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The keys to employee engagement--Research of antecedents to Job engagement andOrganization engagementChapter One1.0IntroductionThe survey was to test a model of the antecedents of job and organization engagements based on social exchange theory.1.1B ackground of the ResearchEmployee engagement is an idea whose time has come. Which is getting more attention than our before. It was found that, individuals with their employer and will, therefore, be more likely to report more positive attitudes and intentions toward the organization. Engagement is an individual-level construct and if it does lead to business results, it must first impact individual-level outcomes. Although neither Kahn (1990) nor May et al (2004) included outcomes in their studies, Kahn (1992) proposed that engagement leads to both of individual and organization outcomes. There are a number of reasons to expect engagement to be related to work outcomes. For starters, the experience of engagement has been described as a fulfilling, positive work-related experience and state of mind (Schauteli and Bakker2004).It was also found that engagement was negatively related to turnover intention and mediated the relationship between job resources and turnover intention. There is some empirical research that has reported relationships between engagement and work outcomes. For example, engagement has been found to be positively related to organizational commitment and negatively related to intention to quit, and believed to also be related to job performance and extra–role behavior (Schaufrli and Bakker,2004; Sonnentag,2003). These positive experiences and emotions are likely to result in positive work outcomes. As noted by Schaufeli and Bakker (2004), engaged employees likely have a greater attachment to their organization and a lower tendency to leave their organization.Engagement is not an attitude; it is the degree to which an individual is attentive andabsorbed in the performance of their roles. Engagement has to do with how individuals employ themselves in the performance of their job. Furthermore; engagement involves the active use of emotions and behaviors in addition to cognitions. (2004 12 p Harter).The driving force behind the popularity of employee engagement is that it has positive consequences for organizations. As indicated earlier, there is general belief that there is a consequence between employee engagement and business results. (Harter et al, 2002).1.2P roblem StatementThe purpose of this study is to focus on the antecedents of two types of employee engagement: job and organization engagements. It was been found that previous research has focused primarily on engagement in one’s job. On the other hand, there is evidence that one’s degree of engagement depends on the role in quest ion (Rothbard, 2001). Thus it is possible that the antecedents depend on the types of engagement. Recent years, on the one hand, there has been a great deal of interest in employee engagement. Many have claimed that employee engagement predicts employee outcomes organizational success and financial performance (Bates, 2004). At the same time, it has been found that employee engagement is on the decline and there is a deepening disengagement among employee today. (Bates, 2004; Richman 2006) It has even been referred to as an “engagement gap” that is costing businesses $300billion a year in lost productivity (Bates, 2004; Johnson, 2004; Kowalski, 2003).Dissatisfaction is a motivator for change. This statement not only refers to the manager who wants to chang e some one else’s behavior, but it also applies to these who are the targets of change. People are most responsible to learning when they are moderately dissatisfied. Too little and they don’t want to bother too much is paralyzing. Therefore, if you want t o increase a person or group’s readiness to change you need to manage their dissatisfaction. (Robert E. Linneman and John L. Stanton, Jr.1993)1.3R esearch Objectives●To identify the factors that lead to employee engagement in an organization.●To identify the factors that lead to job employee engagement●To identify the factors that lead to organization employee engagement.1.3.1 Research question1.4 Significance of the studyIt has been prove that engaging and involving employee make good business sense and building shareholder value. Negative workplace relationships may be a big part of why so many employees are not engaged with their jobs.It was also found that, employee engagement has become more vital than our before. Which has become a hot topic in recent years among consulting firms and in the popular business press? Meanwhile, employee engagement has rarely been studied in the academic literature and relatively little is known about its antecedents of job and organization engagements based on social exchange theory. There is a surprising dearth of research on employee engagement in the academic literature (Robinson et al, 2004)Although employee engagement has become a hot topic among practitioners and Consultants, there has been practically no empirical research in the organizational Behavior literature. This has led to speculation that employee engagement might just. Be the “flavor of the month” or a fad with little basis in theory and research. The results of this study suggest the following: there is a meaningful distinction between job engagement and organization engagement; a number of antecedent variables predict job and organization engagement.1.5 The importance for individual and organizationsOne way for individuals to