Too Stressed To Be Engaged? The Role of Basic Needs Satisfaction in Understanding Work Stress and Public Sector Engagement

• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Date: 01 March 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026020912516
• Author: Jessica Breaugh
• Subject Matter: Articles

912516PPMXXX10.1177/0091026020912516Public Personnel ManagementBreaugh
research-article2020
Article
Public Personnel Management
2021, Vol. 50(1) 84 –108
Too Stressed To Be Engaged?
© The Author(s) 2020
The Role of Basic Needs
https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026020912516
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Satisfaction in Understanding
DOI: 10.1177/0091026020912516
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Work Stress and Public
Sector Engagement
Jessica Breaugh1
Abstract
This article explores employee engagement by linking stress, motivation, and
employee engagement theory and testing this across 30 countries and eight public
sector occupations. First, it is argued that work stress will be negatively related
to engagement. Self-determination theory is then used as a basis for exploring the
positive link between basic needs satisfaction (BNS) and engagement. It argued that
BNS will moderate the relationship between stress and engagement due to the impact
that BNS has on coping strategies. These claims are tested using the 2015 wave of
the European Working Conditions Survey. Results show stress and engagement are
negatively related, whereas BNS and engagement are positively related. Moderation
analyses revealed that the detrimental relationship between stress and engagement
is lessened for individuals who have strong interpersonal relations at work. This
suggests that social relationships play an important role in managing stressful work
environments.
Keywords
employee engagement (EE), self-determination theory (SDT), stress, motivation
theory, public administration
Introduction
The desire to foster employee engagement (herein, “engagement”) is a core interest of
public administrations around the world, because of its connection to performance
1Hertie School, Berlin, Germany
Corresponding Author:
Jessica Breaugh, Hertie School, Friedrichstraße 180, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Email: j.breaugh@phd.hertie-school.org

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Breaugh
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outcomes (Hameduddin & Fernandez, 2019; Lavigna, 2015; Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2016). Engagement refers to the
all-encompassing feeling of being involved in one’s work (Kahn, 1990) and has been
the focus of scholarly literature for over three decades. More recently, Vigoda-Gadot
et al. (2012) have argued that engagement studies within the public sector may offer
an opportunity to bridge the protracted divide between the rational and affective public
servant as engagement takes into consideration both performance-oriented outcomes
and a sense of meaning and dedication. However, very little public administration lit-
erature has focused on this area of study, despite the interest of practitioners
(Hameduddin & Fernandez, 2019). Even rarer are studies that examine this from a
cross-national and cross-occupational perspective. This opens the opportunity for pub-
lic management literature to expand as a discipline, incorporate new concepts into its
repertoire, forge new links between existing theoretical understandings, and test these
links using a large sample of public servants.
A variety of antecedents have been linked to engagement. These include job char-
acteristics such as skill variety, task identity, and task significance, as well as feedback,
supervisor support, rewards, and organizational justice (Saks, 2006, 2019). However,
what is less understood is the relationship between negative antecedents on engage-
ment (e.g., stress), as these tend to be associated with burnout research. However,
burnout and engagement are only moderately correlated (Schaufeli et al., 2008; Taris
et al., 2017), which means that likely also have different relationships to antecedent
variables.
As a result of recent fiscal crises, and a rapid state of change in reform initiatives
around the work (Kettl, 2005), public organizations find themselves in a constant state of
change related to budgetary pressures, personnel reductions, and work intensification,
which has led to increased employee stress (Hammerschmid et al., 2016; Kinman &
Jones, 2005; Noblet & Rodwell, 2009). This leaves one to question the extent to which
stress is associated with lower engagement, and more importantly, what can organiza-
tions do to mitigate this. One approach is to examine different job characteristics.
According to the Job Demands Resources Model (JDR), job characteristics that lead
to high levels of engagement are enhanced by job resources and deflated by job demands.
Therefore, a stressful work environment can be considered a specific type of work
demand that places a burden on employees (Van den Broeck et al., 2008). However,
according to JDR, job resources can have the opposite effect. Within the context of this
research, self-determination theory’s concept of basic needs satisfaction (BNS) intro-
duced as a bundle of job resources that may enhance engagement. According to JDR
theory, the actual satisfaction of basic needs can be considered job resources (Bakker &
Demerouti, 2007), which leads to higher job engagement because resources activate and
energize motivational processes, which are the sources of engagement (Bakker &
Demerouti, 2007; Loughlin & Murray, 2013). By using BNS theory, the underlying psy-
chological mechanisms that link to engagement are examined, which can be used to
develop targeted intervention strategies (Meyer & Gagné, 2008, p. 61).
The theory of BNS is an important concept to introduce to the engagement litera-
ture because it is universal, has been tested using a variety of different methods, and

