many studies evidence a strong relationship between engagement and organizational performance such as profitability, revenue growth, earnings per share, and employee turnover, which has conferred some level of legitimacy to the concept and rise in popularity (Macleod & Clarke, 2009). Fleck and Inceoglu (2010: 31) state that “development of precise and agreed-upon definitions of the construct of engagement has lagged behind the rapid uptake of the construct in practice.” Macey and Schneider (2008) suggest that current definitions of engagement include defining it as a trait, a state, a set of behaviors, characteristics of the work environment, or a combination of these. For Kahn (1990: 700), 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 performance.” On the other hand ‘personal disengagement’ means “the uncoupling of selves from work roles; in disengagement, people withdraw and defend themselves physically, cognitively, or emotionally during role performances” (Kahn, 1990: 694). “People's behaviours display an evacuation or suppression of their expressive and energetic selves in discharging role obligations”, which he calls ‘role disengagement’ (Kahn, 1990, p.701). In role disengagement, demands guide task behaviours without the interplay between internal thoughts (cognitive) and feelings (emotional) and external requirements that characterize moments of personal engagement. They become physically uninvolved in tasks, cognitively unvigilant, and emotionally disconnected from others in ways that hide what they think and feel, their creativity, their beliefs and values, and their personal connections to others. (Kahn, 1990, p.702) Maslach et al.’s (1997) burnout-antithesis approach focused on the lack of some psychological states such as exhaustion and the presence of positive psychological states such as involvement. For Maslach et al. (1997), an engaged employee exhibits positive energy,
According to Harter et al. (2002: 269) the GWA items are antecedents of personal job satisfaction and other affective (emotional) constructs akin to Kahn (1990). As in Kahn’s conceptualization, they see engagement occurring when ‘individuals are emotionally connected to others and cognitively vigilant.’ Employees are emotionally and cognitively engaged when they know what is expected of them (job demands), have what they need to do their work (job resources), have opportunities to feel an impact and fulfilment in their work (personal resources), perceive that they are part of something significant with coworkers who they trust (work engagement), and have chances to improve and develop (performance) – note the JD-R Work Engagement Model (Figure 1, Bakker & Demerouti, 2007, 2008; Bakker & Leiter, 2010 below). The importance of the GWA for Harter et al. (2002) is that if the items make sense to employees and managers it is more likely that people will accept the instruments results and will motivate them to take action as a result of the feedback based on such items. Gallup (2006 cited in Robertson-Smith & Marwick, 2009) proposes that employees can be divided into groups of engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged. Figure 1: The JD-R Work Engagement Model Schaufeli et al. (2002: 74) define work engagement "as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterised by vigor, dedication, and absorption", which Schaufeli, Bakker and Salanova (2006) go on to suggest is a motivational – psychological state akin to Maslach, Schaufeli and Leiter’s (2001: 417) earlier definition. Yalabik et al. (2013: 2802) defined ‘work engagement’ as “an independent, persistent, pervasive, positive and fulfilling work-related affective – cognitive and motivational – psychological state.” Yalabik et al. (2013) suggest that this definition is consistent with the European Engagement Model
(Schaufeli et al. 2006; Bakker and Demerouti 2008; Salanova and Schaufeli 2008) and is operationalized in the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). Fleck and Inceoglu (2010: 31-32) go on to report on a model of engagement that they developed as an attempt to address the negative implications of such conceptual diversity for both research and practice. They had two underlying principles that formed the core of their model; the first was that engagement is defined as a state that people can be in when they perform at work, the intensity of which can vary over time and from day to day. The second principle is that it was necessary to separate out three areas that are often conflated in the engagement literature; namely predictors of the state of engagement, the state of engagement itself, and the consequences of being in this state of engagement (see Figure 2 below). Figure 2 – Model of Engagement Drivers of engagement State of engagement Engagement driven behaviours Organizational outcomes Person-job fit fit Energy Absorption Alignment Identification Effort Extra-role Advocacy Profit Low staff turnover Customer satisfaction Personal Outcomes Personal Dispositions Job satisfaction Career progression Personality Motivation Source: Fleck and Inceoglu (2010: 32)
Cognitive Affective Personal engagement Rational How the business case (the head) determines the work that is done (behaviour). Emotional How feelings (the heart) manifest themselves in doing work (behaviour). Job engagement Absorption Employees lose themselves in their work, and experience a sense of engrossment when doing their work (‘flow’, Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Energy The energy employees draw from their work. Organizational engagement Alignment Employees’ views of the direction of the organisation are aligned with the direction in which the organization is being taken. Identification The emotional bond between the employee and the organization. Source: adapted by the author from Fleck and Inceoglu (2010) Causes and Antecedents of Engagement at an Individual and Organizational Level Sparrow & Balain (2010) referred to four individual ‘bonds’ (Pierce et al. 2001) that need to be established in order to develop the right social climate for employee engagement. Firstly, people need to have a motivation and incentive to bond – a reason and a desire for social membership (with either the team, department or organization), which includes feelings (affect or emotions) and beliefs regarding the reasons why they want to maintain a relationship with, or their membership of the team, department, organization. Then there needs to be some organizational identification, whereby people use the characteristics of the organization they work for to define themselves. Then there has to be a process of internalization – the personal learning, internal recognition and personal adoption of the values and goals of the organization. Finally, there has to be a sense of psychological