Employee engagement and meaningful work.

Abstract

105he concept of engagement was developed to explain what traditional studies of work motivation overlookednamely, that employees offer up different degrees and dimensions of themselves according to some internal calculus that they consciously and unconsciously compute (Kahn, 1990). Traditional motivation studies implicitly assumed that workers were either on or off; that is, on the basis of external rewards and intrinsic factors, they were either motivated to work or not, and this was a relatively steady state that they inhabited (e.g., Taylor, 1911;Vroom, 1964). The engagement concept is framed on the premise that workers are more complicated than this. Like actors, they make choices about how much of their real selves they would bring into and use to inform their role performances (Kahn, 1990). They might truly express themselves, to the extent the role allows, or they might not, with varying degrees of expression in between. Rather than label workers as motivated or not, these personal movements

CSR initiative characteristics and employee engagement: An impact‐based perspective

“…We ground our conceptualization of this construct within the broader literature on work engagement. According to Kahn (, p. 700), personal engagement is the “simultaneous employment and expression of a person's ‘preferred self’ in task behaviors that promote connections to work and to others, personal presence (physical, cognitive, and emotional), and active, full role performances.” High engagement is manifested in voice behaviors (e.g., demanding clarification, proposing alternatives, and holding others accountable), taking initiative (e.g., learning and creative problem solving, issue‐selling, and constructive risk‐taking), and caring behaviors (e.g., perspective‐taking and expressing empathy and compassion; Kahn & Fellows, ; Macey & Schneider, ; Shirom, ) and has been found to predict workplace performance above and beyond job involvement, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation (Christian, Garza, & Slaughter, ; Rich, LePine, & Crawford, ). In contrast, low engagement is reflected in psychological and/or physical withdrawal of one's self from work (Kahn, ; Schaufeli, Taris, & van Rhenen, ).…”

“…Scholars have advocated for approaches that increase work engagement such as “calling forth the self,” “ennobling workers,” and “fostering transcendence” (Pratt & Ashforth, ). Kahn and Fellows (, p. 118) wrote, “Calling forth the self in the context of work involves making the meaningfulness of what people do more evident as they go about their daily role performances …. There is more that needs to be understood in theory and practice about how to actually do this.” By placing CSRI characteristics as the key antecedents of CSRI engagement, we draw attention to the design of CSRIs to motivate engagement from employees who find CSRIs personally meaningful.…”

Intrinsic Human Capacities of High and Low Performers of Public Sector Manufacturing Industry in India

“…Psychological differences also impact on individuals" ability to engage or disengage in their role performance, because they shape a person"s ability and willingness to be involved or committed at workplace. Accordingly, people would engage differently "given their experiences of psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability in specific situations" [9] . For example, when people experience situations as unsafe, it is a matter of individual differences what coping strategies they deploy, and the extent to which they engage or disengage [10] .The process of perception is a key factor in individual behavior.…”

Work Creativity as a Dimension of Job Performance

“…Employees who are engaged have high levels of energy, are enthusiastically involved in their work (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008), and are able to deal completely with their job demands (Schaufeli et al, 2002). This differs from the traditional thought that motivation in employees is either on or off; instead, engagement implies that employees are more complicated than that (Khan & Fellows, 2013).…”

“…Engagement explains what traditional studies of work motivation have overlooked. Engagement researchers believe that employees have differing degrees and dimensions of themselves that act in accord to something internal (Khan & Fellows, 2013). Employees who are engaged have high levels of energy, are enthusiastically involved in their work (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008), and are able to deal completely with their job demands (Schaufeli et al, 2002).…”