Investigating Work Engagement and Affective Commitment Through Work Underload and Work-related Boredom

SMSU Event Center BC

Previous research on workload has overwhelmingly approached work underload as unidimensional focusing on either repetitive monotonous tasks or the employee’s perception of their current workload. Literature has focused on work related outcomes, such as job engagement and organizational commitment, as consequences of those perceptions. Recently, work related boredom has been measured alongside work underload as precursors to aforementioned outcomes. This current study will investigate if a recently developed more complex, multidimensional scale of work underload, including desire for more work and expectation of more work, will better explain the relationship between perceived work underload, and work related boredom, job engagement, and affective organizational commitment. Participants will be recruited from the MTurk and will include full time working adults from around the United States. Hierarchical multiple regressions will be conducted to test for significant changes when desires and expectations are added to a model with perceived work underload. Furthermore, this study will examine the mediating effect of work related boredom between the multidimensional work underload scale and job engagement and affective organizational commitment. Implications from this study could suggest whether researchers should consider the effects of desires and expectations along with perceptions of workload. In practice, these results could emphasis the importance employee’s expectations and desires play in how they perceive their job, particularly when they are experiencing work underload.