repay their organization is through their level of engagement. That is, employees will choose to engage themselves to varying degrees And in respo nse to the reso urces they receive fro m their o rganizatio n. Bringing oneself more f ully into one’s work roles and devoting greater amounts of cognitive, emotional, and physical resources is a very profound way for individuals to respond to an organization’s actions.It is more difficult for employees to vary their levels of job performance given that performance is often evaluated and used as the basis for compensation and other administrative decisions. Thus, employees are more likely to exchange their engagement for resources and benefits provided by their organization. This is consis tent with Robinson et al.’s (2004) description of engagement as a two-way relationship between the employer and employee.1.5.1Why engagement is important to employee?Engaged employees perform better. There are some reasons why engaged workersperform better than non-engaged workers. Engaged employees often experience positive emotions, including happiness, joy, and enthusiasm; experience better health; create their own job and personal resources; and transfer their engagement to others. Importance of Employee Engagement. Recent research has shown that engaged employees often experience positive emotions (Schaufeli and Van Rhenen, 2006), and this may be the reason why they are more productive. Happy people are more sensitive to opportunities at work, more outgoing and helpful to others, and more confident and optimistic (Cropanzano and Wright, 2001).Research suggests that engagement is positively related to health, and this would imply that engaged workers are better able to perform well. Schaufeli et al. (n.d.) have shown that engaged workers report less psychosomatic complaints than their non-engaged counterparts. Similarly, Demerouti et al. (2001) found moderate negative correlations between engagement (particularly vigor) and psychosomatic health complaints (e.g. headaches, chest pain). In addition, Hakanen et al. (2006), in their study among Finnish teachers showed that work engagement is positively related to self-rated health and workability.One important reason why engaged worked are more productive may be their ability to create their own resources. Research with Fredrickson’s (2001) broaden-and-build theory has shown that momentary experiences of positive emotions can build enduring psychological resources and trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. Positive emotions not only make people feel good at the moment, but also feel good in the future (Fredrickson and Joiner, 2002). Employee engagement is a psychological commitment–to take ownership for one’s work and to go the extra mile. Engaged employees learn more, grow faster, and show more initiative than employees who are not. They are committed to finding solutions, solve problems, and improve business processes. Therefore, employee engagement is strongly linked to business performance! How can there be big differences in engagement between teams of the same company, when all employees in those teams are subject to the same organizational culture, the same HR policies and the same economic conditions? The difference is the manager. The manager has the single most impact on the engagement and the happiness of an employee.In most organizations, performance is the result of the combined effort of individual employees. It is therefore conceivable that the crossover of engagement among members of the same work team increases performance. Crossover or emotional contagion can be defined as the transfer of positive (or negative) experiences from one person to the other (Westman, 2001). If colleagues influence each other with their work engagement, they may perform better as a team.kers are more productive than disengaged workers. Companies who can successfully engage their employee can achieve higher levels of performance and deliver greater returns to shareholders. Actively disengaged workers undermine the work of engaged workers. Unfortunately1.5.2 Why engagement is important to employer?Importance of employer engagement Employer engagement can help schools in many ways, including: contributing to work related learning providing real contexts for vocational learning contributing to student support e.g. through mentoring contributing to community cohesion meeting statutory requirements work related learning for information, advice and guidance .Engagement is so important to employer, employee engagement has been defined in many different ways and the definitions and measures often sound like other better known and established constructs like organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior (Robinson et al., 2004).Most often it has been defined as emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization (Baumruk, 2004; Richman, 2006; Shaw, 2005) or the amount of discretionary effort exhibited by employees in their jobs (Frank et al., 2004).For example, human resource practices such as flexible work arrangements, training programs, and incentive compensation might also be important for engagement. Future research could include a broader range of predictors that are linked to particular types of role engagement. Along these lines, future research should attempt to flesh out the types of factors that are most important for engagement in different roles (e.g. job, organization, and group).1.6 Study hypothesesH1. Rewards and recognition will be positively related to (a) job engagement and(b) Organization engagement.H2. Perceptions