Longitudinal process of employee well-being: Cross-lagged relationships among domain satisfactions and subjective well-being

Abstract

Scholars have become increasingly interested in employees' well-being. Despite studies on the relationships among well-being constructs, research gaps still exist from the longitudinal and within-person perspectives. Based on top-down and bottom-up theories of subjective well-being and spillover theories, this study examines the longitudinal relationships of work satisfaction, nonwork satisfaction, and subjective well-being. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model was used with the data of four yearly waves collected from 8624 full-time employees. The autoregressive and cross-lagged coefficients were not stable but rather change across time. There were strong between-person correlations between work satisfaction, nonwork satisfaction, and subjective well-being. At the within-person level, the paths from subjective well-being to work satisfaction were not significant while the paths from subjective well-being to nonwork satisfaction were significant over the years. The cross-lagged effects from work satisfaction and nonwork satisfaction to subjective well-being were not significant across the years. However, the cross-lagged relationships between work satisfaction and nonwork satisfaction were significant. Theoretical implications, practical implications, and suggestions for future research were discussed.