Perfectionistic cognitions as antecedents of work engagement: Personal resources, personal demands, or both?

Whereas personal resources have been established as a counterpart to external job resources in the Job Demands–Resources Theory, personal demands as a counterpart to job demands have been rather neglected. In this study, we propose that multidimensional perfectionism—in the form of daily perfectionistic cognitions—is a relevant personal characteristic for predicting daily work engagement in addition to and in its interplay with daily time pressure as a common job demand. 157 employees participated in a daily diary study for 15 workdays. As hypothesized, multilevel regression analyses yielded a positive unique effect of perfectionistic strivings cognitions and a negative unique effect of perfectionistic concerns cognitions on daily work engagement. Furthermore, we found that both unique perfectionistic strivings cognitions and perfectionistic concerns cognitions moderated a quadratic relationship between daily time pressure and daily work engagement. Building on the Job Demands–Resources Theory, we propose that the dimension of perfectionistic strivings constitutes a personal resource and the dimension of perfectionistic concerns constitutes a personal demand in the prediction of work engagement.