Department of Industrial Psychology

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Browsing Department of Industrial Psychology by Subject "Adaptability (Psychology)"

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    Exploring how individual adaptability and hardiness predict work engagement among recruits in the Military Skills Development System (MSDS)
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Nkambule, Ayanda Hellen; Fontaine, Yolandi Eloise; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Industrial Psychology.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY: The current global socioeconomic status and the COVID-19 pandemic revived the research topic of work engagement. Researchers have established that work engagement in the military context is caused by various factors such as rewards, leadership, and aspects related to a specific job including job satisfaction, work environment and career advancement opportunities to name a few. However, work engagement among military recruits has not received much attention. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to explore how personal resources predict work engagement amongst the Military Skills Development System (MSDS) recruit as no studies according to the knowledge of the researcher has explored this phenomenon previously. More specifically, this study focused on measuring the levels of work engagement of the recruits and explored the relationship between individual adaptability and hardiness (i.e., two independent variables) and work engagement (the dependent variable), respectively. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted, and the data were collected from a sample of MSDS recruits (N = 74) who serve in the Tactical Intelligence Corps in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). The results revealed that the military recruits who participated in this study have an average level of work engagement (M = 3.72, SD = .85); and that hardiness shows a positive, strong relation with work engagement (r = .60, p < .01); whilst individual adaptability shows a positive medium relation with work engagement (r = .39, p < .01). In determining whether individual adaptability and hardiness could be used as predictors of work engagement amongst recruits, a multiple regression model determined that hardiness is indeed a significant predictor of work engagement (β = 1.04, t = 6.44 p < .001), but individual adaptability does not significantly predict unique variance in work engagement (β = .24, t = 1.66, p = .10). The findings of this research contribute valuable knowledge to the field of career psychology and can be applied in the military context to promote the likelihood of engaged recruits during, and after basic military training. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and practice in the military setting which includes a focus on developing SANDF recruits’ hardiness, a focus on ensuring person job fit and job crafting to improve the work engagement of recruits.