Construct Of Engagement Research Articles

Workplace engagement interventions: empirically based alternatives for manager consideration

PurposeThe primary purpose of this paper is to identify for practitioners and readers of this journal several interventions represented in empirical research that have shown promise with regard to the stimulation and/or reinforcement of employee work engagement. The aim is to identify a range of interventions that managers, supervisors or coaches may consider for a given setting as they go about enabling employee learning and performance improvement.Design/methodology/approachExamination of the research literature on work engagement provided initial guidance for study of interventions that link to enhancement and/or reinforcement of employee work engagement. Information was found that aids in developing an understanding of the dynamics of work engagement as well as identifying a variety of interventions successfully applied in many organizations in several countries. The fundamental approach used in the study is a scoping review. Overall, the paper is generally discursive and details are offered based on review of empirical study and meta-analyses.FindingsFindings are represented by a detailed explanation of the construct of work engagement, its theoretical grounding and its relationship with performance and achievement. A summary of interventions identified across many empirical studies provides guidance for managers and leaders, primarily, and organizations with regard to interventions to aid with employee learning, growth and performance improvement.Research limitations/implicationsResearch implications deal mainly with issues linked to the concept of work engagement and the primary tool used for its measurement.Practical implicationsSubstantial information is presented to give a manager, coach or supervisor a detailed view of the construct of work engagement and how one may influence employee growth with regard to the concept. Several interventions are identified, all of which have been shown to be effective. The manager can examine these interventions and make choices about how to influence the employees in her/his unit.Originality/valueWhile hundreds of studies of work engagement have identified and highlighted a variety of interventions used to stimulate or reinforce work engagement with employees, there have been few efforts made to provide practitioners/managers with an array of interventions that have been shown, repeatedly, to be effective. The present study provides such an array.

Gender-Based Multigroup Analysis on the Mediating Role of Online Learning Self Efficacy to The Influence of Academic Interaction to Student Engagement

All schools and Universities in Indonesia have to implement online learning due to covid19 issue. This article examines gender as group moderator to the mediating role of online learning self efficacy (OLSE) to the influence of academic interaction to student engagement in e-learning system in Indonesia. This uses higher order construct of academic interaction comprising student-student interaction (SSI) and student-lecturer interaction (SLI), and also higher order construct of student engagement comprising agentic (AE), emotional (EE), cognitive (CE), and behavioral (BE) engagement. 378 students from several online classes participated in this research. This research found that academic interaction has positive influence to student engagement, academic interaction has positive influence to students’ online learning self efficacy, and students’ online learning self efficacy has positive influence to student engagement. This research also found that online learning self efficacy partially mediates the influence of academic interaction to student engagement and gender moderates all relationships in the research model.

How can human capital promote innovative behaviour? exploring the attitudinal dynamics of employee engagement and mental involvement

This study puts forward a novel advancement on understanding the underlying mechanisms that expound how human capital can lead to employees” innovative behaviour. Thus, this study intends to examine the nuanced associations between human capital and innovative work behaviour, evoking the mediation of employee engagement and moderation of mental involvement. Utilising a cross sectional research design, a random-sampling technique was used to collect responses from professionals selected from different organizations operating in Jordan. In total, 380 participants completed a questionnaire constructed from well-established measures. AMOS-Structural Equation Modelling was used to examine the measurement and structural models. The results demonstrated that, along with the direct effect, human capital asserts a substantial relevance to individuals” innovative behaviour via the mediation of employee engagement and moderation of mental involvement. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this is the first research attempt that views the aforementioned associations through the lens of the attitudinal constructs of employee engagement (mediator) and mental involvement (moderator). Further, this study expands the knowledge base of the cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioural literature by expanding the scope of the JD-R theory aspects to be linked to other psychological dynamics (employee engagement and mental involvement) thought to enhance employees” innovative behaviours.