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Public Personnel Management 50(1)
can be applied in a variety of different environmental settings. It is also parsimonious
in its psychological link to autonomous, or engaged, behavior (Meyer & Gagné, 2008).
This is relevant for the development of the JDR theory because it offers a means of
grouping job resources under the umbrella of the three basic needs outlined by self-
determination theory and introduces more parsimony into the theory. Overall, it is
argued that although stress may hinder the engagement processes, and BNS enhances
it, BNS can act as a buffer for the effects of stress. This responds to calls for the intro-
duction of motivation theory into the theory of engagement (Meyer & Gagné, 2008),
and the need to study the relationships that a variety of engagement antecedents have
with one another (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017).
This article, therefore, contributes to the literature in four ways. First, it contributes to
the theoretical development of engagement by integrating the tenants of motivation the-
ory into understanding engagement, which offers a universal and tangible means in
which to improve employee outcomes. Second, it tests these claims from a cross-national
perspective, providing much needed cross-country analysis of work-related issues.
Third, by using a variety of different organizational and contextual factors, this research
addresses calls to better integrate levels of analysis in public administration (Roberts,
2020). Finally, by examining stress and organizational support mechanisms, this research
responds to the literature that has called on further examination of how institutional and
contextual factors are related to engagement (Truss et al., 2013).
From a practitioner perspective, this research sheds light on questions related to the
likelihood of employees disengaging from their work under stressful work conditions.
If this is the case, the intervention strategies to reduce a loss of engagement would be
more cost-effective than the costs of providing care for employees with burnout (i.e.,
absenteeism, lower productivity). It is also practically significant as supporting work-
place needs may improve the experience of public servants by mitigating how they
handle stress and developing targeted interventions that support competence, auton-
omy, and relatedness, with the purpose of enhancing engagement. These insights may
also be useful for the design of administrative reforms related to increasing engage-
ment, such as those in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand (see Hameduddin
& Fernandez, 2019, for a discussion on this).
This article begins by examining the concept of engagement, stress, and BNS. A
series of hypotheses are then presented. The hypotheses are tested using a series of
multilevel regression models (MLM) with a data set representing 30 different coun-
tries and eight different occupations. Following this, the results are presented and
discussed.
Theoretical Background
Engagement
Schaufeli et al. (2002) define work engagement as “. . . a positive, fulfilling, work-
related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (p. 74).
Vigor refers to high energy levels and resilience while working, and dedication refers

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to having strong feelings of involvement, pride, and a sense of challenge. Absorption
is the sense of “time flying” due to full concentration in one’s work (pp. 74–75).
The JDR is the most commonly used theoretical framework in engagement studies
(Crawford et al., 2010). According to JDR theory, all job characteristics can be classi-
fied as demands that deplete energy, or resources that support energy (Bakker &
Demerouti, 2007). Job demands take away energy from employees, and when per-
ceived as a hindrance, they lower engagement by thwarting growth and goal attain-
ment (Van den Broeck et al., 2010). By contrast, job resources provide support and
energy for...