This study is an investigation of the relationships among job meaningfulness, work engagement, and performance, including testing for a possible mediation effect of work engagement on the relationship between job meaningfulness and performance. We examine task interdependence as a boundary condition that facilitates employee engagement using two-stage multiple-source respondent data drawn from a sample of 183 Uzbek employees from public organizations and their 47 supervisors to test the hypotheses. The research findings confirm a positive association between job meaningfulness and engagement and the relationship between work engagement and performance. Mediation analysis using bootstrapping indicated that work engagement explained the influence of meaningfulness on performance. Furthermore, task interdependence negatively moderated the relationship between meaningfulness and engagement. This study responds to calls for researchers to identify the key and situational drivers of work engagement as well as examine the importance of meaningfulness in the public sector. It also increases the external validity of the findings by examining the relationship between engagement and performance in a non-Western context, namely, Islamic Uzbekistan. Despite the limitations of this research, the empirical findings contribute to the growing body of research on work engagement and meaningfulness in public organizations.

The physical format of office configuration has advanced to mirror the intricacy of modern work and the transitory nature of contemporary employment. Drawing on the social exchange theory, this study examines the effect of office design and psychological empowerment on the relationship between transformational leadership and employee organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). A total of 216 subordinates and 49 supervisors completed questionnaire items from ten organizations in Uzbekistan. The survey was conducted in two waves and designed to have multi-source respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis was run to examine the discriminant validity of our measurement model. Ordinary least square regression-based analysis was used to analyze direct and interaction effects, and then it was followed by bootstrapping tests to identify mediation effects. Results reveal that transformational leadership is significantly related to psychological empowerment, and that psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and OCB. Furthermore, the relationship between psychological empowerment and OCB is stronger in an open-plan office type. This study confirms that transformational leaders are adept at bringing out the best in their followers, influencing their OCB by increasing intrinsic motivation (psychological empowerment). Office type—specifically, open-plan offices—will intensify employee willingness to engage in extra-role behaviour.