84 Chapter 4 Proactive vitality management and work engagement. When employees proactively manage their vitality, they have an abundance of affective, cognitive, and energetic resources to carry out their work tasks (e.g., positive affect, focus, inspiration, energy). These resources will particularly be invested in work when employees have a strong desire to develop mastery at work through learning. Employees who hold learning goals seek work-related challenges (Porath & Bateman, 2006), and are enthusiastic about the initiatives they undertake (Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004). They will actively search for possibilities to use and develop a variety of skills, and this will have a positive impact on work engagement. In contrast, employees who lack learning goals will spend their mental and energetic resources on ongoing work activities and will not search for ways to enrich their work or make it more exciting. Moreover, those low in LGO will not persist when confronted with hindrances or challenge job demands. Furthermore, when employees hold performance avoidance goals, they may proactively manage their resources but the potential of these resources will not be used to go the extra mile. Employees high in PAGO primarily aim to circumvent displays of incompetence that could lead to negative judgments or embarrassment (VandeWalle, 1997). They avoid taking new initiatives at work in order to prevent the risk of failure (Belschak & Den Hartog, 2010). This means that for employees high in PAGO, the affective, cognitive, and energetic resources mobilized through various activities will not lead to more work engagement. In contrast, employees low in PAGO are not afraid of making mistakes and will be able to allocate all the new resources to their work tasks. Therefore, they are more likely to be dedicated to work and get immersed in their work activities (i.e. be work engaged) when they have proactively managed their vitality in or outside the work domain. Hypothesis 3. The positive relationship between proactive vitality management and work engagement is moderated by goal orientation. More specifically, this relationship is (a) stronger when employees have a learning goal orientation, and (b) weaker when employees have a performance avoidance goal orientation. Work engagement and creativity. Work engagement is positively related to creativity, because engaged employees are persistent and show cognitive flexibility (Eldor & Harpaz, 2016; Koch et al., 2015). This flexibility and persistence will particularly lead
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw