Are Workplace Tolerance and Individual Autonomy associated with Work Engagement? —Mediation analyses with Psychological Safety and Intrinsic Motivation

There is growing recognition of the importance of designing work environments that promote the well-being of diverse employees. Although the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model has contributed substantially to work engagement research, there remains scope to extend it to address the challenge of creating inclusive work environments. We examined the associations of workplace tolerance and individual autonomy with work engagement, including the potential mediating roles of psychological safety and intrinsic motivation. We used data from 1084 Japanese workers collected across four waves of online surveys and conducted causal mediation analyses. As a result, the presence of tolerant coworkers was associated with work engagement through workplace psychological safety (total effect = 0.296; proportion mediated = 29.7 %), whereas the absence of intolerant coworkers was not clearly associated with work engagement. Individual autonomy was also associated with work engagement through intrinsic motivation (total effect = 0.444), although the proportion mediated was modest (14.5 %). These findings suggest that positioning workplace tolerance and individual autonomy as social and personal resources, respectively, may extend the JD–R model by enabling it to describe the conditions under which employees with diverse characteristics and circumstances can engage in their work on an equitable basis.