The Meaning, Antecedents and Outcomes of Employee Engagement: A Narrative Synthesis

• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Author: Luke Fletcher,Catherine Bailey,Kerstin Alfes,Adrian Madden
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12077
• Date: 01 January 2017

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 19, 31–53 (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12077

The Meaning, Antecedents and Outcomes

of Employee Engagement: A Narrative

Synthesis

Catherine Bailey, Adrian Madden,1Kerstin Alfes2and Luke Fletcher3

Department of Business and Management, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK, 1Faculty of

Business, Department of Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour, Universityof Greenwich, Greenwich SE10

9LS, 2Department of Human Resource Studies, Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, 5037 Tilburg, The Netherlands,

and 3Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Brighton BN2 4AT, UK

Corresponding author email: a.madden@greenwich.ac.uk

The claim that high levels of engagement can enhance organizationalperformance and

individual well-being has not previously been tested through a systematic review of

the evidence. To bring coherence to the diffuse body of literature on engagement, the

authors conducted a systematic synthesis of narrative evidence involving 214 studies

focused on the meaning, antecedents and outcomes of engagement. The authors iden-

tified six distinct conceptualizations of engagement, with the field dominated by the

Utrecht Group’s ‘work engagement’ construct and measure, and by the theorization

of engagement within the ‘job demands–resources’ framework. Five groups of factors

served as antecedents to engagement:psychological states; job design; leadership; orga-

nizational and team factors; and organizational interventions. Engagement was found

to be positively associated with individual morale, task performance, extra-roleperfor-

mance and organizational performance, and the evidence wasmost robust in relation to

task performance. However, there was an over-relianceon quantitative, cross-sectional

and self-report studies within the field, which limited claims of causality. To address

controversiesover the commonly used measures and concepts in the field and gapsin the

evidence-base, the authors set out an agenda for future research that integrates emerg-

ing critical sociological perspectives on engagementwith the psychological perspectives

that currently dominate the field.

Introduction

It is almost 25 years since Kahn (1990) published

his seminal paper on ‘personal engagement’ with

work, arguing that employees choose whether to in-

vest themselves fully and authentically in their role

on the basis of their experiences within the working

environment. Since that time, interest in engagement

This paper is based on independent research funded by the

National Institute for Health Research (Health Services and

Delivery Research, 12/5004/01). The views expressed in this

paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those

of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research or

the Department of Health. The authors also acknowledge

the guidance of Professor Graeme Currie in the conduct of

the synthesis and the help of the Institute for Employment

Studies.

has mushroomed, leading to the developmentof a be-

wildering multiplicity of definitions, measures, con-

ceptualizations and theories of engagement (Macey

and Schneider 2008).1

1In carrying out this evidence synthesis, a large body of

practitioner literature was also identified in which engage-

ment is approached from a number of differing perspectives.

Although this material reflected the extent of interest in

engagement from the practitioner perspective, it did not meet

the quality criteria for inclusion in the synthesis. However,

separate analysis of this practitioner literature did reveal

different interests in engagement, e.g. engagement with the

employing organization, compared with the more psycho-

logical focus identified in the academic literature. Analysis

of this separate body of literature led to the production of

a number of practitioner guides, which can be accessed via

http://www.nhsemployers.org/case-studies-and-resources/

2014/10/staff-engagement-review-of-practitioner-studies

C2015 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Publishedby John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington

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32 C. Bailey et al.

Arguably, engagement has become one of the most

significant concepts in the management field in re-

cent years (Crawford et al. 2014), yet, to date, there

has been no systematic review that brings together

and synthesizes the evidence-base relating to engage-

ment. This is concerning in light of the fact that,

within the practitioner community, engagement has

caught the interest of policy-makers and employers

keen to find new waysof leveraging high levels of per-

formance. Large numbers of consultancy firms now

offer services such as employee engagement surveys,

and there are widely cited case studies purporting to

show how raised levelsof engagement can lead to or-

ganizational profitability and competitiveness. In the

absence of a systematic review, it is uncertain whether

this advice is appropriate.

To address these issues, the aim of this paper is to

present the findings of a narrative evidence synthesis

that focuses on the following three questions: (1) how

has engagement been defined and theorized; (2) what

antecedents are associated with engagement, and (3)

what evidence is there that engagement is associated

with employee morale and performance?

First, we explain the methodological approach

adopted for the evidence synthesis. We then outline

the findings relating to the meanings and definitions

of engagement, and analyse the implications of these.

Next, we summarize the theoretical frameworksused

to ‘explain’ engagement within the literature. In the

following sections, we report on the findings relating

to the antecedents and outcomes of engagement. Fi-

nally, we reflect on the state of engagement research

and indicate directions for future study.

Research methods

This review used a narrative evidence synthesis

method adopting the guidelines established by Briner

and Denyer (2012), adhering to the principles of orga-

nization, transparency, replicability, quality, credibil-

ity and relevance. We followed the five steps outlined

by Briner and Denyer (2012) of: planning; structured

search; evaluating material against agreed eligibility

criteria; analysis and thematic coding; and reporting.

Narrative synthesis is regarded as an effective way

to identify the story underpinning a disparate body of

evidence by givingreviewers the flexibility to develop

themes that bring coherence to that data (Briner and

Denyer 2012; Popayet al. 2006). The topic of engage-

ment is one that might be considered as now having

reached a sufficient stage of maturity to warrant a

narrative review in order to synthesize the current

evidence-base and provide a foundation for advanc-

ing knowledge in the field (Jones and Gatrell 2014,

p. 260).

Data collection

Using an open search approach, an initial scan of

the literature produced 712,550 items from diverse

sources. First, we developed an inclusive long string

of relevant search terms drawn from different dis-

ciplinary fields, which was then refined using the

CIMO framework (Denyer and Tranfield 2009). This

requires scrutiny of the research questions in relation

to the Context in which evidence has been gathered;

the Interventions being evaluated/tested; the Mech-

anisms through which the intervention is expected

to create outcomes, and the Outcomes themselves in

terms of observable effects. Using this frameworken-

abled the production of a short search string that was

piloted on three databases: Business Source Com-

plete; International Bibliography for the Social Sci-

ences; and Scopus. At this stage, we confined the

search to items written in English and published after

1990, when Kahn’s article on engagement was pub-

lished. The pilot search produced 5295 items.

We sought advice from experts, which led to a

revision of the search string to ‘employee engage-

ment’ OR ‘staff engagement’ OR ‘job engagement’

OR ‘organi* engagement’ OR ‘personal engage-

ment’ OR ‘team engagement’ OR ‘psychological

engagement’ OR ‘work* engagement OR medical

engagement’, and narrowing the search to abstracts

only. We included two further databases, Zetoc and

Nexis, to minimize publication bias (Patterson et al.

2007). Our search strategy was enhanced by citation

tracking, scanning reference lists, endnotes and

footnotes for additional materials not identified by

the databases, and tracking new publication alerts.

The structured search took place in October 2013,

producing a total of 7932 items of literature from the

five databases, which were imported into Refworks.

Using the ‘close de-duplication’ function within Re-

fworks reduced this number to 5771 items for the

sifting stage of the review, along with three research

monographs on engagement.

The abstracts were first sifted independently by

two members of the research team using a pro forma

that set out quality and relevance thresholds, using a

bespoke database developed in Excel Professional

Plus 2010. A kappa rating was calculated from the

results of pilot sifts using all six reviewers from the

C2015 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.