How psychological capital shapes social workers’ job performance: The mediating role of work engagement?

Abstract

Given the fact that social work is an emotionally demanding profession that may generate negative consequences on social workers and their job performance. Drawing on Conservation of Resource Theory and Broaden and Build Theory, we scrutinize the influence of psychological capital on job performance via work engagement as mediator. Despite being crucial, there is a dearth of research on the factors that consider the positive aspects of social work and influence social workers’ performance, particularly in Palestine. The findings acquired from 433 social workers unveiled that psychological capital had a favorable influence on their engagement in work, which in turn had a significant positive association with job performance. Besides, we discovered that the association between psychological capital and job performance was positively mediated by work engagement. Thereby, this study fills the theoretical gap within the social work literature. A further discussion of the findings, contributions, and future directions is provided.