Does meaningful work encompass support towards supervisory, worker and engagement relationship?

This study aimed at examining the influence of two important elements of social supports, namely supervisor support and coworker support, on work engagement among employees in the university setting. The study also further examined the mediating potentials of meaningful work on the relationships between the former and the latter. The sample study comprised of academic and managerial staff members from a public-sector university in Malaysia. Out of the 420 distributed questionnaires, 216 were received back from which 177 were found usable and hence were taken further for final data analysis. Statistical software of SPSS and Smart PLS 2.0 M3 were used to perform data analysis. Supervisor support and coworker support were found to be significant predictors of work engagement. Further, meaningful work was found mediating these relationships. The findings enrich the literature of social support, work engagement, and meaningful work. The study is one of the foremost empirical works examining the mediating potential of meaningful work on the relationships between two social resources (supervisor support and coworker support) and work engagement. The issue of work engagement has been discussed in other mainstream areas such as Banking (e.g., Ahmed et al., 2017); Retail and manufacturing (e.g., Halbesleben, Harvey and Bolino, 2009); Tousirm (e.g., Karatepe and Ngeche, 2012); Aviation (e.g., Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Heuven, Demerouti and Scheufeli, 2008); Healthcare (e.g., Hakanen, Bakker and Demerouti, 2005). Hence, research gap was evident in the investigation of such work engagement issue within the education setting.