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While often used in everyday exchanges, feeling vigorous at work, that is individuals’ feelings that they have physical strength, emotional energy, and cognitive liveliness, has hardly been subjected to any conceptual inquiry or empirical research. In this chapter, I pursue the following objectives: (a) to review the range of behavioral science literature in which vigor has been considered as a distinct affect; (b) based on this review, to present a conceptual framework of vigor at work; (c) to explore the antecedents of vigor and its consequences, including vigor’s possible effects on individuals’ mental and physical health, and job performance; and (d) to describe a proposed measure of vigor at work and the results of an effort to construct validate the new measure. I conclude by pointing out a few open research questions that concern the study of vigor at work.

We compared the fit of our data with four different theoretical expectations regarding the direction of effect across time between job satisfaction and vigor. Respondents were 573 apparently healthy employees who had completed questionnaires while undergoing a periodical health examination at two points in time, T1 and T2, about 22 months apart. We found that the model that predicted that job satisfaction influenced vigor in a unidirectional way best fitted the data. Our findings provided support for theories postulating that job satisfaction, representing an overall appraisal of job conditions, has a unidirectional impact on positive affects at work.

This study supposes to provide new insights into the role of leader behaviors in motivating employees by examining how and when spiritual leadership and contingent reward leadership facilitate employee vigor at work.

Drawing from self-determination theory (SDT), the current study proposes that spiritual leadership intrinsically motivates employees, whereas contingent reward leadership extrinsically motivates employees – both of which subsequently improve employee vigor at work. The theoretical model was tested through a sample of 191 employees collected across three time points in China.

Results revealed that spiritual leadership positively facilitates employee vigor at work through enhancing their work enjoyment, and employees' need for achievement can amplify the effects of spiritual leadership. In addition, employees' performance-reward expectancy transmits the effects of contingent reward leadership on employee vigor at work, and leaders' performance expectations play a key role in strengthening the positive influences of contingent reward leadership.

Based on SDT, this study provides a comprehensive explanation of how and when two patterns of leader behaviors affect employee vigor at work. Therefore, the authors provide significant insights for leadership and work design in human resource management.

Based on the broaden-and-build theory, this study aims to clarify that the relationship between extraversion and service outcomes will be mediated by work vigor, and that, in turn, this mediating effect will be moderated by coworker support. Specifically, the authors examine vigor as an attitudinal resource to drive organizational performance.

This research collected 181 valid questionnaires from service industries through a two-wave survey. The authors used hierarchical regression analysis to conduct each hypothesis test. Owing to the conditional mediating effect, the authors differentiated each variable centering and used the fractional number and the product as the predictor variable, moderator, and interaction effects after centering.

The relationships between extraversion and customer orientation and service performance mediated by work vigor in that the indirect relationships are stronger when perceived coworker support is higher than is lower.

Future studies are suggested to probe into different forms of social support (e.g. family support), mechanisms of coworker support (e.g. task-related vs. non-task-related assistance), and different workplace contexts.

Extraversion, as a personality trait, is a significant reference index to examine an applicant's qualifications during recruitment, particularly in service organizations. Appropriate job assistance and emotional conciliation from coworkers can effectively facilitate employees' work vigor and service outputs.

Previous studies suggested the influence of different personality traits on different dimensions of work engagement. Accordingly, investigation indicates that extraversion can effectively predict work vigor which is an important attitude of willingness to put personal efforts at work to facilitate frontline service outcomes.

Employee silence is pervasive in the workplace and can be severely detrimental to employees' job satisfaction. However, research on why and when employee silence undermines job satisfaction remains poorly understood. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, the authors proposed and tested a moderated mediation model wherein employee silence predicted job satisfaction through vigor, with positive affectivity acting as a dispositional moderator.

Two-wave time-lagged data were collected from a sample of 183 employees in Taiwan. A moderated mediation analysis with latent variables was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Results indicated that employees' vigor mediated the negative relationship between employee silence and job satisfaction only for employees with low positive affectivity.

By identifying vigor as a psychological mechanism explaining the negative effect of silence on job satisfaction and positive affectivity as a buffer against the detrimental effect of silence on vigor and, indirectly, job satisfaction, the results provide a more nuanced understanding of why and when silent employees are less satisfied with their jobs.

COVID-19 placed millions of employees under work-from-home/telework. Employers intend extending telework for the long-term, anticipating business benefits. But the benefits are impacted by employees' well-being/ill-being, which is affected by the satisfaction of psychological needs. In turn, need satisfaction is influenced by employees' personal/job attributes. As work-from-home's blended environment disrupts routines, the satisfaction of the psychological need for structure or routines was examined in this study, along with the effect of personal/job attributes.

