Search

Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to explore the interplay of psychological conditions that influenced personal engagement among university students. As a theoretical lens through which to investigate this, the study used the job demands-resources model, the study demands-resources model, and the leader–member exchange theory. This study further aimed to explore outcomes that supported students in becoming lifelong learners (i.e., deep-learning approach). Method: Participants were undergraduate students registered at a South African university. We used a purposive, non-probability sampling strategy and employed a cross-sectional survey research design. This study used Mplus version 8.6 for the statistical analyses. Results: Results showed that the psychological conditions of meaningfulness (study resources), availability (burnout risk), and safety (student–leader–member exchange) influenced student engagement. In addition, the results showed that study demands were positively associated with student engagement, although this association can be regarded as small. Furthermore, study resources and student engagement were associated with a deep approach to learning. Conclusions: Findings from the present study demonstrated that Kahn’s theory carried implications beyond the workplace and held true in a student learning environment. Further, an exploration of the psychological conditions that led to engagement showed that the job demands-resources model and the study demands-resources model could be used to operationalise study resources as psychological meaningfulness and burnout risk as availability. Similarly, in the context of exploring the student-lecturer relationship, student leader–member exchange could be operationalised as psychological safety. Implication for Practice: Leaders in higher education are encouraged to focus not only on ensuring that students receive adequate support in terms of structures and physical resources during periods of uncertainty, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic, but to adopt a holistic approach that includes considering all the psychological conditions that encourage and promote students’ engagement.

The aim of this study was to explore the influence of perceived authentic leadership on followers’ citizenship behaviour and their intention to quit their jobs, and to examine the indirect effect of psychological ownership in the relevant relationships. The study used a cross-sectional survey design to gather data from a sample of South African service industry employees ( N = 384). It employed structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses formulated. The study found that psychological ownership indirectly affected the relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ organisational citizenship behaviour and intention to quit. This study enables organisations to gain a better understanding of how a contextual resource such as authentic leadership behaviours can influence followers’ organisational citizenship and intention to quit through increasing feelings of ownership of the organisation.

Studies have shown that employees react negatively towards negative supervisory behaviour. Therefore, a questionnaire that could measure the quality of various aspects of the employment relationship could be a useful tool for managing and promoting healthy employment relationships. In the light of this, the aim of this study was to develop a questionnaire that measured the perceived quality of the employment relationship from the employee’s perspective. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted on a non-probability convenience sample of 248 employees from various organisations and sectors in South Africa. Although a 39-item questionnaire was developed across four theoretical dimensions, namely trust, fairness, good faith and justice, the analysis revealed that only two dimensions, labelled social factors and compliance factors and measured by 20 items, were sufficient to measure the desired construct. This questionnaire, which measures the perceived employment relationship quality, could be used as a diagnostic tool by management and HR professionals to determine the state of supervisory relationships in an organisation, and to address any problems brought to the fore, thereby avoiding turnover costs related to negative workplace relationships.

This volume provides a multi-disciplinary perspective on grit, its measurement, manifestation and development. Specifically, it aims to provide a comprehensive and balanced retort to the criticises associated with the construct within the contemporary positive psychological literature. These critiques are firmly cantered around the lack of consensus in girt’s conceptualization, measurement, and management as well as how it differs from other psychological constructs such as conscientiousness, diligence or determination. This lack in consensus resulted in various new ‘theories’, psychometric instruments, and interventions to rapidly emerge from other disciplines. These developments could lead to either seminal advancements in the understanding of grit or lead grit to becoming yet another victim of the ‘jingle-jangle fallacy’. Therefore, this volume aims to provide a thorough multidisciplinary reappraisal- and consolidation of the nature, function, measurement and implications of grit in order to effectively advance the science of achievement. Written by a team of multi-disciplinary experts in fields ranging from neuroscience, sociology, and education to human resource management and psychology, this volume firmly positions Grit within the discipline of positive psychology’s nomological lexicon.

