Job engagement in higher education

Published date04 June 2018
Pages951-967
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/PR-07-2017-0221
Date04 June 2018
AuthorNguyen T. Pham-Thai,Adela J. McMurray,Nuttawuth Muenjohn,Michael Muchiri
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM
Job engagement in higher
education
Nguyen T. Pham-Thai, Adela J. McMurray, Nuttawuth Muenjohn and
Michael Muchiri
School of Management, RMIT University College of Business,
Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Purpose Employeesjob engagement is a key driver for organizational success and competitive advantage.
Based on Kahns engagement theory and social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the
relationships between job engagement, transformational leadership, high-performance human resource (HR)
practices, climate for innovation, and contextual performance.
Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey, conducted at two different points in time, was
employed to collect data from 394 pairs of Vietnamese university academics and their leaders. Data were
analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) and multilevel SEM using the Statistical Package for Social
Science Version 24 and Mplus Version 7.4.
Findings The findings indicated that transformational leadership and high-performance HR practices were
key drivers of employeesjob engagement. A climate for innovation contributed effectively to mediate the
effect of transformational leadership on employeesjob engagement. Further, employeesjob engagement was
positively and significantly related to contextual performance.
Research limitations/implications The short time lag between the two data collection phases might
limit the ability to reach definite causal conclusions. Future research using a longitudinal design is needed to
provide stronger validation for the underlying model.
Originality/value This study is a rare attempt that investigates the process from which employeesjob
engagement is generated and contributes to improve contextual performance in the higher education sector.
Keywords Quantitative, Job engagement, Transformational leadership, Climate for innovation,
Contextual performance, University academics, High-performance human resource practices
Paper type Research paper
In todays global and competitive knowledge society, one of the major challenges faced by
organizations is to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. To survive and develop
effectively,organizations must recruit andretain a talented workforce, and encourage them to
employ and express their full capabilities at work. In other words, organizations must have
engaged employeeswho are willing to invest their physical,cognitive, and emotional energies
in their job performance.Employeesjob engagement,as a result, has received muchattention
from both scholars and practitioners in recent years (Saks and Gruman, 2014). Extensive
research is conducted to understand the drivers and outcomes of job engagement. In a
systematic review of 172 empirical studies of engagement, Bailey et al. (2017) identified five
groups of antecedents (i.e. individual psychological states, experienced job-design related
factors, perceived leadership and management, perceived organizational and team factors,
and organizational interventions), and two groups of consequences of engagement
(i.e. performance and morale). Within the seven groups, Bailey et al. (2017) found little
research addressing the effects of transformational leadership and human resource (HR)
practices on job engagement and the relationship between job engagement and contextual
performance (e.g. organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and innovative work behavior
(IWB)). Further, while extant studies into job engagement focused on Western developed
countries (e.g. the Netherlands, the USA, Finland, the UK, Australia, Germany, and Canada)
(Bailey et al., 2017), limited research was conducted in non-Western developing countries.
Bailey et al. (2017) argued that there might be significant differences between industry
Personnel Review
Vol. 47 No. 4, 2018
pp. 951-967
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-07-2017-0221
Received 26 July 2017
Revised 15 November 2017
1 January 2018
Accepted 10 February 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
951
Job
engagement
sectors, job types or cultural settings that are relevant to understanding engagement(p. 46),
and there was a need for moreresearch on the drivers and outcomes of engagement as well as
the experienceof engagement among employees from differentdemographic backgrounds.In
addition, Reissner and Pagan (2013) stated that developing employee engagement was
definitely not a straightforward process; therefore, further research into the mechanism
through which employee engagement was engendered was required.
To address the research calls of Bailey et al. (2017) and Reissner and Pagan (2013), this
study aims to investigate the direct and indirect relationships between transformational
leadership, high-performance HR practices (HPHRP), climate for innovation, job
engagement, and contextual performance (i.e. OCB and IWB) among university
academics in Vietnam. The study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it is a
rare attempt that integrates and examines the link between transformational leadership,
HPHRP, climate for innovation, job engagement, and contextual performance. Second,
it focuses on academic staffs job engagement which was neglected in previous studies
(Selmer et al., 2013). Finally, it adds to the job engagement literature by providing precious
evidence obtained from a developing higher education sector within a developing country
such as Vietnam.
Theoretical background and hypotheses
Job engagement definition
The concept of engagement was first introduced by Kahn (1990) in his article entitled
Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work.In this
paper, Kahn (1990) defined personal engagement as the harnessing of organization
membersselves to their work role; in engagement, people employ and express themselves
physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances(p. 694). Since then,
various authors (e.g. Harter et al., 2002; Schaufeli et al., 2002) proposed different meanings
and measurements of engagement, some of which even overlapped with other established
constructs such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and job involvement. By
reviewing prior research on engagement, Christian et al. (2011) identified two common
characteristics that were noteworthy for defining engagement. First, engagement indicates
a psychological connection with the performance of work tasks rather than an attitude
toward features of the organization or the job(Christian et al., 2011, p. 91). Second,
engagement relates to the investment of multiple personal resources in work so that the
experience with ones work is simultaneous and holistic (Christian et al., 2011). Given these
characteristics, the authors pinpointed the distinctions between job engagement and
organizational commitment, job satisfaction and job involvement. Specifically,
organizational commitment focuses on the organization, while engagement revolves
around the job itself. Job satisfaction mirrors the satiation of employees toward job
conditions or characteristics, whereas engagement indicates activation, reflecting an
individuals experience stemming from his or her job. Job involvement signifies a cognitive
or belief state of psychological identificationwith a particular job (Kanungo, 1982, p. 342),
which represents one dimension of engagement (i.e. the cognitive dimension) rather than the
whole construct (Christian et al., 2011). Drawing on the work of Kahn (1990) and Christian
et al. (2011), this study describes job engagement as a relatively enduring state of mind
referring to the simultaneous investment of an individuals physical, cognitive, and
emotional energies in the performance of job.
According to Kahn (1990), there are three psychological conditions associated with job
engagement, including psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability. He argued
that employees would be engaged at work when they perceived their role performance could
be meaningful and safe, and they had available resources for investing themselves in role
performance. Although Kahns engagement theory contributed to provide understandings
952
PR
47,4

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