1705: Tracking the Process of Resilience on Work Engagement: The Role of Emotional Inertia (14527)

Adopting a dynamic approach, this study explores the emotional mechanisms through which trait resilience promotes employees’ work engagement. Specifically, we focus on emotional inertia, a key feature of emotional dynamics that refers to the degree to which emotional states are self-predictive and reflects the inflexibility to regulate one's emotions. This study investigated whether emotional inertia mediates between resilience and work engagement-above and beyond the mean level of emotional intensity. Additionally, the study explored whether employees' perceived stress at work moderates this indirect effect. Data were collected from 171 employees who completed emotion surveys five times a day over five days, yielding a total of 3,895 observations. We found that resilience was negatively related to emotional inertia, emotional inertia was negatively related to work engagement, and resilience had a significant indirect effect on work engagement through emotional inertia. The relationship between resilience and emotional inertia, as well as the indirect effect through emotional inertia, was moderated by perceived stress. The effects were only significant when perceived stress was high. It is noteworthy that the above effects apply to both positive and negative emotions. Our study shows the importance of examining employees’ emotional experiences that unfold over time, through which resilience translates into well-being outcomes.

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