Abstract

The SCARF model originated in neuroscience leadership research and stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. SCARF defines the five domains of employee experience that activate strong threats and rewards in people’s brains, influencing human behaviors. Generally speaking, the SCARF model provides the framework for a better understanding of the biology that drives social behaviors. It enables the employees to be more adaptive, and they in turn demonstrate higher performance and enhanced well-being. Consequently, it is highly relevant to analyze the antecedents of employee socio-psychological experience in terms of SCARF dimensions. The focus of the current article is on the workplace environment, namely job resources and job demands. Previous research was mainly dedicated to the examination of individual work environment factors concerning concrete SCARF elements; however, a comprehensive picture or systematic literature review is missing. To fill the research gap, this research is aimed at outlining and investigating the connections between workplace environment and employee socio-psychological experience. More specifically, the article seeks to determine the workplace environment factors that serve as antecedents for each of the five employee experience elements, namely for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. In doing this, a systematic review of the literature was carried out. The core findings demonstrate that factors such as leader; feedback, recognition and performance review; communication; and advanced technologies were most frequently linked in the literature with the SCARF elements.