The Relation between Personality Trait, Psychological Capital, Work Flow and Engagement in Teachers

BELÉN MESURADO; MARSHALL VALENCIA

París

Congreso; 28th International Congress of Applied Psychology; 2014

Individual differences in work settings have been fertile areas of research among organizational psychologists. With the emergence of the Big Five model, the last two decades saw the substantial increase of research on personality in relation to various aspects of work life. Psychological capital or PsyCap has been defined as ?an individual?s positive psychological state of development and is characterized by: (1) self-efficacy (2) optimism (3) hope; and (4) resilience (Luthans et al., 2007, p. 3). Flow is a state of consciousness where people become totally immersed in an activity, and enjoy it intensely. When flow is applied to the work situation, it can be defined as a short-term peak experience at work that is characterized by absorption, work enjoyment and intrinsic work motivation (Bakker, 2005). Prior research emphasized the relation between personality trait and flow experiencies, in different types of activities. However, there is a gap in the literature in terms of identifying whether personality attributes affects work flow. Although there are not prior evidences about relationship between Psycap and work-flow, It is possible to find different studies that show an important relation between flow and dimentions included in Psycap. On the other hand, another contruct associated with work-flow is work engagement. Work engagement is ??a positive, fulfilling, affective-motivational state of work-related well-being?? (Leiter & Bakker, 2010, p. 1). Engaged employees are characterized by high levels of energy and involvement in work. The current study examine mediator role of Psycap in the relationship between Extroversion and Work-Flow. And moderation role of Engagement on Work-Flow. Two hundred forty Argentinean professors (aged 22 to 65, M = 38.96; SD = 10.21), participated in this study by completing inventories on Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann 2003); Positive Psychological Capital (PsyCap) (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007) ; Utrech Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006) and Work-related flow inventory (WOLF) (Bakker, 2010). The result allows us to affirm that personality trait in employees are associated with PsyCap. However personality trait has no direct effects on work-flow. PsyCap fully mediates the relationship between extraversion and work-flow. Finaly, our study showed that engagement has a direct and moderate effect on work-flow.