A current trend in organizational job design is to provide employees increased autonomy to enhance their performance. Using the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory as a working framework, the present study proposes proactive vitality management and work engagement as sequential mediators of this relationship. Thus, we test a parsimonious model that encompasses both individual strategies (i.e., proactive vitality management) and affective-cognitive (i.e., work engagement) factors as explanatory mechanisms in the link between autonomy and performance. Data from 256 Romanian employees were gathered and analyzed via structural equation modeling. The results provided support to our model. Specifically, we found proactive vitality management and work engagement to fully mediate the relationship between autonomy and performance. As such, our model validates the theoretical assumption of the JD-R theory that employees who engage in individual strategies (i.e., proactive vitality management) can capitalize on existing job resources (i.e., autonomy) to increase their well-being (i.e., work engagement) and performance. Furthermore, by identifying proactive vitality management as a mediator in the relationship between autonomy and performance, we provide practitioners with a set of proactive behaviors that can complement resource-replenishing activities (e.g., coffee break) in securing and sustaining high energy levels at work.

Job resources play a prominent role in employee performance literature, yet a fine-grained understanding of how resources are relevant for several performance types is still needed. Relying on the Job Demands-Resources and Conservation of Resources theories, the present study addresses this call in two ways. First, it examines the predictive effect of four job resources (i.e., role clarity, feedback, autonomy, and opportunities for development) on nine types of performance (i.e., proficiency, adaptivity, and proactivity as an individual, team, and organization member). Second, it tests the moderator role of strengths use in these relationships. Data was gathered from a sample of Romanian employees (N = 332) and analyzed via hierarchical multiple linear regression. The results indicate that the selected job resources are, indeed, predictors of different types of employee performance and not in a unitary manner. Role clarity and feedback appear to be the most relevant predictors for various performance types, while autonomy seems to be the least important. Also, strengths use moderates these relationships, but in a reinforcing manner only regarding opportunities for development. The interaction of strengths use with role clarity and feedback renders the latter two obsolete, indicating that individual strategies may act as substitutes for job resources. These findings add to the Job Demands-Resources theory's versatile nature and provide more clarity to practitioners who plan interventions to enhance specific performance types, taking individual strategies into account.

This study provides a cross-lagged examination of the relationships between proactive vitality management, work–home enrichment, and entrepreneurial performance. Specifically, based on the Job Demands-Resources and Conservation of Resources theories, we postulate a mediation model where proactive vitality management leads to entrepreneurs transferring resources developed in their work role to thrive in their home role (i.e., work–home enrichment), resulting in augmented entrepreneurial performance. The hypotheses were tested with data collected at two time points, 1 onth apart—T1 (N = 277) and T2 (N = 249), from Romanian entrepreneurs. We analyzed autoregressive, causal, reversed, and reciprocal models to test the mediation model. In the linkage between predictor and outcome variable, the reversed model is the best-fitting model, showing that proactive vitality management is only a distal precursor of performance. However, the best-fitting models for the relationship between predictor and mediator and between mediator and outcome were the reciprocal models. Thus, proactive vitality management and work–home enrichment have reciprocal effects on each other over time, as was the case between work–home enrichment and entrepreneurial performance. These results are in line with the resource gain cycle perspective of the Conservation of Resources theory. Employing proactive behaviors to optimize functioning at work enables the transfer of resources to the home role. Potentiating one role through aspects of another will thus generate additional resources reflecting on entrepreneurial performance. Hence, this study provides insights into precursors and mechanisms that can shape entrepreneurial performance.

Purpose: Based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, this study aims to identify person-contingent antecedents and consequences of proactive strength-oriented behaviors at work. Thus, the authors propose and test a model in which psychological capital (PsyCap), as a personal resource, represents a precursor of strengths use, which in turn is a facilitator of employees' self-rated performance.Design/methodology/approach: The authors tested the hypothesized mediation process through a cross-lagged study with three waves, using data collected from a sample of Romanian employees. The authors analyzed the data through structural equation modeling.Findings: The results provided support for our model. The data showed significant, positive cross-lagged relationships between PsyCap, strengths use and performance across waves. Also, the authors identified a significant and positive indirect effect between PsyCap at T1 and performance at T3 through increased strengths use at T2.Originality/value: This research brings new evidence for strengths use's placement as a proactive individual strategy within the JD-R theory. Practical implications are related to career self-management and work from home.

Purpose: Based on the Job Demands-Resources theory, this study investigates whether psychological capital (PsyCap) is a precursor of the one-directional work-to-home enrichment (WHE) process through a parallel mediation mechanism enabled by promotion-focused job crafting components.Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 231 Romanian employees. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).Findings: PsyCap (what I can do) is an antecedent of all three promotion-focused job crafting behaviors (what I actually do) and WHE. Two specific job crafting dimensions – increasing social job resources and increasing challenging job demands – fully mediate the link between PsyCap and WHE. Increasing structural job resources does not predict WHE.Originality/value: This study identifies PsyCap as an antecedent of WHE. It also uncovers underlying behavioral mechanisms that enable the transfer of resources from the work role to individuals' home role by investigating job crafting components as distinct dimensions. As such, it gives practitioners a clearer understanding of which behaviors they should seek to cultivate for employees to potentiate their home role through aspects of their job.