Date of Award

5-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Richard L. Griffith

Second Advisor

Jessica L. Wildman

Third Advisor

Lisa A. Steelman

Fourth Advisor

Georgios C. Anagnostopoulos

Abstract

Employee engagement has long been regarded as a positive phenomenon for organizations and individuals. However, recent investigations into unintended, negative consequences of engagement have illuminated the potential “dark side” of engagement. This research applied an organizational fairness lens by investigating the relationship between engagement and psychological contract fulfillment to explain why engaged employees may experience emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions. Additionally, autotelic personality and job crafting were explored as potential mitigating factors in weakening the relationships between psychological contract breach and emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. While findings across two studies did not support the assertion that engagement was related to psychological contract fulfillment in a curvilinear (i.e., inverted U-shaped) fashion, psychological contract fulfillment did partially mediate the relationships between engagement and turnover intention and engagement and emotional exhaustion. Neither autotelic personality nor job crafting behaviors were found to mitigate the effect of psychological contract breach on the outcomes in question. This research contributed to the exploration of the dark side of engagement by investigating a novel perspective to explain and predict the phenomenon and proposing accessible means to lessen negative consequences of engagement. While ultimately this research did not yield evidence of the dark side of engagement, future research is proposed to expand researchers’ understanding of the dark side of engagement.

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