Abstract
In modern jobs, performing well at work requires to an increasing degree that workers manage and motivate themselves for their tasks. Rather than to rely on a supervisor, they must set their own goals, decide how hard they work to achieve that goal, and decide when the task is completed. This manuscript describes the validation of an instrument that measures the extent to which workers must deal with such “motivational job demands”; the Motivational Demands at Work Scale (Mind@Work). Using data from a Dutch (N = 308) and a Chinese (N = 681) sample of working adults, confirmatory factor analysis showed that this instrument was reliable and robust in both samples, and that the factor structures obtained in both samples were highly comparable. Subsequent analyses demonstrated that high scores on the dimensions of the Mind@Work were associated with higher levels of engagement, work passion, job crafting and innovation behavior, even after controlling for job control, and job demands. These findings suggest that motivational job demands can be measured in a reliable and valid way. Thus, more research that examines the potential of this new concept for well-being and performance of employees seems warranted.
Highlights
The expression that “the times are changing” certainly applies to the way we work
Hypothesis 1 stated that the motivational job demands concept can best be considered as a concept consisting of three separate, yet correlated dimensions, and that this structure should be obtained in both the Dutch and the Chinese sample (Hypothesis 2)
In China this model fitted the data well, with all fit indexes meeting their respective cutoff values; in Netherlands, these cutoff values were met for Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI) (0.91) and Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI) (0.91), but not for Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA) (0.11, with the corresponding 90% confidence interval ranging from 0.09 to 0.12)
Summary
The expression that “the times are changing” certainly applies to the way we work. Social, political, technological, and economic changes, such as national and international regulations, aging, globalization, and the ever-increasing use of information and communications technologies (ICT) and robotics in the workplace result in significant changes in the context in which organizations as well as individual workers must operate (Taris et al, 2019). Organizations are flatter and selfmanaging teams and individual employees have a greater span of control (Lee and Edmondson, 2017), and the increasing use of ICT allows workers to work outside regular working hours and independently of certain fixed locations, such as the company office (Van Steenbergen et al, 2018). These changes pose a major challenge to occupational health psychology. The basis for many of the models used in this field has been laid in the 1960s–80s, during which the industrial sector was strong and where the number of highly structured jobs that offered little challenge was large (Väänänen and Toivanen, 2018). These models (such Karasek’s Job Demands-Control Model, 1979, the Job Characteristics Model of Hackman and Oldham, 1980, and Warr’s (2019) Vitamin model)
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