Literary-stylistics of engagement in Femi Osofisan’s The Engagement

ABSTRACT Existing linguistic and non-linguistic studies on Femi Osofisan’s The Engagement (TE) and his other plays have articulated the revolutionary dialectics that characterise his works. Besides the fact that TE has not been sufficiently explored, scholarly information on Osofisan’s construction of marriage proposal remains under-reported. Taking insights from aspects of literary stylistics (LS), this study examines the construction of marriage proposal in TE with a view to describing the implications of such construction for Yoruba culture. Engaging aspects of LS, ten purposively selected excerpts, relating to contextual construction of engagement are subjected to literary stylistic analysis. The study reveals that Osofisan adopts satire, humour and songs to trivialise marriage proposal as a relevant aspect of Yoruba cultural belief. Rather than describing the contextual description of marriage proposal within the Yoruba cultural perspective, Osofisan satirises marriage institution by creating conflict to orchestrate to characters’ follies, lampoon inherent complexities in human relations and depict the collapse of good parenting, especially in marriage. A literary stylistic reading of TE reveals the robust attachment of Osofisan to the Yoruba cultural values, and describes the smooth interaction between his art and social commitment.

Investigating the Impact of the Social Media Branding on Purchase Intention in the African Context

Start-ups play an important role in providing job opportunities and promoting economic development. Social media enables start-ups to reach customers at a more affordable cost than traditional channels. The present study aims to explore the possibility of using social media for African start-ups as a marketing and branding tool and to investigate the effects of social media branding on African consumers’ purchase behaviours. Multiple studies were conducted. First, two case studies of African start-ups were made to obtain feasible business models of social media branding. Then, a qualitative pilot study was conducted to explore the consensus map of social media branding from the consumers’ perspective. Finally, a model was established and verified by employing a quantitative approach. Six constructs of trust, interaction, social support, information sharing, brand relationship, and brand engagement are identified. Among them, trust plays a crucial role in the context of African markets. By using SEM testing, the present study reveals that brand relationship and brand engagement act as mediators between social media branding factors and consumers’ purchase intentions. In Africa, the idea of branding via social media is appealing for start-ups due to the emergence and growth of various social media platforms. The present study provides an overall view of social media branding for African start-ups, including business models, consumer engagement, and consumer experience. The insights and suggestions will be beneficial for African start-ups and will contribute to the African business literature.

Learner engagement in the flipped foreign language classroom: Definitions, debates, and directions of future research.

Flipped classrooms have attracted widespread attention and interest from English for foreign language (EFL) practitioners and researchers and are regarded as a promising pedagogical approach to increase learning outcomes and facilitate learner engagement. This article takes stock of the publications on learner engagement in flipped EFL classrooms. In so doing, we aim to clarify the engagement construct specific to the EFL classroom setting, summarize the effect that flipped classrooms have on EFL learners’ engagement, and identify factors affecting engagement. We find that there has been a range of debates and tensions regarding flipped classrooms and learner engagement in EFL settings, and that more theory-grounded empirical studies are needed to delineate learner engagement in localized flipped learning and teaching contexts. We would argue that in future research, multiple variables, including learner dynamics and social-psychological factors, should be considered while flipping the EFL course so that practitioners can provide tailor-made support to improve learners’ engagement levels.

Student Engagement and Language Learning: What, Why, and How?

Student Engagement and Language Learning: What, Why, and How?

The Study of the Effect of Occupational Stress on Resilience: Mediating Role of Occupational Engagement (A Case Study: Nurses of Al-zahra Hospital in Isfahan)

Introduction: Considering the high mental pressures on nurses at work, identifying the effective resilience factors is deemed necessary. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of occupational engagement in the relationship between occupational stress and resilience among the nurses of Al-zahra Hospital of Isfahan.
 Methods: The present study was a descriptive survey-correlational study. The population of this study included 1700 nurses from Al-zahra hospital in Isfahan city. Based on Cochran’s formula and by convenience sampling method, 200 people (60 men and 140 women) were chosen. Occupational stress questionnaires of HSE, resilience, and occupational engagement were performed on the sample. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS software using structural equation modeling.
 Results: The results showed that occupational stress had a negative and significant effect (P <0.001) on the vibration with the mediating role of occupational engagement. Also, occupational stress had a negative and significant (P <0.001) negative effect on occupation and there was a significant and positive effect (P <0.001) on resilience.
 Conclusion: The results indicate that occupational stress affects the resilience, but if the nurses are engaged in their jobs, this effect will reduce and the construct of engagement will act as a mediating variable.

