Connecting value creation for society with work engagement: the relevance of an organization’s public value as an extension of the job characteristics model

Since the seminal work by Hackman and Oldham (1975) there has been a growing body of literature demonstrating how work characteristics can positively both organizations and their employees. While the very nature of the task or job at hand is well explored, insufficient attention has been given to the social and cultural context in which the work is done (Spreitzer & Cameron, 2012). Based on Meynhardt’s public value approach (2009, 2015), we investigate whether organizational public value acts as an additional work characteristic in the Job Characteristics Model (JCM), thus extending the model. Specifically, we theorize that organizational public value is an additional unique resource for employees and social context work characteristic in the JCM that is positively related to employees work engagement. Additionally, our study analyzes that the positive relationship between the work characteristics, including organizational public value, and work engagement is mediated by self-efficacy. Moreover, we analyze whether employees working in industries with a public focus integrated into their core business will experience higher levels of public value in their jobs than employees in other industries. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a representative online survey in different public and non-public organizations in Switzerland (N = 949). Overall, the results support our hypotheses and contribute to close the gap by taking social context factors into the JCM and to reveal processes between the macro-level (organizational public value, work characteristics) and micro-level (employees work experience). Further theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues are discussed in the paper.