Spreading engagement: On the role of similarity in the positive contagion of team work engagement

Abstract

Emotional contagion theory applied to work and organizations posits that positive emotions are shared among team members, thus enabling them to converge in desirable shared states such as team work engagement. The aim of this study is to analyze how similarity among team members in terms of gender and company tenure is related to convergence in work engagement at the team level. Similarity in terms of gender and company tenure was expected to be positively related to convergence in team work engagement. Hierarchical regression modeling in 161 teams showed that similarity in terms of gender was positively related to convergence in team work engagement, whereas, unexpectedly, similarity in company tenure was negatively related to convergence in team work engagement. © 2013 Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid. All rights reserved.