Well-Being in Agile Teams: The Role of Work Demands and Emotional Contagion

Abstract

The present study develops and validates a model that seeks to explain the emergence of shared work engagement and exhaustion in agile teams. Following the team literature, we introduce the concept of agile work practices and make a distinction between agile taskwork and agile teamwork. Based on job demands-resources (JD-R) theory we hypothesize that agile taskwork contributes positively to affective well-being when teams face high (vs. low) levels of work complexity (i.e., high challenge demands). Agile teamwork is hypothesized to contribute positively to affective well-being (WB) when teams face low (vs. high) levels of role conflict (i.e., low hindrance demands). Furthermore, agile teamwork is hypothesized to strengthen the crossover from team-WB to individual-WB through emotional contagion mechanisms. We tested our model in a multilevel field study involving 110 teams (N = 694 employees) of a large German organization. Results of random coefficient analyses supported most predictions of our model, based on both referent-shift and direct-consensus measures of shared work engagement. Results with measures of shared exhaustion as WB outcome were less consistent, particularly with respect to the role of agile teamwork. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on work demands, well-being, and emotional contagion in teams.