Agility and the three musketeers: The interplay of epistemic curiosity, joy, and rumination

Organizations and their stakeholders constantly face disruptions to stay competitive, relevant, and upgraded. Firms employ agile production, marketing, and technology practices to handle and benefit from such sudden changes. However, they seldom focus on understanding or enhancing Workforce agility at the individual level. This work adopts a bottom-up approach to explore the effects of psychological variables - Epistemic curiosity, Rumination, and Joy on Workforce agility. In Study 1, the cross-sectional survey (n₁ = 482) validated the conceptual model. PLS-SEM was employed to analyze the roles of Epistemic curiosity (Interest-type and Deprivation-type curiosity), Rumination (Reflective Pondering and Brooding), and Joy in influencing Workforce agility. The analysis also revealed additional post-hoc relationships. An external sample (n₂ = 194) was employed in Study 2 to verify the findings from Study 1. The findings revealed that Interest-type (I-type) curiosity and Joy positively predict Workforce agility. Additionally, D-type curiosity predicts both types of rumination and indirectly influences Workforce agility through Brooding. This paper explains why strength-based mechanisms must replace deficit-focused employee development initiatives by highlighting the differential roles played by I-type and D-type curiosities. In sum, it discusses the dark side of curiosity in the workplace, which is often overlooked in the literature.