How Entrepreneurial Proclivity Affects Job Engagement and Satisfaction of Retail Employees

Purpose - This research examined whether entrepreneurial proclivity of retail employees affects job engagement and satisfaction, which are job-related positive aspects; and whether job engagement affects job satisfaction. Research design, data, and methodology - To accomplish this purpose, data were collected for 224 retail employees working in the distribution industry in the Republic of Korea. Reliability, validity, and hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling, and mediating effects of job engagement between entrepreneurial proclivity and job satisfaction were verified through the bootstrap method by using the process model. Results - The results show that innovativeness and progressiveness in entrepreneurial proclivity positively affected job engagement and job satisfaction, but risk-taking did not affect either job engagement or job satisfaction. Also, this research confirmed that job engagement positively affects job satisfaction. Conclusions - This study contributes to the retail literature by applying the concept of entrepreneurial proclivity in the retail employee context. This study puts forward empirical evidence that identifies the effect of entrepreneurial proclivity as a job resource that influences job engagement and job satisfaction in the JD-R model. Thus, this study surmounts the limitation of prior studies by examining entrepreneurial proclivity from the aspect of retail employees.