Brad Shuck

Integrative Literature Review: Four Emerging Perspectives of Employee Engagement: An Integrative Literature Review

The concept of employee engagement has garnered attention in both practitioner and academic communities and several approaches for understanding engagement have developed. Whereas many authors have taken their own approach to understanding employee engagement, others have offered reinterpretations of the concept wrapped in well-researched and documented organizational variables. Fortunately, distinct streams of literature have emerged but are widely disparate, surfacing intermittently in the fields of psychology, sociology, management, human resource development (HRD), human resource management, and health care. This lack of continuity is a significant hurdle for HRD professionals being called on to develop innovative solutions to the absence of engagement inside organizations. The purpose of this integrative literature review was to synthesize the current state of scholarly research on employee engagement. As a result, four major approaches emerged, defining the existing state of employee engagement in the academic community. Each approach is explored and interpretations offered. Implications and questions for HRD bring this article to a close.

Employee Engagement and Leadership: Exploring the Convergence of Two Frameworks and Implications for Leadership Development in HRD

As the use of workplace knowledge economies increases and emerging motivational-state variables such as employee engagement become more widely used, current frameworks of leadership are undergoing changes in perspective and practice. Moreover, while shifts in workplace dynamics have occurred in practice for some time, scholars are now calling for a new perspective of leadership. This article explores the connection between traditional and emerging leadership theories and the motivational-state variable of employee engagement, building toward a conceptual framework proposed for further refinement, discussion, and ultimately testing. A conceptual link between meeting and understanding employee needs, the use of emotional intelligence as a leadership competency, and transformational leadership is examined. Implications for leadership development in research and practice in an HRD context bring this article to a close.

The Employee Engagement Landscape and HRD How Do We Link Theory and Scholarship to Current Practice

The Problem. Employee engagement strategies are widely applied in practice, yet the construct remains underdeveloped in the human resource development (HRD) literature. This underdevelopment in the HRD scholarly community, combined with high levels of interest in the HRD practitioner community, highlights the need for closing the gap in theory, scholarship, and practice. To develop and support possible engagement-related interventions, HRD researchers and practitioners must be at the forefront of the emerging engagement conversation. The Solution. This article provides a definition and framework of employee engagement within the context of HRD, specifically in the areas of theory, scholarship, and practice. In addition, this article provides an overview of articles related to the latest thinking, research, and strategy development for generating employee engagement in practice found within this special issue. The Stakeholders. The intended audience for this article includes HRD scholars, scholar-practitioners, and practitioners interested in the development and use of employee engagement as an organizational performance and workplace culture -building strategy.

Employee Engagement and Well-Being: A Moderation Model and Implications for Practice

Poor workforce engagement can be detrimental to organizations because of the ensuing decrease in employee well-being and productivity. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the degree to which psychological workplace climate was associated with personal accomplishment, depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and psychological well-being, and whether employee engagement moderated these relations. A sample of 216 health care employees from the United States, Canada, and Japan completed an online survey. Regression results suggested that psychological workplace climate was significantly related to each outcome variable; engagement moderated relations between workplace climate and each of the four dependent variables. ANOVA results revealed that high engagement group employees demonstrated higher psychological well-being and personal accomplishment, whereas low engagement group employees exhibited higher emotional exhaustion and depersonalization.

The Jingle Jangle of Employee Engagement: Further Exploration of the Emerging Construct and Implications for Workplace Learning and Performance

While research is emerging around the employee engagement construct, evolution is in early stages of development. Presently, some questions remain about how employee engagement differs from other well-researched and documented constructs such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and job commitment. Although such inquiry is seemingly academic in nature, the use of engagement in practice is gaining momentum, and debate remains healthy as to the utility and statistical validity of the engagement construct. To respond, developing clear lines of interpretation and coordination across varied disciplines seems prudent, but an essential first step is a context-specific, conceptual exploration of the construct of employee engagement in relation to other well-researched job attitude and organizational constructs in the literature. This article explores literature on employee engagement, job satisfaction, commitment, and involvement. Implications for organizational learning and workplace performance are examined in a human resource development (HRD) specific context.

