Moving forward to social workers’ work engagement: Framing the regulatory modes and the job demands-resources model

This research aimed to study how two regulatory modes called assessment (i.e., tendency in appraising goal-directed means) and locomotion (i.e., action-driven orientation) were associated with work engagement (WE). According to the job demands-resources model, it was hypothesized that assessment and locomotion were indirectly associated with WE mediated respectively by job demands and by job and personal resources. A sample of 257 social workers participated in the study by completing a questionnaire. Results suggested that social workers higher in assessment tended to experience lower WE because of an augmented appraisal of job demands, while those higher in locomotion reported a higher WE through triggering job and personal resources.