Understanding work engagement through multi-level investigations: From antecedents to outcomes

Abstract

Work engagement is a valuable organizational resource, and it has many positive outcomes. In today’s dynamic and competitive business environment, organizations can only be successful when they have an engaged workforce. The current study examines how supervisors support and fairness is important for employee’s work engagement and how the role of perceived organizational support is significant in an employee's workplace. In line with Organizational Support Theory (OST) and Conservation of Resource Theory (CRT), the current study is an empirical attempt to explain antecedents that could increase work engagement and resultantly fetch productivity and profit in the context of South Asia (the case of Pakistan) by considering the outcomes. This cross-sectional study draws data through structured questionnaires from 310 employees of eight mega retail stores by using simple random sampling. The outcomes of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis revealed a positive effect of supervisors’ support and organizational fairness on work engagement through the mediation of Perceived Organizational Support (POS) and explained the impact of work engagement on task performance and career satisfaction of employees. The current study tested the model for work engagement; future research might test the model using other employee factors (employee sustainability or motivation) in order to test continuous employee behaviors in their workplaces.