Reframing Employee Engagement Within the Context of Meaning and Purpose Implications for HRD

The Problem Leaders who develop high levels of employee engagement within their organizations enjoy increased levels of competitive advantage. Consequently, organizations understandably desire higher levels of engagement. However, present research and perspectives on employee engagement have focused primarily on leveraging outcomes toward performance rather than the conditions that nurture performance. Such a unidimensional focus presents a gap in understanding how engagement emerges in practice and what strategies human resource development (HRD) practitioners can utilize to cultivate positive conditions for employee engagement. The Solution Reframing engagement within the context of meaning and purpose provides a unique lens from which to view the conditions that cultivate the development of engagement. In this article, we present an alternative, yet complementary view of employee engagement that focuses on how performance can be sustained within the context of meaning and purpose. Emerging implications for the field of HRD are explored. The Stakeholders The intended audience for this article includes HRD scholars, scholar-practitioners, practitioners, and students interested in the development and use of employee engagement, meaningful work, and the operationalization of meaning and purpose within an HRD context.

Exploratory Factor Analysis Implications for Theory, Research, and Practice

The Problem Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) serves many useful purposes in human resource development (HRD) research. The most frequent applications of EFA among researchers consists of reducing relatively large sets of variables into more manageable ones, developing and refining a new instrument’s scales, and exploring relations among variables to build theory. Because researchers face a number of decisions when conducting EFA that can involve some subjectivity (e.g., factor extraction method, rotation), poor analytic decisions regarding how the EFA should be conducted (e.g., number of factors to extract) can produce misleading findings to the detriment of these efforts, especially theory building. The Solution Steps must be taken to improve the quality of the decision making associated with conducting EFAs if sound theory building and research related to this statistical method is to continue. Higher quality EFAs facilitate higher quality theory building and research. The Stakeholders HRD theorists, researchers, and scholar-practitioners are the intended audience of this article. In particular, those interested in refining measures and theory building would benefit most from being exposed to best EFA decision-making practices.

Skunked: An Integrative Review Exploring the Consequences of the Dysfunctional Leader and Implications for Those Employees Who Work for Them

Dysfunctional leaders are described in the research literature as those leaders who consistently place burdensome structures in the path of progress, intentionally or unintentionally violate psycho...Dysfunctional leaders are described in the research literature as those leaders who consistently place burdensome structures in the path of progress, intentionally or unintentionally violate psychological contracts, and generally treat their employees with a disrespectful approach. Research suggests that upward of 13% to 36% of employees in the United States work with a leader whose approach could be described as dysfunctional. Yet, research regarding this negative organizational phenomenon is surprisingly limited. Moreover, scholarship in the field of human resource development (HRD) is nearly void of research on this topic. The purpose of this integrative literature review was to examine the literature on dysfunctional leadership and to highlight conceptual links present across various streams of scholarship. Specifically, we systematically categorized the dysfunctional behaviors that leaders exhibit, highlighted the short- and long-term effects of working under a dysfunctional leader as well as documented the known strategies for working through the effects of dysfunction.

Emotional intelligence and organizational learning in work teams

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation between emotional intelligence (EI), team learning and team psychological safety, using a context sensitive approach.Design/methodology/approach – Using an internet survey‐research design, employees embedded inside work teams were asked to respond to an anonymous survey battery. Careful attention was paid to the collection of data from members of ad hoc teams currently engaged in projects within their respective organizations.Findings – Post analysis, evidence suggested EI was significantly and positively related with team psychological safety and team learning. Likewise, team psychological safety was significantly associated with team learning. Q‐Sorting technique was used to establish discriminant validity between the three scales. Bootstrapping revealed that team psychological safety mediated the relation between EI and team learning.Research limitations/implications – The paper’s results extend current theoretical bounds of organization le...

Exploring Organizational Alignment-Employee Engagement Linkages and Impact on Individual Performance A Conceptual Model

We explore existing perspectives of organizational alignment and employee engagement from the literature to better understand the alignment-engagement linkages to individual performance. This is an underexplored area of inquiry in human resource development (HRD). Our analysis of the alignment and engagement literatures resulted in the development of an exploratory conceptual model. The conceptual model elaborates on the organizational alignment–employee engagement linkages and their impact on individual performance. These interconnections emphasize the importance of developing internally consistent HRD interventions or programs that align individual skills and knowledge with job characteristics and organizational systems and routines. Furthermore, the model highlights the dynamic nature of the alignment-engagement linkages both as a source and context which facilitates individual performance, and influences the extent to which employees exhibit essential as well as discretionary behaviors. We elaborate on the implications for HRD theory, research, and practice.