Exploring L2 Engagement: A Large-Scale Survey of Secondary School Students.

Engagement, a psychological individual difference variable with three facets (vigour, dedication and absorption), has recently attracted scholarly attention. Through a large-scale survey, we examined what we call ‘L2 engagement’ among 21,370 secondary school students in China, with an L2 engagement scale adapted from the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES)-student version. Factor analysis showed this scale to be empirically unidimensional with three highly intercorrelated facets and very high internal consistency; this contributes to our understanding of the conceptual challenges surrounding the construct of engagement (e.g., dimensionality) and the broader issue concerning the correspondence between empirical constructs and theoretical terms (e.g., engagement in our case). Hierarchical regression revealed that the selected sociobiographical variables (e.g., L2 proficiency) were linked to L2 engagement to varying degrees; adopting a more refined approach to gauge the unique contribution of a predictor to L2 engagement in hierarchical regression, we identified L2 proficiency, parental attention, study time and frequency of parental coaching as (very) important predictors for L2 engagement. We call for more studies to adopt our L2 engagement scale, a sufficiently valid and reliable instrument developed based on a large sample. We also propose a few future research directions (e.g., combining self-reports with other data sources).

Representations of Social Justice and Digital Civic Engagement: The Influence of Psychosocial Variables in Teacher Training

Teacher training programs usually contain specific psychoeducational aspects, but these should also promote citizenship competences based on social justice in order to encourage a more sustainable world. The three dimensions of Social Justice, the Belief in a Just World (BJW) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) are psychosocial variables linked to the construction of civic engagement and participation, including in digital frameworks. The aim of the study was to analyze these variables in students seeking teaching training degrees that have begun their program and students who are finishing their studies. The sample was composed of 420 teachers enrolled in a Teacher Training Degree for Elementary Education with an age range between 17 to 44 (M = 21.10; DT = 3.26), among which a subgroup was in their first year of study (n = 217) and another group was in the fourth year (n = 203). The results shows that there were significant differences in social justice representations, and in levels of SDO and BJW, with a better psychosocial index at the end of training. The changes in social justice representations of future teachers are not uniform for the three dimensions and some gender differences were maintained, showing no significant differences in the variables evaluated in both stages of training. Finally, linear regression analyses showed that BJW and SDO predicted social justice representations and the Digital Civic Engagement of future teachers. The implications of the psychosocial variables studied are discussed as possible factors to consider in educational psychology to promote innovative developments from teacher training programs.

"I Have Grown Accustomed to Being Rejected": EFL Academics' Responses Toward Power Relations in Research Practice.

While there has been an increasing interest in English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ research engagement and researcher identity construction, scant attention has been paid to tensions caused by the issue of power relations in their research practice. This study draws on data from semi-structured interviews complemented with data from narrative frames and document analysis to examine the influence of power relations on the research practice of six EFL academics and their coping strategies at a Chinese university. The data analysis reveals that for the participants in the study, even though they were driven to be engaged in research practice by a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, they found that their research endeavors were undermined by the marginalized status of EFL researchers from non-elite universities, as imposed by the Chinese academic circle. Nevertheless, in the face of potential bias against their peripheral academic status, they exerted their agency with micropolitical literacy and tried to seek a way out of the unfavorable academic culture. As EFL teachers at regular universities are increasingly expected to be more research-active and research-productive, more attention and support are needed to facilitate their professional development and researcher identity construction.

Precedence analysis of customer engagement dimensions for tourism destinations: an evidence-based modeling using RIDIT-GRA approach

PurposeThe current research prioritizes the dimensions of a higher-order customer engagement construct in the tourism destination context in order of their relative importance as perceived by tourists to provide meaningful insights to the tourism industry player.Design/methodology/approachData was collected from 429 tourists' from selected tourist destinations. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used for data analysis using SPSS. The scale items were prioritized through hybrid evidence-based modeling using the RIDIT-GRA (Relative to an Identified Distribution and Grey Relational Analysis, respectively) approach.FindingsThe prioritization of customer engagement scale items is done through RIDIT analysis and is verified through GRA. The rankings of two independent methodologies show a 93% correlation, thereby ensuring the ranking's robustness.Practical implicationsPrioritizing customer engagement scale items may assist destination managers in strategy formulation to ensure tourists' high-level loyalty transcending purchase. The findings help develop key response areas (KRA's) for effective destination brand management.Originality/valueSuch precedence analysis of customer engagement scale items has not been done in the tourism studies yet. Also, the present study verified the results by incorporating two independent methodologies, thus providing more valid results.

