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Top1. Introduction
Employee engagement is considered as important element for organization’s success, although various factors are influencing employee engagement at its performance level; For instance, human resource strategies, leadership style and culture prevailing inside of an organization are considered as main elements which impact on employee engagement (Khan, 2013).
Many studies have shown that employee engagement has been illustrated to be related to greater organizational productivity and profitability (Schroeder, and Modaff, 2018). According to Kahn (1990), engagement was introduced as “The harnessing of organization member’s selves to their work roles; in engagement people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances”. Although there are other definitions besides Kahn, Saks (2006) believed that “Engagement is not an attitude; it is the degree to which an individual is attentive and absorbed in the performance of their role”.
Although scholars have explained that employee engagement have divided into dimensional concept including physical, emotional, and mental components, Kahn (1990) claimed that workers are careful about members of groups and thus, they try to protect themselves from both being separated and being overwhelmed by instead of pulling away from and moving towards their memberships (Schroeder. and Modaff, 2018).
According to Homans (1958) (1974), social exchange theory’s roots are in economics, phycology and sociology and this theory involves multiple series of interactions among different groups or different people and resulting to commitments. Therefore, by using social exchange theory can help to analyse employee engagement from a commitment viewpoint (Schroeder and Modaff, 2018).
Cropanzano and Mitchell (2005) said that this theory is useful to employee engagement research since employees and managements have two-way relationships in which interactions are continuously occurring.
Schroeder and Modaff (2018), has done an empirical study on employee engagement inside and outside of the organization by doing semi-structured interviews. They have reached into three dimensions. The first dimension was the idea of expressing their engagement in a best way by making themselves visible through showing up and getting involved in the group (Schroeder & Modaff, 2018). The second dimension was creating personal connections with other colleagues to connect their engagement at work. Third dimension is related to being “brand ambassador” was a way for staffs to express their engagement communicatively. Thus, from the result, employees presented their engagement to other inside and outside of organization through external displays which is mentioned above. Also, from the research they have done, social exchanges happened among the organization when that employee engagement was a direct response to the exchanges occurring between these multiple shareholders and workers (Schroeder and Modaff, 2018).