Can an Entrepreneurial Personality Compensate for a Boring Job?: The Influence of Proactive Personality and Job Characteristics on Employee Engagement Levels

Abstract

We examined the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and employee engagement by studying 101 Indian managers across three companies. In addition, we studied the moderating role of three job characteristics (autonomy, skill variety and task feedback) on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and employee engagement. The results of this study show that individuals who score high on entrepreneurial orientation are likely to score high on employee engagement. In addition, we found that individuals high on entrepreneurial orientation experienced high engagement levels when their jobs were characterised by low levels of autonomy, low levels of skill variety and high levels of task feedback. The findings indicate that a proactive personality does compensate for some non-motivating elements of job design.