of this paper is to test two hypotheses. First, an indirect relationship between qualitative job insecurity and turnover intention through basic psychological need satisfaction was investigated. Second, a moderated mediation analysis was conducted to explore potential sectoral differences in this indirect relationship.

A cross-sectional design was used to collect and analyze the data. In total, 358 employees participated in the study (private sector n=178, public sector n=180). The data were collected through an online survey platform.

Qualitative job insecurity was indirectly related to turnover intention through the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. The indirect relationships were more salient in the private sector.

Basic psychological needs may explain the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and turnover intention. Furthermore, sector differences may exist in the way job insecurity is responded to. However, a longitudinal study is necessary to confirm the sequential effects.

The study provides a constructive replication of the findings on basic psychological need satisfaction as a mediator between job insecurity and employee outcomes. A novel aspect is the authors’ focus on sector differences, which draws attention to contextual factors that may shape the way employees respond to job-insecure situations.