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In 2002 a seminal article of Work Engagement was published in Journal of Happiness Studies by Schaufeli, Salanova, Bakker & González-Romá. Since then, hundreds of scientific articles had been published around the globe, and the great interest and publications on the topic still continues. For example, a search (January, 2012) in PsycINFO, the leading database of academic publications in psychology, yielded 140 peer reviewed journal articles on ‘‘work engagement’’, 61 on ‘‘employee engagement’’, and 30 on “job engagement”. And more importantly, more than 80% of these articles used the UWES (Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, Schaufeli, Salanova et al., 2002) as the measure of the construct. It seems that Work Engagement is a very popular topic, not only in research but also in consultancy as well. For instance, a Google search (January, 2012) reveals 28,600,000 hits for ‘‘employee engagement’’ and 632,000,000 hits for ‘‘work engagement’’. If we look into the past about the “story” of work engagement, we can associate its study to the idea that after years and years of being studying job burnout (the theoretical opposite to work engagement), it was time to shift our focus from investigating the negative side of psychological health at work and start to study its positive side. This is coincident with the Positive Psychology movement, which became more prominent since the beginnings of the century. Whereas traditional psychology focuses on disease, disability and malfunctioning, Positive Psychology focuses on well-being, human strength and optimal functioning. Following this recent trend, Luthans (2002, p. 179) argued that we need positive organizational research as well, which he defined as ‘… the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today’s workplace’. Currently, Positive Organizational Psychology moved around the globe with more and more specific scientific journals, conferences and seminars, university teaching programs and PhD theses. In that International exciting context, we can characterize work engagement as the competence (energy or vigour) and willingness (involvement or dedication) to work passionately and with enthusiasm. Furthermore, empirical work seems to confirm the divergent role of the third dimension of work engagement—absorption (e.g., Salanova, Llorens, Cifre, Martínez, & Schaufeli, 2003; Schaufeli, Taris, & van Rhenen, 2008).

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2012-10-12   |   560 visitas   |   Evalua este artículo 0 valoraciones

Vol. 14 Núm.1. Marzo 2012 Pags. 1 CyT 2012; 14(Esp.)