Recently, particular attention is being given to grit (as a personality trait) and its associated individual and organisational outcomes. Gritty individuals are more likely to remain interested in achieving their goals over an extended period, despite failure, adversity and setbacks. As a result, literature suggest relationships between grit and outcomes such as career success and performance. However, empirical studies investigating these direct relationships are inconclusive, since findings indicate these relationships as weak to moderate. Although gritty employees might perform better or experience career success, what remains unclear are understanding the theoretical and psychological mechanisms (possible influencing variables) through which grit may lead to performance or career success. Using the distal-proximal framework, the argument are being made that grit as a distal personality trait is unlikely to have a direct effect on work behaviour, but rather indirectly through proximal motivational variables. Thus, for the transformation of distal attributes (e.g. grit) to increase performance, the proximal mechanisms (possible influencing variables) becomes significant. Once such possible proximal- mechanism (influencing variable) that have already been linked with employees’ performance and attachment to their careers, is psychological ownership. Psychological ownership is defined as a cognitive-affective state in which an individual feels a sense of ownership for a target that could be tangible or intangible in nature. Through a review of existing literature, we explore the possible associations or the influencing role that psychological ownership may play in the relationship between grit and employees’ task performance and perceived subjective career success. Based on the distal-proximal perspective we propose that psychological ownership as a proximate, domain-specific flexible psychological construct which may influence both the grit-performance as well as grit-subjective career success relationship. To date, no research has explored these relationships theoretically based on extant literature. Thus, this chapter aims to contribute to the field of career development and talent management by exploring whether grit, as a trait, could play a role in enhancing employees’ task performance and perceptions of career through psychological ownership within an organisational context providing a possible basis for future empirical studies.

The study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the MHC-SF within selected organisational contexts. Specifically, the aim was to determine the factorial validity, measurement invariance, and reliability of the instrument for South African organisations. A cross-sectional online survey-based research design was employed, coupled with a convenience sampling strategy (N = 624). The results showed that the original three-dimensional factor structure of the MHC-SF fitted the data the best. Items loaded statistically significantly on all three subscales (emotional, psychological, social wellbeing). Further, the scale showed full configure, convergent and metric invariance between males and females. However, invariance was not established in either age cohorts, language groups, or marital status. The instrument proved to be reliable at both a lower (Cronbach Alpha) and upper level (Composite reliability) limit within South African organisational contexts.

The information and communication technology (ICT) sector within the Netherlands is a major driver of globalization, the country’s economic growth and innovation. The Dutch ICT sector’s performance is increasingly becoming dependent upon employee driven innovations in order to address the needs of the sectors they service. In other words, the ICT sector within the Netherlands is largely dependent upon the performance and innovative capacity of its employees; both of which are functions of employee engagement. Given the high demand, and low supply of talent within this sector, ICT organizations need to develop innovative ways to enhance the performance capacities of its people. Developing an engaged and highly innovative workforce seems to be an efficient way to activate employees’ performance. As such, the aim of this paper was to investigate the mediating function of employee driven innovative work behaviors in the relationship between work engagement and task performance within the a Dutch ICT consulting firm. A cross-sectional survey-based research design, employing a census-based sampling method, was employed to obtain data from a global ICT consulting firm within the Netherlands (n = 232). The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, the Innovative Work Behavior Scale and the Task Performance Scale was used to assess the associative subjective experiences of ICT employees. The results showed that work engagement is a significant driver for innovative work behaviors, which in turn affects the task performance of employees. Further, innovative work behaviors are therefore important to translate the engaging energies of employees into performance. This paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

An increasing number of women are entering the workforce. Many of them are mothers and are therefore expected to combine motherhood with occupation. However, because of the complexity of these two roles, it is difficult to maintain a successful career and a satisfying personal life, and this difficulty can influence women’s commitment and intention to stay with organisations. Nonetheless, when women perceive this experience as enriching, it can enhance their career wellbeing and positively influence their perceptions of their subjective career success. This chapter describes work-family enrichment (WFE) and subjective career success (SCS), as well as an empirical study that the authors conducted. Given the importance of WFE and SCS for the overall wellbeing of employed women, this chapter’s objective is to explore the possible indirect effect of SCS on the relationship between WFE and two retaining factors (i.e. commitment and turnover intention). The empirical study was based on the quantitative survey data obtained from 240 employed females, and mediation analyses were conducted using Mplus software.

This book shares the theoretical advancements that have been made regarding psychological ownership since the development of the construct and specifically the practical applications within multi-cultural and cross-cultural environments. Enriched by empirical data and case studies by subject specialists in the field, this book serves as a cutting-edge benchmark for human resource management specialists, industrial psychologists, as well as students in positive organizational psychology and professionals in other fields. This book follows an in-depth view of the most recent research trends in psychological ownership. Offering practical tools of how the psychological ownership of employees could be developed in the workplace to not only enhance the performance of organisations, but to increase the commitment of employees and influence the intentions of skilled employees to remain with their organisations.

