Organizational goal ambiguity and senior public managers’ engagement: does organizational social capital make a difference?
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852317701824 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
Organizational goal ambiguity
and senior public managers’
engagement: does organizational
social capital make a difference?
Rhys Andrews
Cardiff University, UK
Ahmed Mohammed Sayed Mostafa
University of Warwick, UK
Abstract
The Job Demands–Resources model highlights that aspects of the work environment
that place high demands on employees are job stressors, which can reduce their levels
of engagement with their work and organization. By contrast, social support for
employees is a resource that can sustain their engagement and enable them to cope
with high demands. We analyse the separate and combined effects of two key job
demands and resources on the engagement of more than 4000 senior public managers
in 10 European countries: organizational goal ambiguity, which may demotivate employ-
ees; and organizational social capital, which can prompt employees to share knowledge
in constructive ways. The statistical results suggest that there is a negative relationship
between goal ambiguity and engagement, and a positive one between social capital and
engagement. Further analysis reveals that organizational social capital weakens the nega-
tive goal ambiguity–engagement relationship.
Points for practitioners
This study emphasizes the value of organizational social capital for enhancing senior
managers’ engagement. Positive co-worker relationships lead senior public managers to
feel more engaged with their work and organization, and protect that engagement from
the damaging effects of organizational goal ambiguity. The findings we present therefore
provide a strong basis for the introduction of policies and practices that support the
development of social capital within public organizations.
Keywords
civil service, human resources management
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2019, Vol. 85(2) 377–395
!The Author(s) 2017
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0020852317701824
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Corresponding author:
Professor Rhys Andrews, Cardiff University, Colum Road, Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK.
Email: andrewsr4@cardiff.ac.uk
Introduction
Employee engagement is one of the most important issues in the theory and prac-
tice of human resource management (Baldev and Anupama, 2010; Brunetto et al.,
2014). Individuals who are committed to the organization and involved with
the work that they do are the source of positive contributions to organizational
functioning (Albrecht, 2010). The perceived need for an engaged workforce has
become especially prevalent within the public sector, with governments across the
world seeking to transform service provision by increasing levels of employee
engagement. The Canadian, UK and US governments have all run evaluation
projects seeking to understand how to better support the engagement of civil ser-
vants (i.e. the Public Service Employee Survey, the Civil Service People Survey
and the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, respectively). The growing emphasis
on employee engagement reflects a wider turn towards positive psychological states
in organizational psychology (Meyers et al., 2013). Indeed, recent applications
of the Job Demand–Resources (JD–R) model highlight the role that spe-
cific demands and resources within the working environment can play in
shaping positive employee outcomes, such as engagement, as well as negative
ones, like employee burnout (Crawford et al., 2010). Nevertheless, although
attention has been devoted to the determinants of employee burnout and disen-
gagement in the public sector (e.g. Demerouti et al., 2001; Hallberg and
Sverke, 2004; Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004), there is a need for more research
that evaluates the organizational factors that might shape the positive engagement
of public employees. Such work has already been undertaken among street-level
bureaucrats and professionals (e.g. Brunetto et al., 2014; Di Simone et al.,
2016) but has rarely addressed the engagement of senior public managers, even
though the efforts of these individuals are critical to the success of public service
organizations.
For the purposes of our study, we view engagement as the degree to which an
employee is motivated to contribute to organizational success and is willing to
display attitudes and behaviours that help in the achievement of organizational
objectives (see Wiley et al., 2010). Employee engagement is typically associated
with positive work-related outcomes, such as improved job performance and citi-
zenship behaviours (Saks, 2006; Yalabik et al., 2013). However, despite growing
interest in the organizational factors that might shape engagement (Christian et al.,
2011; Rayton and Yalabik, 2014), comparatively little attention has so far been
devoted to the antecedents of senior managers’ engagement. In particular, research
has yet to fully explore how ambiguous organizational goals and positive co-
worker relationships might influence the engagement of senior public managers,
even though these are job demands and resources that many argue are character-
istic of managerial work in the public sector (Burke et al., 2013). To address these
gaps in the literature, we examine the separate and combined effects of organiza-
tional goal ambiguity and social capital on the engagement of high-ranking public
officials across Europe.
378 International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(2)
To continue reading
Request your trial