Linking personal growth initiative and organizational identification to employee engagement: Testing the mediating- moderating effects in Indian hotel industry

Abstract

PurposeThe study intends to study the association between personal growth initiative, organizational identification and employee engagement. It further investigates the mediating effects of psychological empowerment and hardiness on organizational identification, personal growth initiative and employee engagement relationship on hotel employees. DesignData was collected from 382 employees of hotels located in the vicinity of North India via questionnaire survey and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and mediation analysis. FindingsPsychological empowerment was found to act as partial mediator between personal growth initiative, organizational identification, and employee engagement. Hardiness acted as a significant moderator between psychological empowerment, and employee engagement relationship. Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on the convenience sample and taking only three states of India. Different conceptual model explaining the mediating and moderating effects can also be added in future direction of research. Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that top level management should create an environment where the employees feel a sense of empowerment because empowered employees automatically become engaged employee. This is possible only when the organization has a culture where the employees have the power to ‘say’ ‘stay’ and ‘strive’. Originality/valueGoing through the literature, the importance of psychological and social needs of the employees are much talked about in western world. However, there is a paucity work done in Indian context which has addressed these needs in the hospitality sector. The study is the first of its kind which has taken hardiness and psychological empowerment as mediators in Indian context.