The aim of this chapter is to explore, based on the literature, the role that psychological ownership can play in the career success of individuals. The specific focus is whether psychological ownership can foster subjective career success, which could result in increased positive work-related outcomes. To date, no research has been conducted on ways in which employees’ psychological ownership can play a role in the success of their career. Thus, this chapter aims to explore this relationship as a contribution to the field of career development and talent management.

This study determined the measurement equivalence of the South African Psychological Ownership Questionnaire (SAPOS) for black and white South African employees. Participants were a non-probability sample of 645 professional level employees from both the private and the public sector (59.4% were females, 35.2% were black and 52% were over the age of 40. Over 90% of the participants have college education qualifications and nearly 41.7% had been working in their current organisations for a period of less than 5 years). Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyse the data. The results indicated that factor variances appeared to be equal for the two groups although differences existed in factor loadings and covariances.

Psychological ownership is a cognitive-affective construct that is used to measure individuals’ feelings of possessiveness towards material and immaterial objects. The existence of psychological ownership strengthens an individual’s feelings of responsibility towards and influence over a target and has behavioural effects on both the individual and the organization for which the individual works. The aim of this chapter is to explore the theory underlying the role that psychological ownership can play when applied to the GROW model of coaching within a multicultural context. It is posited that psychological ownership can enhance a coach-client relationship and can help a client to solve problems, make better decisions, learn new skills, and even progress in a role or career. Furthermore, psychological ownership may enhance an individual’s perception of meaningfulness and self-determination during the coaching process, which may have positive outcomes for both the individual and the individual’s organization in a multicultural context such as South Africa.

The Job Characteristics Model, the accompanying Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) and the proposed steps for improving motivation, satisfaction and performance have been functionally utilized in South Africa as a revised job redesign practice to address some critical human resources problems currently facing managers and human resources practitioners. The aim of the study was ] to determine the construct validity of the Revised Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) in the South African context. The Revised JDS was evaluated using item analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The finding of this study is in favour of the Revised JDS as a reliable and factorially valid instrument for South African use. The promising results of this study should pave the way for further research and the search for more conclusive evidence on the construct validity of the Revised JDS in the South African context.

This chapter explores the possible role that individuals’ psychological ownership can play in their career anchors, since job satisfaction and commitment are common denominators of both constructs. The chapter will commence with a description and an explanation of career anchors and psychological ownership. The possible relationship between the seven dimensions of psychological ownership and the eight career anchors is explored to indicate possible linkages. Several propositions are developed, based on their theoretical relationship, and these propositions are illustrated in a proposed figure.

Many scholars, consultants and practitioners have recently focused their attention on ‘ownership’ as a psychological, rather than just a business phenomenon. Psychological ownership is defined as a state in which individuals feel as though the target of ownership or a piece of it is ‘theirs’ (that is ‘It is mine!’). It suggests that, the presence of psychological ownership among employees can have a positive effect on organisational effectiveness. The main aim of this paper is to introduce and describe a new kind of ownership, known as ‘psychological ownership’ that could be a valuable managerial construct for improving talent retention and organisational effectiveness within the South African work environment. The research methodology followed an extensive literature review in order to compile the construct for psychological ownership, which was then validated by a panel of nine scholarly subject-matter experts by applying Lawshe’s quantitative approach to content validity. The study resulted in a multidimensional construct for psychological ownership with high content validity, consisting of a promotion-orientated and prevention-orientated dimension. Promotion-orientated psychological ownership consists of six theory-driven components: Self-efficacy, sense of belonging, self-identity, accountability, autonomy and responsibility. Territoriality, the seventh dimension, was identified as a preventative form of psychological ownership. The particular relevance of this paper is the introduction of a positively oriented psychological ownership construct that can be utilised by managers and human resource professionals as a potential guideline to facilitating talent retention and productivity in the current work environment.

The Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) and the Job Characteristics Model (JCM) have been widely used in South African organisations. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the JDS is useful if it is applied to a particular population or to groups from highly dissimilar backgrounds. Cultural diversity research has revealed differences between the values, attitudes and leadership styles of people from different cultural groups. In this study, Hackman and Oldham’s JDS was applied to Black and White employees (n=66) to determine construct equivalence for these two cultural groups. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that there were no significant differences between the Black and White groups tested, suggesting that the JDS could be applied to different population groups. Opsomming Die Pos-diagnostiese vraelys (JDS) en die Pos-kenmerke Model (JCM) word wydverspreid deur Suid-Afrikaanse organisasies gebruik. Die doel van hierdie studie was om te bepaal of die JDS van toepassing is op verskillende kultuurgroepe. Navorsing rakende kultuurdiversiteit het aangetoon dat daar verskille bestaan rakende die waardes, houdings en leierskapstyle van verskillende kultuurgroepe. In hierdie studie is die (JDS) van Hackman en Oldham toegepas op Swart- en Blanke werknemers (n=677) ten einde die konstruk-ekwivalensie daarvan bepaal. ’n Bevestigende faktorontleding het aangetoon dat daar geen betekenisvolle verskille bestaan tussen die Swart- en Blankegroepe wat getoets is nie. Die aanname word dus gemaak dat die JDS toegepas kan word op verskillende populasiegroepe.