Cross-section primary data were collected from 500 teleworking information technology employees from India and analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. Vigour and exhaustion represented well-being and ill-being. Telework self-efficacy, standardised job, technology assistance and supervisor social support were the determinants or personal/job attributes. Need for structure satisfaction was the mediator.

Telework self-efficacy, technology assistance and supervisor social support were positively associated with structure satisfaction. In turn, structure satisfaction was related positively with vigour and negatively with exhaustion, and thus mediated between personal/job attributes and vigour/exhaustion. Standardised job did not affect vigour, exhaustion or structure satisfaction.

Need for structure is mostly studied as a trait, with implications of greater/lesser preference for structure examined. However, this work acknowledges structure as a basic ubiquitous need. Everyone needs some structure. Hence, need for structure is researched from the novel perspective of its satisfaction. This paper also uniquely combines job demands–resources model which identifies personal/job attributes, with concepts of epistemic which posit the need for structure.

The traditional perspective in the occupational and organizational psychology literature aimed at understanding well‐being, has focused almost exclusively on the “disease” pole. Recently, however, new concepts focusing on health are emerging in the so‐called “positive psychology” literature. The purpose of this paper is to test multiple possible linkages (or profiles) between certain personal, organizational, and cultural variables that affect both burnout and vigor. Burnout (disease) and vigor (health) are assumed to represent two extreme poles of the well‐being phenomenon.

An innovative statistical treatment borrowed from data mining methodology was used to explore the conceptual model that was utilized. A self‐administered questionnaire from a sample of 1,022 physicians working in Swedish public hospitals was used. Standardized job/work demands with multiple items were employed in conjunction with the Uppsala Burnout scale, which was dichotomized into high (burnout) and low (vigor) score. A combination of ANOVAs and “classification and regression tree analyses” was utilized to test the relationships and identify profiles.

Results show an architecture that predicts 59 percent of the explained variance and also reveals four “tree branches” with distinct profiles. Two configurations indicate the determinants of high‐burnout risk, while two others indicate the configurations for enhanced health or vigor.

In addition to their innovative‐added value, the results can also be most instrumental for individual doctors and hospitals in gaining a better understanding of the aetiology of burnout/vigor and in designing effective preventative measures for reducing risk factors for burnout, and enhancing well‐being (vigor).

Focusing on the positive aspects of business trips, the current study aims to examine the antecedents of vigor and the crossover of vigor from business travelers to their spouses.

The sample consisted of 275 business travelers and their working spouses. The business travelers were required to travel abroad several times a year within the framework of their jobs. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The study finds that demands on the travelers (number of trips) and their resources (trip control and their business trips satisfaction) were positively related to travelers' vigor. Furthermore, as hypothesized, travelers' vigor crossed over to spouses' vigor.

The limitations of this paper are the use of a cross‐sectional self‐report survey. Its implications are that it showed that positive feelings may cross over between partners. Further research should focus on additional positive outcomes.

This is the first study that set out to investigate crossover relating to business travels and one of the few that focused on and found confirmation of crossover of positive experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a growing research field on the subject of intra-organizational social capital (IOSC) and its effects on employee job performance.

Data were collected from a sample of 209 employees in community centers. The variables that were specified are IOSC, vigor, self-efficacy, and a supervisor report regarding employee performance.

The results indicate a mediation-moderation model in which the connection between IOSC and employee performance is mediated by vigor and moderated by self-efficacy.

Although the sample includes employees from a single organization, collecting data from different sources within the organization permitted to overcome this limitation. Mainly, the current findings emphasize the importance of the interaction between environment and personality.

Creation and preservation of IOSC in organizations increases the employee vigor and can serve to upgrade performance.

The important role of IOSC in organizations has been confirmed. Furthermore, the combination between supportive environment and personality traits can foster employee performance.

The effect of hotel employee safety behavior has not as yet been investigated. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of hotel employee ternary safety behavior on negative safety outcomes, as well as the moderation effects of job vigor and emotional exhaustion.

A questionnaire survey of 16 medium- and high-star-rated hotels in southeast China was conducted and 571 responses were received for model estimation. The statistical analysis techniques adopted were confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, hierarchical regression, and structural equation modeling.

The results showed that: (1) safety compliance and participation positively predicted safety adaptation; (2) the three dimensions of safety behavior contributed to reducing negative safety outcomes, and there was a multiple mediation process in their relationship; and (3) job vigor positively moderated the influence of safety compliance and adaption on negative safety outcomes, and emotional exhaustion negatively moderated the influence of safety participation on negative safety outcomes.

This research provides greater insights into the relationship between safety behavior and outcome performance within the hotel industry, and yields theoretical and practical implications for improving employee safety behavior and hotel safety performance.