of procedural justice will be positively related to (a) job engagement and (b) organization engagement.H3 Perceptions of distributive justice will be positively related to (a) job engagement and (b) organization engagement.1.6.1 Study hypothesesFor instance, H2 Rewards and recognition will be positively related to (a) job engagement and (b) organization engagement. Furthermore, a sense of return oninvestments can come from external rewards and recognition in addition to meaningful work. Therefor e, one might expect that employees’ will be more likely to engage themselves at work to the extent that they perceive a greater amount of rewards and recognition for their role performances. Maslach (2001) have also suggested that while a lack of rewards and recognition can lead to burnout, appropriate recognition and reward is important for engagement.Fairness and justice is also one of the work conditions in the Maslach et al. (2001) engagement model. A lack of fairness can exacerbate burnout and while positive perceptions of fairness can improve engagement (Maslach et al., 2001). In terms of SET, when employees receive rewards and recognition from their organization, they will feel obliged to respond with higher levels of engagement. Thus, the second hypothesis is as follows: Distributive and procedural justice .The safety dimension identified by Kahn (1990) involves social situations that are predictable and consistent. For organizations, it is especially important to be predictable and consistent in terms of the distribution of rewards as well as the procedures used to allocate them. While distributive justice pertains to one’s perception of the fairness of decision outcomes, procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness of the means and processes used to determine the amount and distribution of resources (Colquitt, 2001; Rhoades et al., 2001). A review of organizational justice research found that justice perceptions are related to organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, withdrawal, and performance (Colquitt et al. 2001). However, previous research has not tested relationships between fairness perceptions and employee engagement. The effect of justice perceptions on various outcomes might be due in part to employee engagement. In other words, when employees have high perceptions of justice in their organization, they are more likely to feel obliged to also be fair in how they perform their roles by giving more of themselves through greater levels of engagement.On the other hand, low perceptions of fairness are likely to cause employees to withdraw and disengage themselves from their work roles. Fairness and justice is also one of the work conditions in the Maslach et al. (2001) engagement model. A lack of fairness can exacerbate burnout and while positive perceptions of fairness can improve engagement (Maslach et al., 2001). Therefore, H5 and H6 are as follows: H5. Perceptions of procedural justice will be positively related to (a) job engagement and(b) organization engagement. H6. Perceptions of distributive justice will be positively1.7 Implications for this researchThe results of this study suggest that employee engagement is a meaningful construct That is worthy of future research. There are several avenues to consider. One area would be to investigate other potential predictors of job and organization engagement. The present study included a number of factors associated with Kahn’s (1990, 1992) and Maslac h et al.’s (2001) engagement models. However, there are other variablesthat might also be important for both job and organization engagement. For example, human resource practices such as flexible work arrangements, training programs, and incentive compensation might also be important for engagement. Future research could include a broader range of predictors that are linked to particular types of role engagement. Along these lines, future research should attempt to flesh out the types of factors that is most important for engagement in different roles (e.g. job, organization, and group).1.8 Structure of the studyIt also has confirms that engaged work places compared with least engaged are much more likely to have lower employee turnover, it is higher than average customer loyalty, above average productivity and earning. Figure is the whole table that2.0 IntroductionEmployee engagement, also called engagement or worker engagement, is a business management concept. An "engaged employee" is one who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization's interests. "Employee Engagement is a measureable degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization which profoundly influences their willingness to learn & perform at work". Thus engagement is distinctively different from satisfaction, motivation, culture, climate and opinion and very difficult to measure.As a manager, the above points can act as your shortlist of factors to which you need to attend. As you engage each employee in a conversation, look out for each of the above factors that get mentioned. Put systems and processes in place to fix any shortcomings and communicate openly and often. By working towards having satisfied workers, you are setting the conditions for giving them a reason to stay withyour organization and to deliver peak performance.2.1 Definitions of employee engagementIt would be defines employee engagement is as an individual’s degree of positive or negative emotional attachment to their organization, their job and their coworkers. (Scarlett Survey 2011) Schaufeli et al. (2002, p. 74) define engagement “as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.” They further state that engagement is not a momentary and specific state, but rather, it is “a more persistent and pervasive affective-cognitive state that is not foc used on any particular object, event, individual, or behavior” (p. 74).According to Kahn (1990, 1992), engagement is to be psychologically present When occupying and performing an organizational role. In the academic literature, a number of definitions have been provided. Kahn (1990,p. 694) defines personal engagement as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.”Personal disengagement refers to “the uncoupling of selves from work roles; in disengagement, people withdraw and defend themselves physically, cognitively, or emotionally during role performances” (p. 694). Rothbard (2001, p. 656) also defines engagement as psychological presence but goes further to state that it involves two critical components: attention and absorption. Attention refers to “cognitive availability and the amount of time one spends thinking.About a role” while absorption “means being e ngrossed in a role and refers to the intensity of one’s focused on a role.”Burnout researchers define engagement as the opposite or positive antithesis of burnout (Maslach et al., 2001). According to Maslach et al. (2001), engagement is characterized by energy, involvement, and efficacy, the direct opposite of the three burnout dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy.2.2Following shown that there is a structure of Antecedents ofEmployee Engagement2.2.1At the core of the model are two types of employee engagement: job and organization engagements. This follows from employee engagement the conceptualization of engagement as role related (Kahn, 1990; Rothbard, 2001); that is, it reflects the extent to which an individual is psychologically present in a particular organizational role. The two most dominant roles for most organizational members are their work role and their role as a member of an organization. Therefore, the model explicitly acknowledges this by including both job and organization engagements. This also follows from the notion that people have multiple roles and as suggested by Rothbard (2001) as well as May et al. (2004), research should examine engagement in multiple roles within organizations.2.2.1.1 Antecedents of employee engagementAlthough there is little empirical research on the factors that predict employee engagement, it is possible to identify a number of potential antecedents from Kahn’s (1990) and Maslach et al.’s (2001) model. While the antecedents might differ for job and organization engagement, identical hypotheses are made for both types of engagement given the lack of previous research and this being the first study to examine both job and organization engagement. Job characteristics, Psychological meaningfulness involves a sense of return on investments of the self-in-role performances (Kahn, 1992). According to Kahn (1990, 1992), psychological meaningfulness can be achieved from task characteristics that provide challenging work, variety, allow the use of different skills, personal discretion, and the opportunity to make important contributions. This is based on Hackman andOldham’s (1980) job characteristics model and in particular, the five core jo bcharacteristics (i.e. skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback). Jobs that are high on the core job characteristics provide individuals with the room and incentive to bring more of themselves into their work or to be more engaged (Kahn, 1992). May et al. (2004) found that job enrichment was positively related to meaningfulness and meaningfulness mediated the relationship between job enrichment and engagement?Chapter 3: Methodology3.1Research designThe research design helps researcher to solve the problem by describing the characteristics of the variables in this study, and offer some ideas for future probing and research. Research design is a master plan specifying the methods and procedures for collecting and analyzing needed information. It is a framework of the research plan of action ( Zikmund, 2000).There are three basic types of research framework which are exploratory, descriptive, and hypotheses. For this research descriptive type is the most suitable. Descriptive research is normally directed by the one or more formal Questions or hypotheses. Typically, a survey or questionnaire is administered to a sample from a population of interest .Gilbert and Dawn (2005) defined the descriptive research study that typically concerned with determining the frequency with which something occurs or the relationship between two variables.This research gathers the information from primary and secondary data. A survey or questionnaire enables researchers could get information from each respondent directly. It is a tool collecting primary data that adapts well to quantitative research, as it allows the researchers to work with large sample and establish statistical relationships or nume rical c omparisons (Ra y mond, 2001). As cite d by Pa ul e t al(2004),questionnaire s are generally viewed as providing quantitative (numerical )information but researche rs can also use them to measure qualitative concepts such as opinions and attitudes through that are obtained from previously published materials.Such as magazines and government concerns publication (Gill& Johnson, 2002). In this study ,the researcher will collect primary data by using survey method .Survey is a research technique in which information is gathered and collected from a sample of people by using questionnaires(William&Zikmund,2002)3.2 Sampling DesignThe sampling of this research design is focus on the staff of UCSI University, and others are these employees nearby the university. The researcher takes the employeeas the target population and random takes a few private universities in Kuala Lumpur as its respondents. Finally, through many times random sampling, UCSI is chosen as the main target respondents because its location, and situation are more suitable for this research. Many questionnaires would distribute to respondents in above places randomly o collect information and will choose around 100 amounts of effective questionnaire as real data to analyze .The covered areas are mainly in UCSI’s North Wing and South Wing. The eligible respondents who are the individuals located in UCSI University.