The Effects of Mindfulness-based Training Intervention on Employees’ Ego Depletion and Work Engagement: A Field Experiment Based on ESM

Abstract

Abstract: Employee ego depletion is a highly prevalent phenomenon in the organizations, which may cause substantial negative influences on organizations. Thus, it is important and urgent to find an effective intervention to help employees reduce their daily ego depletion. Currently, researchers usually prevent individuals from ego depletion using regular trainings on self-control tasks in a specific domain. These trainings are mostly laboratory experiments that lack of external validity and that still have controversies over the intervention effectiveness. Drawing upon the strength model of self-control, employing experienced sampling methods, we probe the influences of mindfulness-based training on ego depletion and its aftereffect (i.e., work engagement). Our results reveal that mindfulness-based training intervention indirectly enhances employees’ work engagement via reducing ego depletion. In addition, job control moderates the positive indirect effect of mindfulness-based intervention on work engagement via ego depletion: when job control is high, the positive and indirect effect of mindfulness-based intervention on work engagement via ego depletion is significant, whereas when job control is low, the positive and indirect effect is not significant.

Key words: ego depletion, mindfulness-based training intervention, work engagement, job control, job demands

Zhang Xin, Wang Yongli, Lu Hailing, Yang Yang. The Effects of Mindfulness-based Training Intervention on Employees’ Ego Depletion and Work Engagement: A Field Experiment Based on ESM[J]. Management Review, 2022, 34(8): 192-204.

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