Benefits of spouse resilience on frontline hospitality employee work engagement: dual situational contingencies

Abstract

Due to the work shift and high job demands, the topic of resilience has attracted increasing attention in the field of hospitality. Despite considerable research has highlighted the intrapersonal effects of resilience, knowledge about potential interpersonal, cross-domain effects of resilience is limited. Drawing upon crossover theory, we develop a model that specifies whether and when spouse resilience contributes to frontline hospitality employee work outcomes. We test our hypotheses using dyadic experience-sampling data, collected from 134 frontline hospitality employees and their spouses across seven consecutive workdays. Results confirmed that spouse resilience was associated with increased frontline hospitality employee next-morning work engagement. Spouses’ psychological detachment––a personal factor––and spouses’ work–family interpersonal capitalization––a behavioral factor moderated our observed effects. Specifically, spouse with high psychological detachment or high work–family interpersonal capitalization can strengthen the proposed positive transmissions. By focusing on the crossover of spouse resilience onto frontline hospitality employee work engagement, our study contributes to the ongoing discussions on the interpersonal effects of resilience.