(Zikmund92000) stated that the process of sampling involves the procedures using a portion of large population to make conclusion representative the whole population. A convenience sampling which under non-probability sampling was conducted where the sample being selected from the entire population is unknown and based on conveniently available for the researcher (Zikmund, 2000)3.3Questionnaire designIn order to gain the quantitative description, the researcher chose the questionnaire as the research tool. Questionnaires will gather information that cannot be found elsewhere from secondary information such as books, newspapers and Internet resources: this is because the information researchers obtain will be fresh and unique. According to Zikmund (2000), the closed-end questions are mainly used to obtain the respondents’ demographic information like gender and nationality. The respondents will have to answer the questions asked in the questionnaire by selecting the appropriate answer provided (Zikmund, 2000).The questionnaire includes of two main parts. Part A asked about respondents’ personal background; part B and part C gathered the data about the factors that affect employee engagement .The questionnaire covers both male and female to make the data collection more suitable .The researcher uses the descriptive statistics to present quantitative descriptions to measure the existence of collection data in manageable form or chart.Questionnaires are usually paper-and–pen instruments that administer too many people at once with relatively inexpensive to administer (Researcher Design, Data collection Techniques and Selection of subjects, 2004). Questionnaires are easy to compare and analyze. While interviews are completed by interviewers based on what were the respondent’s experiences but can be very time consuming and expensive. Conversely, interview is the process recording actual verbal and non-verbal of people without communicating with them (Zilmund,2000). Structured interview is a quantitative technique that concerned the frequency with people does (Saunders &et al 2003)3.3.1MeasurementMeasures Job and organization engagement Items were written to assess participant’s psychological presence in their job and organization. It is impossible for the researcher to collect all the data available with the restriction of time and money .The budget constraints prevent the researcher to survey the whole population .Thus, convenience sampling technique provides an alternative to the population and It is cheaper for the data collection .Furthermore, this technique allows the researcher to obtain the sample size in quickly and saves time to meet the research project deadline.A sample item for job engagement is, “Sometimes I am so into my job that I lose track of time” and for organization engagement, “One of the most exciting things for me is getting involved with things happening in this organization.” Part icipants indicated their response on a five-point Likert-type scale with anchors (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree. A principal components factor analysis with a prom ax rotation resulted in two factors corresponding to job and organization engagements.3.4.1Data GatheringData collection is the process of gathering information from the respondents .There are many research techniques. Data collection is divided into primary data and secondary data. For instance, Surveys can be divided into questionnaire and the interview and other journals on the line.3.4.2 Primary DataPrimary data is data collected for a particular research project at hand (Zikmund,2000).Survey techniques and interview technique play as a data collection method in this research: Kalsbeek (2000) said that survey is the most often to use in gathering information from a sample in which only a portion of individuals chosen from the population Under survey , information is collected by standardized and uniform in the questions asked , so that every individual is asked the same questions in the same way. Surveys can be divided into questionnaire and the interview. Questionnaires are usually paper-and –pen instruments that administer too many people at once with relatively inexpensive to administer (Researcher Design, Data collection Techniques and Selection of subjects, 2004). Questionnaires are easy to compare and analyze. While interviews are completed by interviewers based on what were the respondent’s experiences but can be v ery time consuming and expensive .Conversely, observation is the process recording actual verbal and non-verbal of people without communicating with them (Zilmund,2000). Structured observation is a quantitative technique that concerned the frequency with people do (Saunders &et al 2003)3.4.3 Secondary Data。