The study investigated the construct validity of the Locus of Control Inventory (LCI) for first and second language respondents. The results of confirmatory factor analysis revealed differences in the construct validity of the LCI for the first language (n=357) and second language (n=387) respondents. Item discrimination values, scale reliabilities and factor structures revealed that the three hypothesized domains, (namely external locus of control, internal locus of control and autonomy) underlying the LCI could be confirmed for the first language group, but not for the second language group. Opsomming Die studie het die konstrukgeldigheid van die Lokus van Beheer Vraelys (LBV) vir eerste en tweede taal respondente ondersoek. Die resultate van ‘n bevestigende faktorontleding het verskille in die konstrukgeldigheid van die LBV vir eerste (N=357) en tweede taal (N=387) respondente blootgelê. Itemdiskriminasie waardes, skaalbetroubaarhede en faktorstrukture het onthul dat die drie hipotetiese gebiede, (naamlik eksterne lokus van beheer, interne lokus van beheer en outonomie) wat onderliggend is aan die LBV, bevestig word vir die eerste taal groep maar nie vir die tweede taal groep nie.

Popular criticism is that psychometric instruments, based largely on middle-class White values, knowledge and culture are biased and less valid for other population groups. It is therefore important that the testing of persons with highly dissimilar backgrounds receive greater attention. In this study the LCI of Schepers was applied to Black and White tertiary students to determine the construct validity of the instrument for different cultural groups. It was found that there is evidence of differences in the construct validity of the LCI for the Black (n=376) and White (n=374) groups. The item discrimination values, scale reliabilities and factor structures revealed that the three hypothesised constructs, namely external locus of control, internal locus of control and autonomy underlying the LCI, were confirmed for the White group but not for the Black group. Opsomming Die algemene kritiek teen psigometriese instrumente wat grootliks op Blanke waardes, kennis en kultuur gebaseer is, is dat die instrumente sydig en minder geldig vir ander populasiegroepe mag wees. Dit is dus belangrik dat sydigheids- en geldigheidsaspekte veral aandag geniet by die toetsing van persone uit verskillende kultuurgroepe. In hierdie studie is die LVB van Schepers op Swart en Blanke tersiêre studente toegepas om die konstrukgeldigheid van die instrument vir verskillende kultuurgroepe te bepaal. Die resultate dui daarop dat die konstrukgeldigheid van die LVB vir die Swart (n=376) en Blanke (n=374) groepe verskil. Die item-diskriminasiewaardes, skaalbetroubaarhede en faktorstrukture dui daarop dat die drie konstrukte waaruit die LVB bestaan, naamlik ‘n eksterne lokus van kontrole, ‘n interne lokus van kontrole en outonomie vir die Blanke groep bevestig is, maar nie vir die Swart groep nie.

Psychological ownership is a cognitive-affective construct based on individuals' feelings of possessiveness towards and of being psychologically tied/attached to objects that are material (e.g. tools or work) and immaterial (e.g. ideas or workspace) in nature. Research suggests that psychological ownership could be influenced by various individual, organisational and contextual factors. The South African Employment Equity Act, which was implemented to grant equitable opportunities to previously disadvantaged employees, could be a significant contextual factor affecting psychological ownership, due to perceptions associated with inequality. Ethnicity may also act as a moderator for the relationship between perceptions of employment equity and psychological ownership. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between employment equity perceptions and psychological ownership and to explore whether ethnicity plays a moderating role in the relationship. A cross-sectional survey design was employed with a purposeful sample of 202 respondents employed in a large South African mining house. Pearson product-moment correlations and structural equation modelling confirmed that employment equity perceptions could predict the five components of psychological ownership. However, the results revealed that ethnicity has no moderating effect on the relationship between perceptions of employment equity and the emergence of psychological ownership. By implication, organisations that seek to retain employees targeted through equity initiatives need to find ways to enhance and develop the psychological ownership of these employees. The research contributes new insights into and knowledge of how contextual factors could influence employees' psychological ownership.