Antecedents to Employee Engagement

Abstract

The Problem. Employee engagement is an emerging concept in the HRD literature, with demonstrated organizational benefits; yet little is known about its antecedents. The purpose of this article is to explore conceptual and empirically driven antecedents as well as differentiate the two perspectives. The Solution. As a result of a structured literature review method, 42 antecedents were grouped by application at the individual and organizational level. The Stakeholders. HRD researchers seeking to conduct original research in organizations, and practitioners interested in creating greater levels of engagement in their organizations will find the discussion and implications sections and the index tool valuable.

Building a Proactive, Engagement Culture in Asset Management Organizations

“…A review of the extant literature by Wollard and Shuck (2011) proposes that while there is some empirical research suggesting that a supportive organisational culture is an antecedent of employee engagement, such evidence is limited. However, one study by Oakley (2004) found that organisational culture provides a significant influence on the development of employee engagement.…”

The Jingle Jangle of Employee Engagement

“…Conceptually, job involvement is a judgment; engagement is a psychological state (Saks, 2006). However, they have the propensity to share antecedents such as self-esteem and supervisory support and feedback and to be related to common organizational outcome variables such as performance and employee turnover (S. Wollard & Shuck, 2011), which perhaps is the impetus for the confusing state of affairs. A comparison of the definitions of the two constructs helps make clear that the focus of job involvement is on cognition (e.g., Lawler & Hall, 1970;Lodahl & Kejner, 1965;Kanungo, 1982;Paullay, Alliger, & Stone-Romero, 1994), whereas, engagement, according to most definitions (e.g., Baumruk 2004;Frank, Finnegan, & Taylor, 2004;Kahn, 1990;Richman, 2006;Shaw, 2005;Shuck & Wollard, 2010), encompasses cognition, emotion, and behavior.…”

Can Corporate Sustainability Influence Employee Engagement?

“…Since then, various definitions, conceptualizations and measure have been forwarded in understanding the mechanisms that influence an employee to employ their discretionary effort to engage. Additionally, past proponents have found drivers and consequences of EE (Saks, 2006;Wollard & Shuck, 2011). However, to date the construct still suffers from construct ambiguity, especially due to its conceptualization and measure, between academia and the practitioner domain.…”

“…However, to date the construct still suffers from construct ambiguity, especially due to its conceptualization and measure, between academia and the practitioner domain. Consequently, this has contributed to the current diffusion, where other researchers have now argued that EE is a passing fad (Wollard & Shuck, 2011), elusive construct (Saks, 2006) and a concept that should be ignored (Purcell, 2014).…”

“…The study supports this assertion, and proposes that CS be incorporated as a strategic business imperative (Garcia-Castro et al, 2010;Pojasek, 2007).Arguably, the dynamism involved in engaging employees require constant innovation and readjustments of previous ideologies. In fact, the number of studies on the drivers and outcome of EE are many (Macey & Schneider, 2008;Saks, 2006;Wollard & Shuck, 2011). However, the changing pace of the global workforce, and its subsequent impact of human behaviour have influenced the shifting of the metaphoric goal post of employee engagement, and employee engagement may fluctuate (Bakker, 2014), as EE is not consistent and the influencers means different things to different people (Simon & Zhou, 2017) .…”