Role of Authentic Leadership and Employee Engagement in the Relationship of Psychological Capital and Engineers’ Performance: A Case of Construction Projects in Pakistan

Abstract

Positive psychology is very important for the employees. This research pertains to the construction industry employees’ psychological functioning and perspicacity. As the nature of the construction projects is very stressful and demanding, the main purpose of our research is to investigate the impact of PsyCap and employee engagement on performance of engineers working at construction projects in Pakistan, mediation effect of “employee engagement” and moderation effect of “authentic leadership”. The comprehensive framework of the study provides the better understanding and has addressed the vast spectrum of literature regarding the impact of “PsyCap” on engineers’ performance with mediation effect of “employee engagement” and moderation effect of “authentic leadership”. A survey-based approach using a questionnaire was adopted to achieve the objectives of the study. 400 questionnaires were distributed after visiting the construction sites. Due to COVID-19 pandemic a lockdown was imposed and all offices/projects were closed. So, we used the Google form and sent emails to engineers working on construction projects in Pakistan. Our respondents were engineers working on different construction projects in Pakistan. Analysis has been done by correlation and regression analysis techniques. Mediation is checked by process of Andrew F. Hayes. Findings show that there is a significant relation between PsyCap, employee engagement and employee performance. Employee engagement partially mediates the relationship between PsyCap and performance of engineers working at different construction projects in Pakistan. But, moderating role of authentic leadership between PsyCap and performance of engineers found to be insignificant. Data was collected from engineers working in construction projects in Pakistan. Software SPSS version 25 was used to test the framework. The findings may help the engineering sector to implement these positive organizational behaviors to improve the performance of engineers. Positive psychology is very important to enhance the performance and engagement of engineers and it has highest return on investment. It will help engineers to work without stress and link them psychologically to their organizations and projects. There are some limitations of this study as it is done in only one sector, due to less time we used cross-sectional approach. In future other researchers may explore this model in other sectors. In future a qualitative study maybe conducted.