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Individual work engagement and team work engagement: (new) antecedents and consequences

Gast, Inken (2012) Individual work engagement and team work engagement: (new) antecedents and consequences.

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Abstract:Motive and goal of this thesis: This study was conducted for a Dutch consulting company. The company assumes that work engagement plays a crucial role for employee performance. On behalf of the company I therefore researched the contribution of work engagement to various performance outcomes and tried to find out how work engagement can be enhanced. The focus was not only on the work engagement of individual employees but also on antecedents for and the role of team work engagement. This thesis concretely focuses on leader work engagement, the employee involvement climate, team reflexivity and leader member exchange as antecedents of team work engagement and/or individual work engagement. This thesis also studies the crossover of team work engagement on individual work engagement. Finally, chargeability, turnover intentions and organization citizenship behavior are studied as possible consequences of individual work engagement. Method: The research of this thesis was conducted with 116 employees from six teams of the company. Of the participants, 69.6% were male and 30.4% were female. The participants performed different roles within the company and 65.2% of the participants were 32 years or younger. A cross-sectional study was conducted where participants were asked to fill in an online questionnaire within three weeks of time. The data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. Results: A positive relationship was found between employee involvement climate, team reflexivity and leader member exchange on the one hand and individual work engagement on the other hand. Also, team work engagement partially mediated the relationship between team reflexivity and leader member exchange on the one hand and individual work engagement on the other hand. Finally, individual work engagement was found to have a positive relationship with organization citizenship behavior and a negative relationship with turnover intentions. There was however no significant relationship between individual work engagement and chargeability. Discussion: The results illustrate the important role of work engagement when it comes to retaining employees and enhancing organization citizenship behavior. In order to enhance work engagement, the company is advised to involve employees actively in decision making processes, share information with employees, train employees, and use adequate performance based reward systems. Also, a high quality relationship between supervisors and employees has to be established and teams have to reflect on their objectives and on the social aspects of their team work. This way the company’s employees can become more engaged in their work.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/61946
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