<p>Employees are generally considered as the most important resource needed for an organization to achieve its main goals. Realization of goals achievement heavily depends on the extent to which these employees are engaged in their jobs and their organization. Employee engagement is a factor that contributes positively to employee productivity and then organizational effectiveness. It reveals that a conceptual confusion exists with regard to the meaning of employee engagement owing to that the concept has been defined by different scholars in different ways and also that there are several associated terms such as job satisfaction, job involvement, work involvement, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior which have been used in the literature, either synonymously or non-synonymously. Further a question arises to decide whether employee engagement is an attitude or a behavior. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive conceptualization of employee engagement that results in formulating a working definition for research purposes involving the construct, and to explore its dimensions and elements for the purpose of measuring the construct.</p>

This study is a systematic and scientific attempt to fill five identified research gaps in the existing literature with regard to employee engagement through the use of empirical evidence from Sri Lankan listed companies. This study focuses on investigating employee engagement, its selected dynamics such as high-performance work practices (HPWPs), religiosity, personal character, leadership, work–life balance, and mediating effects of employee engagement on the relationship between the selected dynamics and employee job performance. The data gathered from 272 executives and managers in the Sri Lankan listed companies were analyzed and a set of hypotheses established and developed based on the theoretical and empirical accounts with regard to the dynamics of employee engagement, the combined effect of the dynamics of employee engagement, employee engagement as an independent variable, and the mediating role of employee engagement. A total of 12 hypotheses were tested with minimum researcher interference, in a noncontrived setting as a cross-sectional study and they were substantiated. Implications of the research findings have been discussed.

This research paper sets out to investigate the research gaps in employee engagement for systematic empirical investigations, in order to substantiate future studies. A desk research has contributed to identify seven gaps in employee engagement. The first gap which is about the conceptual confusion, can be minimized by formulating a working definition of employee engagement. The nonexistence of theoretical arguments and empirical tests on the impact of the religiosity on employee engagement, in both the Sri Lankan and in the international contexts, has been identified as the second gap. The third gap has been identified to be the fact that the rapport between personal character and employee engagement being, neither theoretically argued nor empirically tested, in Sri Lankan and the international contexts. The fourth gap is the unavailability of studies in the Sri Lankan context as to how the high performance work practices (HPWPs) impact on employee engagement. The fifth gap identified is the shortage of empirical evidence regarding the link between employee engagement and organizational financial performance in the Sri Lankan context. Absence of empirical evidence on employee job performance to be an intervening variable for employee engagement and organizational financial performance is brought up as the sixth gap. The same absence is found in empirical evidence about religiosity, HPWPs, personal character, leadership and work life balance that significantly affect employee engagement in a nomological network in the Sri Lankan context as well as in the international context, which is the seventh Gap.

Religiosity is closely interwoven with the lives of Sri Lankan citizens who are adherents of mainly Buddhist, and then Hindu, Muslim and Christian faiths. There is a growing interest in conducting research on religiosity. There are many definitions of religiosity but they need to be refined since they do not represent the whole idea of religiosity. Religiosity is defined as the extent to which the particular employee believes in and venerates the founder, gods or goddesses of the relevant religion, practices the relevant teaching and participates in the relevant activities. Religiosity involves one's being religious earnestly and really rather than one's being religious frivolously and nominally. The dimensions and elements of religiosity have been investigated with a view to developing an instrument to measure the variable of religiosity. Reliability and validity of the instrument are also presented.

Some of the frequently used buzz words in the corporate sector include green leadership, green human resource management, green employee engagement and green work-life balance. The intention of this article is to identify and examine the logical reasons that govern “green work-life balance” or, in simple terms, “greenwashing” work-life balance. The paper also aims at providing a comprehensive conceptualization of work-life balance, while thoroughly examining the components of measuring the construct. Based on a cross-sectional study in the banking industry with a sample of 170 managerial employees, this study analyzes the impact of work-life balance on employee job performance mediated by employee engagement. Results support the assumed relationship between work-life balance and employee job performance embedded in employee engagement. The theoretical contribution of this study concerns the application of role behavior theory to describe the mechanisms shaping the relationship between work-life balance and job performance through employee engagement. The practical implications of the paper include recommendations for improving job performance by enhancing the work-life balance and strengthening employee engagement.

This study aims to identify the primary topics and present dynamics in the field of entrepreneurship education at universities and to make recommendations for future research directions. We conduct a bibliometric analysis on a selection of 447 studies from the Web of Science database to determine the extent of research on entrepreneurship education at universities between 2004 and 2022. In this study, researchers identify the most influential articles and writers based on their citations, publications, and geographical location. Additionally, they assess existing themes, identify bottlenecks to growth in the literature, and recommend future study options. While research on entrepreneurship education at universities happens globally, there is a dearth of collaboration across national borders, particularly between writers from developed and developing countries. Most of the research on entrepreneurship education at universities focuses on a quantitative approach in the analysis of entrepreneurship. Lastly, we conclude by proposing possible avenues for future research.

Employee engagement encompasses and connects a vast range of management discipline which turns it to be a wide spread concept. The correlation between employee engagement and perceived financial performance has rarely been studied. The intention of this study scrutinizes the connection between employee engagement and perceived financial performance. Based on data extracted from 67 HR managers in the listed companies in Sri Lanka, the study investigates two hypothesized relationships; the relationship between employee engagement and perceived financial performance, and the mediating role of employee job performance on the relationship between employee engagement and perceived financial performance. These ideas initiate important discussion for academics and practitioners.

H. H. D. N. P. Opatha, Sustainable Human Resource Management: Expanding Horizons of HRM. University of Sri Jayewardenepura, 2019, 464 pp. (Paperback), ISBN: 978-955-52907-1-5.