How interpersonal leadership relates to employee engagement

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine organizational identification as an underlying mechanism for how perceptions of interpersonal leadership are related to employee engagement, and its relationship with commitment and job tension. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 451 full-time employees at an international firm completed a web-based survey. Findings – Organizational identification mediated the relationship between perceived interpersonal leadership and engagement, which mediated the relationship between perceived interpersonal leadership and commitment. Engagement mediated the relationship between identification and job tension. Research limitations/implications – Limitations include cross-sectional data. Strengths include a large field sample. Implication is that leaders who encourage employees’ identification with the organization may also encourage their engagement. Practical implications – Interpersonal leadership characteristics can be developed, and are positively related to employees’ identification, commitment, and engagement, which are negatively related to job tension. Social implications – Interpersonal leaders are positively associated with employees’ engagement; high engagement has been related to positive employee health and well-being. A healthy workforce translates into a healthy society. Originality/value – This study is one of the few to examine the underlying mechanisms through which leadership relates to engagement.

Back to Basics: The Relative Importance of Transformational and Fair Leadership for Employee Work Engagement and Exhaustion

“…Concerning positive well-being, fair leadership explained work engagement equally well, thereby leaving no additional variance for transformational leadership to explain. Thus, our results concur with the findings of Hansen et al (2014) and show that fair leadership also facilitates energy and dedication at work. From the point of view of subordinates, being able to trust that the organizational authorities treat employees respectfully and in an unbiased way is essential in order to feel engaged at work (e.g.…”

“…We could, however, locate two studies suggesting that justice is important for work engagement (Hansen, Byrne and Kiersch, 2014;Moliner et al, 2008). The psychological benefits of fairness can be understood through its fundamental value in organizational life (e.g.…”

“…Studies that have investigated transformational leadership together with justice (DeCremer, van Dijke and Bos, 2007;Hansen et al, 2014) have demonstrated that transformational leadership is closely related to justice perceptions of employees, especially interactional justice (DeCremer et al, 2007). High correlations reported in these studies (.35-.81) indicate that empirical overlap is evident and consequently emphasize the need to investigate whether transformational and fair leadership actually show incremental validity in relation to employee well-being.…”

The Relationship between Employee Engagement, HRM practices and Perceived Organizational Support: Evidence from Banking Employees

“…Prior studies (e.g., Nazir & Islam, 2017;Hansen, Byrne & Kiersch, 2014;Agarwal, 2014) found the positive association of employee engagement with individual and organizational performance. In academic literature, employee engagement has been conceptualized as the positive, full of energy, and job-related state of mind that is manifested by vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli et al, 2002).…”

Do Diversity and Inclusion Help Drive Employee Engagement?

“…That widening stream of research surfaces in recent studies looking at specific variables that may affect employee engagement, such as internal communications (Mishra, Boynton, & Mishra, 2014), listening climate (Reed, Goolsby, & Johnston, 2014), flexible work arrangements (Timms et al, 2015), and leadership styles (Hansen, Byrne, & Kiersch, 2014). Oswick (2015) described employee engagement as an "illusive, slippery, and poorly defined concept" (p. 9), which results in a futile effort to operationalize and manage engagement strategies.…”