Evidence From Public Universities in Sri Lanka About Organizational Culture and Employee Engagement

Introduction

Universities play a very important role in the development of young people. Thanks to the knowledge, skills and competences acquired during the studies, the graduate is not only prepared to start work. During education, the student acquires skills that are necessary in the future. The added value of higher education is, among others, openness, creativity, the ability to work as a team in the implementation of projects. External accreditation confirms the quality of the education program implemented at the university. Program accreditation carried out by national institutions or international organizations such as the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) or the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) confirms that schools accredited by them have similar educational quality (Baniadam et al. 2021). Obtaining accreditation by a university requires the involvement of teachers and managers. Higher education institutions are responsible for the quality of their education (Fesenko et al. 2022). Teachers play a very important role in acquiring knowledge and developing student skills. University staff who are more engaged to doing their job achieve better results (Hilliger et al. 2022). They are focused on learning outcomes and developing the student's experience and skills (Halls et al. 2022). Therefore, it is very important to learn about the factors that increase an engagement of a university employee, and thus improve the quality of work and educational results.

The early studies on employee engagement suggest that it is an incessant investigation. The renowned survey organization, Gallup (2017) reports that in Sri Lanka 38% of employees are engaged, 54% disengaged, and 8% actively disengaged. According to Gallup (2013), in Sri Lanka, 14% are engaged, 62% are not-engaged, and 23% are actively disengaged. Although progress is observed, Sri Lanka has a long journey ahead in terms of increasing the level of employee engagement. Dharmasiri (2010), in his an overview of employee engagement provides theoretical evidence that supports employee engagement. The empirical study conducted by Iddagoda and Opatha (2020), on employee engagement among the managerial employees in the public listed companies, identified several research gaps in the literature on employee engagement. The United States, with 30% engaged, 52% disengaged, and 18% actively disengaged (Gallup, 2017), records the highest employee engagement rate. In the global level, according to AON (2018) an expert survey organization, just as same as Gallup –in 2017 27% of the global employees have been recorded highly engaged, 38% engaged, 21% and 14% actively disengaged.

Lisyutkin et al. (2022) reveal that there are common causes for public universities decline, classified as intra-organizational, contextual, and technological factors. Jiony et al., (2105) in their study found that organizational culture is a driver of employee engagement. The unit of analysis of their study is full-time executive level employees in selected five star hotels located in Sabah, Malaysia identified that there is an empirical research gap in the literature of employee engagement. The identified gap is that there is no empirical evidence between the relationship between organizational culture and employee engagement in the public universities in the Sri Lankan context. The researchers of this study are going to bridge this empirical and population research gap using the research objectives; (1) To identify the culture types that determine employee engagement (2) To determine the demographics, such as gender and organizational tenure that can shape employee engagement.