The Effect of Job Autonomy on Psychological Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Personal Initiative

Abstract

Employees’ psychological well-being is an important factor affecting organizational performance. Thus, through empirical study, the present article investigates the influence of employees’ job autonomy on their psychological well-being. Specifically, personal initiative will mediate this relationship. To examine a series of hypotheses we developed, online survey was used to collect data. Finally, 380 respondents were accepted. Empirical data showed that employees’ job autonomy is positively related to psychological well-being. Namely, the psychological well-being of employees will gain dramatic improvement when they possess high job autonomy. In addition, through the way of path analysis, we revealed that personal initiative plays a role of intermediary mechanism in the relationship between job autonomy and psychological well-being. In last part, we discussed the contribution, limitations, and the directions of future research.