Abstract
Purpose: To investigate the extent to which mindfulness, emotional intelligence and positive affect predict work engagement among small, micro-, and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMME) employees within Gauteng’s financial and business services sector.
Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts a quantitative research approach, employing survey questionnaires to gather data from a representative sample of 320 (n = 320) employees working within South African SMMEs in the financial and business services sector in Gauteng. A cross-sectional research design was used to examine the associations between the key constructs at a single point in time. Standardised and validated measurement instruments were administered to assess mindfulness, emotional intelligence, positive affect and work engagement. To evaluate the proposed hypotheses, a range of statistical analyses were computed, including correlation, factor analysis, regression and mediation analyses. The mentioned statistical analyses aimed to identify both the direct and indirect effects of the independent variables on the outcome variable, notably work engagement.
Findings/results: The results confirmed all but one of the hypothesised relationships. Positive affect emerged as the strongest predictor of work engagement (r = 0.674 with vigour, r = 0.648 with dedication, and r = 0.565 with absorption), explaining a substantial proportion of the variance across all three dimensions. Emotional intelligence also demonstrated significant positive correlations with vigour (r = 0.447), dedication (r = 0.408), and absorption (r = 0.402), reinforcing its role as a core personal resource. Mindfulness correlated positively with vigour (r = 0.215) and dedication (r = 0.222), but not with absorption (r = 0.084), indicating that its contribution is primarily motivational rather than experiential. In terms of the research questions, 21.5% of the variance in vigour and 22.2% of the variance in dedication could be...