177 Summary and General Discussion and fewer functional limitations two years later. Accordingly, in line with JD-R theory, using proactive vitality management may help to avoid or reduce fatigue, and reduce corresponding deficits in work performance (i.e., mitigating health impairment; Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). These findings suggest that proactive vitality management may play an important protective role with regards to occupational health and performance. Individuals may maintain adequate levels of psychological and physical resources that prevent future resource losses by initiating actions on a regularly basis, helping them to stay ahead of physical and mental health issues (cf. Hobfoll, 1989). Through proactive vitality management, individuals may intervene in a proactive and timely manner, undertaking action before they might become depleted and their functioning impaired (Hockey, 1997; Op den Kamp et al., 2018). In contrast, acting in a reactive manner and failing to undertake such anticipatory action may, over time, result in maladaptive or even self-destructive behaviors that cause health impairment to progress (Bakker & Costa, 2014; Bakker & De Vries, 2021). Affective Mechanism In addition to a physical mechanism, the studies in this dissertation suggest that proactive vitality management may also relate to favorable outcomes through an underlying affective mechanism. For example, findings from a weekly diary study detailed in Chapter 4 showed that employees were more engaged in their work and performedmore creatively at work during weeks in which they had proactivelymanaged their vitality. In Chapter 6, I also focused on the affective mechanism by exploring the mediating role of work engagement in the link between proactive vitality management and creative work performance. More specifically, findings from the longitudinal study described in Chapter 6 show that employees who used proactive vitality management were more engaged in their work three months later, which subsequently related to increased creative performance at work two years later. Recently published studies that corroborate these findings show, for example, that proactive vitality management relates positively to work engagement, which, in turn, relates positively to mental health (Ye et al., 2021). Moreover, Tisu et al. (2021) showed that the use of proactive vitality management was related to higher job performance, mediated by work engagement. Accordingly, in addition to mitigating health impairment, proactive vitality management may instigate an affective process that corresponds to JD-R’s motivational process. 7
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