Employee intrapreneurship and work engagement: A latent change score approach

•Employees' entrepreneurial behaviors build personal resources over time.•Personal resources stabilize experiences of work engagement over time.•Results provide robust support for core assumptions of the JD-R theory.•A latent change score approach provides novel intra-individual insights.

Although ample evidence has shown that intrapreneurial activities of an employee (i.e. employee intrapreneurship) positively impact organizational outcomes, research on how these activities affect employee outcomes is scarce. Based on Job Demands-Resources theory, we hypothesized that employee intrapreneurship builds personal resources over time, which in turn, fosters work engagement. We conducted a two-wave study with a three-month time interval among a sample of public servants (N = 351). Results of a latent change score analysis showed that employee intrapreneurship predicted a positive change in employees' personal resources over time, and personal resources predicted higher and more stable experiences of work engagement during the study period. Moreover, we found evidence for a positive gain cycle of employee intrapreneurial behavior, personal resources, and work engagement. The practical implication of our findings is that intervening to increase either one of these constructs can be expected to lead to mutual gains in the others.