Job engagement in higher education

Abstract

Purpose Employees’ job engagement is a key driver for organizational success and competitive advantage. Based on Kahn’s 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 employees’ job engagement. A climate for innovation contributed effectively to mediate the effect of transformational leadership on employees’ job engagement. Further, employees’ job 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 employees’ job engagement is generated and contributes to improve contextual performance in the higher education sector.

Antecedents of Cognitive Job Engagement and its Effect on Teacher Performance: Moderating Roles of Occupational Stress and Mentoring

“…First, this study provides an empirical support of the theoretical relationship between organizational climate and morale, and CJE -the relationship which is recently identified meagre to date in the literature (Ancarani et al, 2019). Moreover, it attempts to answer research call of (Pham-Thai et al, 2018) to investigate three antecedents of CJE of academic staff of higher education. Second, unlike previous authors, it is among the first to reveal a reverse lens between OCB-I and CJE by suggesting that OCB-I can have a direct and positive effect on CJE.…”

“…Gaining and sustaining a competitive advantage in today's hypercompetitive era are confounding challenges for organizations (Pham-Thai, McMurray, Muenjohn, & Muchiri, 2018) because the dynamic and professional work environment have substantially challenged the conventional view of measuring employee performance (Eldor & Harpaz, 2016). Universities are the hub of highly-qualified individuals where they are engaged in various educational pursuits e.g.…”

“…Likewise, there is a strong and positive correlation between highly-educated employees and their attitude towards enhancing their occupational skills and productivity, higher education institutions (HEIs) bring an interesting research context because a) job engagement of academic staff is much of a neglected area in research (Pham-Thai et al, 2018); b) there is a paucity of knowledge about the antecedents of CJE in the education sector especially in a developing country; and c) its holistic effect on teacher performance in higher education.…”

Determinants of Internal Corporate Social Responsibility Practices and Employee Engagement: A Study of Malaysian Private Higher Education Institution

“…This further supported the notion of Ramasamy and Abdullah (2017) where employee disengagement in the universities may result in loss of progress for the institutions. Despite the issue that has been frequently highlighted in the mass-media and government official reports, empirical studies on employee engagement are still limited in developing countries (Bailey, Madden, Alfes, & Fletcher, 2017) and studies on the HEIs require further investigation (Pham-Thai, McMurray, Muenjohn, & Muchiri, 2018).…”

Quality Education from Faculty Management Perspectives in Private Higher Education: Does Faculty Commitment Behaviour Mediate?

“…It is reported that the authorities of these private universities of Bangladesh including UGC seem ineffective in improving quality education (Ashraf et al, 2009;Joarder, 2012;Ashraf et al, 2016). In fact, except a few, in most of the private universities, quality of education has been staggering in unfathomed quagmires inflicted by unplanned and improper human resource management practices for which the faculty turnover rate in these universities is very high (Ashraf, 2009;Jalil, 2009;Joarder, 2012;Ashraf et al, 2016;Imran et al, 2017;Wong and Wong, 2017;Pham-Thai et al, 2018). This high faculty turnover rate intuitively implies a lack of organisational commitment behaviour of the faculty members (Joarder, 2012;Imran et al, 2017;Kokubon, 2018;Sutherland, 2018).…”