Good morning, good day: A diary study on positive emotions, hope, and work engagement

Abstract

The objective of this diary study was to look at the potential positive within-person relationships between positive emotions, work-related hope, and the three dimensions of work engagement on a daily level (i.e. vigor, dedication, and absorption). Following Broaden-and-Build theory and Affective Events Theory, it was expected that the experience of positive emotions would cause hope, which in turn would lead to a state of vigor, dedication, and absorption. The study was conducted among 59 employees of a Dutch university, who filled in a diary questionnaire for five consecutive working days, twice a day. As expected, the experience of positive emotions had an indirect effect on the level of vigor, dedication, and absorption through hope across days. So, it seems that an individual and daily perspective on work engagement is particularly worthwhile and provides valuable insights to enhance employee engagement in practice.

Promoting personal resources and reducing exhaustion through positive work reflection among caregivers.

“…Furthermore, research has shown that positive emotions build hope on a daily basis (Ouweneel et al, 2012). In addition, people who experience positive emotions show increases in optimism (Fredrickson et al, 2003).…”

The Job Demands and Resources Decision Making (JD-R-DM) Model

“…Work engagement and positive emotions are both forms of positive affect (Oerlemans & Bakker, 2013). Whereas work engagement (active positive affect) is enduring and stable, positive emotions are fluctuating and fleeting (Ouweneel, Le Blanc, Schaufeli, & van Wijhe, 2012). Some researchers found that positive affect encourages the use of intuition (Elsbach & Barr, 1999;Sinclair, 2011).…”

How healthy are software engineering conferences?

“…Based on a more refined acceptance probability estimate, one can also consider modeling the prospective author behaviour by weighting the effort she needs to put in preparing a submission against the probability of acceptance and potential benefits such as increased scientific visibility. Similarly to positive emotions affecting work engagement mediated by hope [69], we expect that positive emotions associated with a paper accepted at a prestigious conference in the preceding year give rise to hope, making the author to be more inclined to submit the paper in the year afterwards. Using these kinds of models, conference organisers can obtain additional insights in the impact of different policies recommended in the literature, such as increasing the acceptance rate, on future submissions (cf.…”