Abstract The concept of human energy (HE) is embedded in various theories and has been widely studied in organizational psychology research. This meta‐analysis aims to examine a nomological network of individual HE at work and to investigate whether relationships between conceptualizations of HE, such as vigor and vitality, assessed with different measures, show comparable patterns of associations with work‐related constructs. Moreover, we compared this nomological network to those of engagement and thriving, two related constructs that include HE as part of their multidimensional conceptualizations, to gain insights into their conceptual distinctiveness and empirical overlap. Analyzing 198 studies, the findings revealed that HE positively and moderately to strongly correlates with positively connoted construct categories (e.g., job and organizational resources, job attitudes, performance) and negatively correlates with negatively connoted construct categories (i.e., negative well‐being, negative work‐related intentions and behaviors). Relationships with job stressors varied, suggesting the need to distinguish between stressor types. The type of measurement influenced the relationships between HE and most construct categories, with small to moderate effect size differences. Our analysis revealed notable alignment between the HE, engagement, and thriving nomological networks. We conclude that individual HE at work, as a parsimonious, mostly unidimensional construct, offers advantages over comparable multidimensional constructs. We discuss implications for future research and encourage scholars studying HE at work to carefully consider its conceptualization and theoretical foundation, and to transparently report its measurement to enhance construct clarity.
Schmitt et al. (Sun,) studied this question.