Fifth and ninth grade students’ engagement in science classes in Palestine

In the study reported on here I aimed to measure the extent to which fifth and ninth grade science students were cognitively, behaviourally, emotionally and socially engaged in science classes. These constructs of engagement were examined based on a set of variables: the grade, students’ gender, teachers’ gender, teachers’ specialisation, teachers’ experience and teachers’ academic degree. To measure these constructs, I used the Wang Engagement Scale as well as a descriptive approach, especially in its relational components. The population, which comprised 15,057 students from the northern West Bank, was divided into groups; from each I chose a representative sample drawn using a random sampling technique based on the size of each of the three directorates of education (Jenin, Qabatia and Tubas). A questionnaire was then designed and delivered to 1,132 respondents from the fifth and ninth grades. The results suggest that fifth graders are by far more engaged than ninth graders, especially female students, and that female teachers, teachers with a degree in science, teachers with 1 to 5 years of experience and teachers with a 2-year associate degree were particularly motivating for student engagement.

How Perceived Organizational Support, Identification with Organization and Work Engagement Influence Job Satisfaction: A Gender-Based Perspective

The main objective of this study is to analyze the effects of work engagement, identification with an organization and perceived organizational support on job satisfaction and how these issues vary with gender. Data were collected in a public higher education institution with a questionnaire applied to professors and support staff. The data collected from the 171 employees allowed the development of a structural equation model. The results suggest that work engagement constructs have a greater effect on job satisfaction for female employees, whereas the impact of perceived organizational support on job satisfaction is stronger for male workers. The analysis also revealed that identification with the organization does not influence job satisfaction differently in terms of gender. The findings of this study contribute to the body of empirical knowledge on how the influence of factors on job satisfaction, such as engagement at work, perceived organizational support and identification with the organization, varies by gender.

Sustaining Engagement during Reading Activities

Research shows that engagement in reading is one of the factors to motivate students’ literacy learning development. The aim of this study is to synthesize and elaborate instructions that enable students’ motivation for being engaged inside and outside classrooms. The method of this study is a literature review using 16 articles. The review was presented in descriptive narration that discusses the multidimensional construct of engagement in reading activities and the instructional strategies to enhance engagement in reading. The results showed that there were not all reading instructions examined in the recent studies represented the entire aspects of engagement. Meanwhile, only a few studies addressed the analysis of those aspects in the reading instruction approach used in the studies.

Pretend Participation: Procedural Injustices in the Madeira Hydroelectric Complex

Energy infrastructure projects have long been associated with a lack of participation by impacted, local populations—this history is evident in the case of hydropower projects in the Global South. Ever since the World Commission on Dams’ Report (WCD 2000), there has been substantive evidence, and numerous recommendations, that have called on governments, financial agencies and construction companies to increase community engagement and participation in dam construction and in their governance thereafter. Further, community groups, activists, and scholars have long articulated the need for participatory governance in energy projects. In this analysis, we evaluate participation in institutionalized mechanisms provided by dam builders—such as public meetings and negotiations—in Brazil’s Madeira hydroelectric complex. We evaluate how perceptions of positive and negative impacts, among other factors, predict engagement, estimating a series of logit models based on a social survey of 673 households carried out in 2019/20. Perceptions of negative and positive impacts of the dams before construction are related to participation in the meetings promoted by dam builders. Yet our results also imply that participation was rare, fleeting, and insufficient and points to the need to ensure community engagement and governance to ensure energy justice in future dam projects in Brazil and elsewhere.

