Antecedents of organizational engagement: exploring vision, mood and perceived organizational support with emotional intelligence as a moderator.

Edward G Mahon,Richard E Boyatzis,Scott N Taylor

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01322

Edward G Mahon, Richard E Boyatzis + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01322

Copy DOI

Abstract

As organizational leaders worry about the appalling low percentage of people who feel engaged in their work, academics are trying to understand what causes an increase in engagement. We collected survey data from 231 team members from two organizations. We examined the impact of team members’ emotional intelligence (EI) and their perception of shared personal vision, shared positive mood, and perceived organizational support (POS) on the members’ degree of organizational engagement. We found shared vision, shared mood, and POS have a direct, positive association with engagement. In addition, shared vision and POS interact with EI to positively influence engagement. Besides highlighting the importance of shared personal vision, positive mood, and POS, our study contributes to the emergent understanding of EI by revealing EI’s amplifying effect on shared vision and POS in relation to engagement. We conclude by discussing the research and practical implications of this study.

Highlights

Employee engagement has quickly become an important construct in organizational studies (e.g., Crawford et al, 2010; Rich et al, 2010; Gruman and Saks, 2011; Saks and Gruman, 2014)
Empirical research suggests that employee engagement drives a number of positive individual and organizational outcomes (Saks and Gruman, 2014), including, for example, job performance (Rich et al, 2010), job satisfaction (Saks, 2006), and helping organizations reach their potential through business growth and profitability (Saks, 2006; Macey et al, 2009)
We found a similar result in that model 1 shows emotional intelligence (EI) (b = −0.06, p > 0.05) does not have a significant association with organizational engagement

Summary

Introduction

Employee engagement has quickly become an important construct in organizational studies (e.g., Crawford et al, 2010; Rich et al, 2010; Gruman and Saks, 2011; Saks and Gruman, 2014). Empirical research suggests that employee engagement drives a number of positive individual and organizational outcomes (Saks and Gruman, 2014), including, for example, job performance (Rich et al, 2010), job satisfaction (Saks, 2006), and helping organizations reach their potential through business growth and profitability (Saks, 2006; Macey et al, 2009). Employee engagement is viewed as a source of competitive advantage (Kular et al, 2008), has become a catalyst for rethinking performance management systems (Gruman and Saks, 2011), and is used as a tool for improving talent management (Macey et al, 2009). Macey and Schneider (2008) lamented that “potential antecedents and consequences of engagement. . .have not been rigorously conceptualized, much less studied” (p. 304)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion