Introduction

 The notion that individuals can be ‘personally engaged’ in their work, investing positive
emotional and cognitive energy into their role performance, was first proposed by William
Kahn in 1990 in his seminal paper in the Academy of Management Journal.
 Perhaps the reason that engagement has garnered so much attention lies in its dual
promise of enhancing both individual well-being and organizational performance (Bakker
and Schaufeli, 2008; Christian et al., 2011; Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, 2002).
 The inspiration behind the book has been the seminar series led by the editorial team:
‘Employee Engagement, Organisational Performance and Individual Wellbeing: Exploring
the Evidence, Developing the Theory’ funded in the UK by the Economic and Social Research
Council (RES-451-26-0807), which ran between 2010 and 2012.
 Employee engagement is a problematic construct. Even the term itself is subject to a
number of variations, including ‘work engagement’, ‘personal engagement’, ‘job
engagement’, ‘staff engagement’, ‘employee engagement’ and just simply ‘engagement’,
each lending itself to a range of different definitions. MacLeod and Clarke (2009) found as
many as 50 different versions of engagement, and suggested that there may well be more.
 Kahn’s original (1990) research suggested that engagement is the personal expression of
self-in-role; someone is engaged with their work when they are able to express their
authentic self and are willing to invest their personal energies into their job.
 Schaufeli and his team developed the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), which
measures vigour, dedication and absorption as the three constituent facets of engagement,
and is the most extensively used academic measure of engagement.
 In chapter 1, Schaufeli situates the UWES within the context of other contributions to the
field, and shows how not only the UWES, but also other measures, capture what is unique
about engagement and provide the basis for demonstrating the link between engagement
and an important range of outcomes including health and well-being, organizational citizen-
ship behaviour, turnover intent, absence and in-role performance. This topic is picked up
again in Chapter 15, where Luke Fletcher and Dilys Robinson discuss a range of different
measures that have been developed by both academics and practitioners to evaluate levels
of engagement.
 Schaufeli concludes that the job demands–resources model (JD–R), which suggests that
individuals’ job and personal resources combine to energize employees and foster high
levels of engagement, has received the strongest empirical support to date.
 The chapter 1 concludes with the important point that by defining engagement narrowly as
a psychological state, aspects of behavioural engagement that are most important to
organizations tend to become lost, whilst a broader, more behaviourally based definition,
 would lead to the loss of specificity that would blur the boundary between engagement and
similar constructs.
 In Chapter 2, Carolyn M. Youssef-Morgan and Kristi M. Bockorny situate the concept of
engagement within the wider positive psychology movement. Historically, workplace
psychology has been based on a ‘deficit’ approach, whereby the focus is on identifying
problems and challenges and then working out appropriate solutions. In contrast, an
‘abundance’ approach is based on identifying positive, peak experiences and identifying
their enablers and drivers (Linley et al., 2010). Alongside this, the emphasis has shifted in
the past 20 or so years to positive psychology and organizational studies, and engagement’s
status as an active, motivational state clearly fits within this overarching paradigm (Stairs
and Galpin, 2010).
 Eean R. Crawford, Bruce Louis Rich, Brooke Buckman and Jenny Bergeron turn their
attention in Chapter 3 to the factors that have been found to drive up levels of engagement.
In particular, they build on the work of Kahn (1990) to suggest that the experienced psycho-
logical conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability lie at the heart of engagement
models, and discuss research findings on organizational factors that affect each of these. In
exposing the critical role played by job design in influencing engagement levels, they
anticipate the themes pursued by Maria Tims and Arnold B. Bakker in Chapter 7. In addition
to job design, Crawford and colleagues explain how the organizational context, in particular
in areas such as leadership, social support, workplace climate and justice perceptions are
relevant for engagement.
 Pursuing the notion introduced earlier by Schaufeli, they also reveal how excess job
demands such as role overload or work-role conflict can deplete individuals’ resources and
decrease engagement levels.
 One of the most pressing questions asked by practitioners concerns the relative importance
of the wide range of factors that have been identified as engagement drivers. In a world of
diminishing resources, which areas warrant most investment? Crawford and colleagues
provide some insight into this, although the answer may not be what most practitioners
would wish. Overall, their conclusion is that most research to date suggests that antecedent
factors have unique effects on engagement levels, in other words, potential antecedent
factors such appropriate job design, value congruence and transformational leadership, in
those studies that have considered combinations of these, each appear to be relevant for
engagement.
 The final chapter of this section of the book, written by William A. Kahn and Emily D.
Heaphy, focuses on the relational contexts of engagement. William Kahn’s own lasting
influence in defining the field can be seen throughout the book as each chapter
acknowledges his legacy as ‘founding father’ of the concept of engagement.
 In this chapter, Kahn and Heaphy turn their attention to the role of work relationships in
enhancing or depleting levels of engagement, an aspect that has hitherto received less
attention than areas such as job design or leadership. In doing so, they reclaim engagement
as originally conceived as ‘personal engagement’ in contrast to ‘work engagement’,
whereby employees fully express themselves in physical, cognitive and emotional terms
during the performance of their work (Kahn, 1990).
 Kahn and Heaphy revisit the relational aspects of the original psychological conditions for
engagement identified earlier by Kahn – meaningfulness, safety and availability – thus
complementing Crawford and colleagues’ discussion of job design in relation to these three
states in Chapter 3.
 Relational aspects of work such as a sense of belonging, high-quality connections,
meaningful contact with beneficiaries, together with the importance of ‘holding
environments’ where workers feel supported, enabled and affirmed through their work
relationships, can all assist in creating a setting conducive to personal engagement.
 The authors also highlight the importance of positive and energizing group dynamics for
high levels of engagement and, conversely, show the depleting effects of psychologically
unsafe environments.

Chapter – 1 The Psychology of Engagement

 Everyday connotations of engagement refer to involvement, commitment, passion,
enthusiasm, absorption, focused effort, zeal, dedication, and energy.
 The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes the state of being engaged as ‘emotional
involvement or commitment’ and as ‘being in gear’.
 Work engagement refers to the relationship of the employee with his or her work, whereas
employee engagement may also include the relationship with the organization.
 By including the relationship with the organization, the distinction between engagement
and traditional concepts such as organizational commitment and extra-role behavior
becomes blurred.
 The structure of the chapter is as follows
1. First, a brief history is presented of the emergence of engagement in business and
in academia (section 1)
2. which is followed by a discussion of various definitions that are used in business
and in science (section 2)
3. Next it is argued that engagement is a unique construct that can be differentiated,
for instance from job-related attitudes such as job satisfaction and organizational
commitment, and from work addiction and personality dispositions (section 3)
4. The most important theoretical frameworks are discussed that are used to explain
engagement (section 4)
 5. and the organizational outcomes of engagement are elucidated (section 5).
6. The chapter closes with some general conclusions and an outlook on the future of
this intriguing psychological state (section 6)

1. The emergence of engagement in business and academia: a brief history

 It is not entirely clear when the term ‘engagement’ was first used in relation to work,
but
 generally, the Gallup Organization is credited for coining the term somewhere in the
1990s.
 Organizational change requires adaptation, diversity requires perspective taking,
teamwork requires assertiveness, working in vertical networks requires
communication skills, job crafting requires personal initiative, boundarylessness
requires self-control, and mental and emotional demands require resilience.

 David Ulrich has put it in its best-selling book Human resource champions:

“Employee contribution becomes a critical business issue because in trying to

produce more output with less employee input, companies have no choice but to try
to engage not only the body, but also the mind and the soul of every employee.”

 Ulrich makes two points here.

a. First, the organization’s human capital becomes increasingly important
because more has to be done with fewer people. So, people matter more
than they did in the past.
b. Second, modern organizations need employees who are able and willing to
invest in their jobs psychologically. And this is exactly what work engagement
is all about. No wonder that companies became interested in engagement at
a time of profound changes in the world of work.
 Positive psychology refers to the scientific study of optimal human functioning that
aims to discover and promote the factors that allow individuals, organizations, and
communities to thrive.
 The emergence of engagement at the beginning of the 21st century has to do with
two converging developments:
a. the growing importance of human capital and psychological involvement of
employees in business, and
b. the increased scientific interest in positive psychological states
2. Definitions of engagement in business and in academia
 Engagement has been criticized for being no more than old wine in new bottles (Jeung,
2011). Consultancy firms have conceptualized engagement by combining and relabeling
existing notions, such as commitment, satisfaction, involvement, motivation, and
extrarole performance.
 For instance, according to Mercer, ‘Employee engagement – also called “commitment”
or “motivation” – refers to a psychological state where employees feel a vested interest
in the company’s success and perform to a high standard that may exceed the stated
requirements of the job’ (www.mercerHR.com).
 Another firm, Hewitt, states that: Engaged employees consistently demonstrate three
general behaviors. (www.hewittassociates.com) They:
1. Say – consistently speak positively about the organization to co-workers, potential
employees, and customers;
2. Stay – have an intense desire to be a member of the organization despite
opportunities to work elsewhere;
3. Strive – exert extra time, effort, and initiative to contribute to business success
 Finally, for Towers Perrin engagement reflects employees’ ‘personal satisfaction and a
sense of inspiration and affirmation they get from work and being a part of the
organization’ (www.towersperrin.com).
 Taken together, these three examples suggest that in business, engagement is defined
as a blend of three existing concepts
a. job satisfaction;
b. commitment to the organization; and
c. extra-role behavior, i.e., discretionary effort to go beyond the job
description.
 Shuck (2011) searched all relevant HRM, psychology, and management databases and
systematically reviewed academic definitions of engagement. Based on 213 eligible
publications he identified four approaches to defining engagement:
a. The Needs-Satisfying approach
Kahn (1990) defined personal engagement as the ‘harnessing of organization
members’ selves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and
express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally, and mentally during
role performances’ (p. 694). He conceptualized engagement as the
employment and expression of one’s preferred self in task behaviors.
Although important for the theoretical thinking about engagement, the
Needs-Satisfying approach has only occasionally been used in empirical
research (e.g. May, Gilson and Harter, 2004).
b. The Burnout-Antithesis approach
 Rooted in occupational health psychology, this approach views work
engagement as the positive antithesis of burnout. As a matter of fact, two
schools of thought exist on this issue. According to Maslach and Leiter (1997)
engagement and burnout are the positive and negative endpoints of a single
continuum. More specifically, engagement is characterized by energy,
involvement and efficacy, which are considered the direct opposites of the
three burnout dimensions exhaustion, cynicism and lack of accomplishment,
respectively. By implication that means that persons who are high on
engagement are inevitably low on burnout, and vice versa. The second,
alternative view considers work engagement as a distinct concept that is
negatively related to burnout. Work engagement, in this view, is defined as a
concept in its own right: ‘a positive, fulfilling, work related state of mind that
is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.’ (Schaufeli, Salanova,
González-Romá, and Bakker, 2002: 74), whereby vigor refers to high levels of
energy and mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in
one’s work, and persistence even in the face of difficulties; dedication refers
to being strongly involved in one’s work, and experiencing a sense of
significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge; and absorption
refers to being fully concentrated and happily engrossed in one’s work,
whereby time passes quickly and one has difficulties with detaching oneself
from work. To date, most academic research on engagement uses the
Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), a brief, valid and reliable
questionnaire that is based on the definition of work engagement as a
combination of vigor, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli, 2012).
c. The Satisfaction-Engagement approach
 According to the Gallup Organization: ‘The term employee
engagement refers to an individual’s involvement and satisfaction
with as well as enthusiasm for work’ (Harter, Schmidt and Hayes,
2002: 269). Thus, like the definitions of other consultancy firms,
Gallup’s engagement concept seems to overlap with well-known
traditional constructs such as job involvement and job satisfaction.
This is illustrated by the fact that, after controlling for measurement
error, Gallup’s Q12 correlates almost perfectly (r = .91) with a single
item that taps job satisfaction, meaning that both are virtually
identical. The authors acknowledge this overlap by stating that the
Q12 assesses ‘antecedents to positive affective constructs such as job
satisfaction’ (Harter et al., 2002: 209). Hence, rather than the
experience of engagement in terms of involvement, satisfaction and
 enthusiasm, the Q12 measures the antecedents of engagement in
terms of perceived job resources. The reason for that is that the Q12
has been explicitly designed from an ‘actionability standpoint’ and
not from a scholarly perspective (Buckingham and Coffman, 1999). In
other words, the Q12 was first and foremost designed as tool for
management to improve jobs so that employees would be more
satisfied. Nevertheless, the Satisfaction-Engagement approach has
had a significant
impact in academia as well, because Gallup’s research has established
meaningful links between employee engagement and business unit
outcomes, such as customer satisfaction, profit, productivity, and turnover
(Harter et al., 2002).
d. The Multidimensional approach
Saks (2006) defined employee engagement as ‘a distinct and unique
construct consisting of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that
are associated with individual role performance’ (p. 602). This definition is
quite similar to that of Kahn (1990) because it also focuses on role
performance at work. The innovative aspect is that Saks (2006) distinguishes
between ‘job engagement’ (performing the work role) and ‘organizational
engagement’ (performing the role as a member of the organization).
Although both are moderately related (r = .62), they seem to have different
antecedents and consequences. Despite its intuitive appeal, the
multidimensional approach (i.e. the distinction between job and
organizational engagement) has hardly been taken up by the research
community.
 Taken together, these four approaches each stress a different aspect of engagement:
a) its relation with role performance;
b) its positive nature in terms of employee well-being as opposed to burnout;
c) its relation with resourceful jobs; and
d) its relation with the job as well as with the organization
 Probably the most important issue in defining engagement is ‘where to draw the line’.
Or put differently, what elements to include and what elements to exclude from the
definition of engagement.
 In their seminal overview Macey and Schneider (2008) proposed an exhaustive synthesis
of all elements that have been employed to define engagement. Their conceptual
framework for understanding employee engagement includes:
a) trait engagement (e.g. conscientiousness, trait positive affect, proactive personality);
b) state engagement (e.g. satisfaction, involvement, empowerment); and
 c) behavioral engagement (e.g. extra-role behavior, proactivity, role expansion)
 the definitions of engagement as a psychological state by Kahn (1990) and Schaufeli et
al. (2002) fit with Figure 1.2. Both academic conceptualizations agree that engagement
entails a physical-energetic (vigor), an emotional (dedication), and a cognitive
(absorption) component. The similarity between both definitions is further illustrated by
their operationalizations.
 Based on the work of Kahn (1990), May, Gilson and Harter (2004) developed an
engagement inventory that consists of three dimensions: cognitive, emotional and
physical engagement. The items that are included in this inventory show a striking
resemblance with those included in the absorption, dedication, and vigor scales of the
UWES (Schaufeli et al., 2002), respectively.
 It appeared particularly that the cognitive engagement and absorption scales are
strongly related, whereas the physical engagement and the vigor scales are only weakly
related, with the emotional engagement and dedication scales somewhere in between
(Viljevac, Cooper-Thomas and Saks, 2012). Recently, and also building on the work of
Kahn (1990) the Intellectual, Social, Affective (ISA) Engagement Scale was introduced
(Soane, Truss, Alfes et al., 2013). It includes three facets of engagement:
a) intellectual (i.e, ‘the extent to which one is intellectually absorbed in work’);
b) social (i.e. ‘the extent to which one is socially connected with the working
environment and shares common values with colleagues’); and
c) affective (i.e. ‘the extent to which one experiences a state of positive affect relating
to one’s work role’).

Measuring Employee Engagement

A performance indicator that represents the extent to which employees are engaged can
constitute a useful headline measure for the ‘employee’ section of the dashboard or
scorecard. However, there has been a lack of a unifying definition or framework (MacLeod,
Clarke, 2009; Truss, Mankin and Kelliher, 2012) and so there exists a wide range of
‘employee engagement’ indicators. Therefore, this chapter aims to (a) provide a review of
the main ways in which employee engagement has been measured; (b) give insight into
issues that may occur when designing and implementing such measures; and (c) consider
implications in regards to presenting and interpreting engagement scores.
  a useful organizing framework when examining the wide range of literature on
employee engagement is that of Shuck’s (2011) systematic review. He identified
four main approaches to defining engagement, which can also be utilized when
exploring measures of engagement: (a) The Burnout-Antithesis Approach; (b) The
Needs-Satisfying Approach; (c) The Satisfaction-Engagement Approach; and (d) The
Multidimensional Approach.

Perrin T. also said that engagement reflects the personal satisfaction of employees and the feeling of
inspiration and affirmation they derive from their work and belonging to the organization.