The effect of individual and organizational factors of employee engagement on employee attitude towards work

Abstract

The construct of employee engagement had gained much reputation in recent years among reputable consulting firms than in the academic. Yet, the contributions of few academic researchers had made the construct an interesting area of research. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of individual and organizational factors of employee engagement on employee attitude towards work; with the measures of employee engagement (job engagement and organization engagement) as a mediator, and the social exchange theory as a theoretical foundation. 104 Human Resource staff working at the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia participated in the survey using the simple random sampling strategy. The t-test and multiple regressions were employed for data analyses. The findings of this study showed a significant difference between job engagement and organization engagement; indicating more of organization engagement than job engagement. In addition, co-employee support is seen as the major factor that influences both measures of engagement. Furthermore, though the factors explained a significant variance to employee attitude to work, yet their contributions were more significant with the mediator (employee engagement) being controlled. This study is among the pioneering work to support a distinctive difference between job engagement and organization engagement. Further research is recommended to clarify the results of this study as well as to explore the possible influence of other variables.