Service amid crisis: the role of supervisor humor and discretionary organizational support

PurposeThis paper aims to study the effects of widespread stress and uncertainty that is characteristic of organizational crises on service employees and to explore the extent to which organizations may proactively use supervisors’ positive humor and discretionary organizational support that goes above and beyond service employee expectations to mitigate the pandemic’s negative impact on work engagement.Design/methodology/approachCross-sequential survey-based data was collected from 172 service employees during the height of the pandemic to assess service employees’ perceptions of both their supervisors’ use of positive humor and their employers’ discretionary organizational support in response to the emotion-laden stress and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. PROCESS analysis was used to test the hypotheses and to conduct supplementary analyses.FindingsResults suggest employee perceptions of supervisors’ use of positive humor positively impact dimensions of work engagement at Time 1. This engagement then positively impacts extra-role behavior, innovativeness and pride at Time 2. The impact from supervisor humor to the outcomes is fully mediated through work engagement. From a moderation perspective, discretionary organizational support was shown as a substitute for creating work engagement at low levels of supervisor humor suggesting that the two “resource builders” can act as substitutes in creating engagement.Originality/valueThis paper provides unique insights into both the valuable role of positive workplace humor for service workers’ work engagement during times of widespread crisis and the moderating role discretionary organizational support plays when perceptions of humor are relatively low. Moreover, the supplemental examination of the multidimensional work engagement construct as a mediator between humor and the service outcomes of extra-role behavior, innovativeness and organizational pride provides unique insights into how a crisis context may deferentially affect the experience and implications of engagement for other service worker outcomes. Understanding the proactive, ameliorative role in service effectiveness played by supervisor humor and discretionary organizational support during crises is an emerging question for service research.

Employee Engagement in the Home-Work Lifeworld

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a rapid implementation of the work-from-home model. The struggles imposed by COVID-19 and the challenges of the work-from-home pose consequences for being either fully present and complete or fragmented when occupying an organizational role. This article summarizes existing knowledge on employee engagement under the work-from-home design. In addition, it provides new insights and coherent explanations on the development of engagement when employees are working from home. This article offers a conceptual framework regarding employee engagement and the work-from-home format, i.e., the home-work lifeworld matrix. The home-work lifeworld matrix describes and explains the processes or sequence of events while employees work from home. The home-work lifeworld matrix provides a basis for understanding the underlying constructs of engagement; body, time, space, and relations and their interconnectedness when employees work from home. The article proposes assessing engagement holistically by considering different facets of the body, time, space, and relations and specifies the implications for managing employees in home-based work.

Factor structures associated with online student engagement in campus-based blended and online distance education settings

This research is strictly grounded in the work undertaken by Coates regarding traditional campus-based settings of student engagement and was applied to the online settings positioned within the domain settings of blended online learning design and practice in an Australian higher education business context. Utilising an online student survey instrument, across two consecutive academic years, undergraduate commerce students were invited to reflect upon their learning engagement experience through the lens of a common learning management system (LMS) a resource accessible to both campus-based and off-campus student cohorts. Subsequent analysis of the research reconfirms the existence of student engagement constructs of Coates in the blended online setting, but also unexpectedly revealed a previously unknown construct relating to Assessment. This new student engagement construct, Assessment, is identified as being a significant motivational factor relevant to student engagement in the context of the blended online learning environment of this higher education business undergraduate commerce course and is the focus of this exposition.

Relationships Between Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction, Regulations, and Behavioral Engagement in Mathematics.

Behavioral engagement is a key determinant of students’ learning. Hence, knowledge about mechanisms affecting engagement is crucial for educators and stakeholders. Self-determination theory (SDT) offers a framework to understand one of these mechanisms. However, extant studies mostly consider only parts of SDT’s theoretical paths from basic psychological need satisfaction via regulations to student engagement. Studies that investigate the full model are rare, especially in mathematics, and results are inconclusive. Moreover, constructs are often merged in ways that may preclude detailed understanding. In this study, we used structural equation modeling to test several hypothesized paths between the individual variables that make up higher-order constructs of need satisfaction, regulations, and behavioral engagement. Satisfaction of the need for competence had a dominating effect on engagement, both directly and via identified regulation. Similarly, satisfaction of the need for relatedness predicted identified regulation, that in turn predicted engagement. Satisfaction of the need for autonomy predicted intrinsic regulation as expected but, in contrast to theory, was also positively associated with controlled motivation (external and introjected regulation). Neither intrinsic nor controlled regulation predicted engagement. Theoretical and method-related reasons for this unexpected pattern are discussed, as well as implications for research and teaching.