Conceptualising and exploring the meaning of employee engagement : an exploratory study.

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate academic and practitioner understandings of the term employee engagement. The sample consisted of 13 academic participants from Industrial Psychology/Human Resource departments of universities across South Africa and 8 practitioner participants from organisations and consulting firms across the Gauteng region. The aim of the research was to determine the similarities and differences between academic and practitioner understandings of employee engagement, to determine employee engagements relationship with other well-known constructs, namely, affective commitment, job involvement and organisational citizenship behaviour, and to determine the uniqueness and importance of the construct employee engagement. Participants were emailed a questionnaire comprising of both open-ended and close-ended questions. It was found that academic and practitioner understandings of employee engagement were similar and reflected what is said in both the academic and practitioner literature. Both academic and practitioner participants used similar words to describe the concept that are indicative of something extra that a person feels towards his/her work or organisation that results in the person working hard and passionately resulting in positive consequences for both the individual and the organisation. Both academic and practitioner participants also found employee engagement to be different to, or include small aspects of other well-known constructs such as affective commitment, job involvement and organisational citizenship behaviour. Both academic and practitioner participants found employee engagement to be an important construct that organisations should address due to it‟s various positive organisational and individual consequences. It was concluded that further research of the construct is necessary so that engagement can be better understood, interpreted and utilised in both the academic and practitioner arenas.