The Relationship between Leadership Behaviour and Work Engagement – A Literature Review

Akinlawon O Amoo, Shamila Singh

Abstract


Leaders in educational and training institutions or organisations are not different from leaders in other organisations, and therefore are faced with the same challenge of maintaining the corporate objectives of their organisations. The emphasis is on how business organisations can create effective leadership behaviour that fosters increased employee work engagement in order to achieve set business outcomes. Many studies have shown that a leader’s leadership behaviour or style and employee’s work engagement are two of the most important factors responsible for business success. Also, many researchers have observed that the leader’s leadership behaviour considerably influences employee’s work engagement. For any organisation to achieve its corporate goals and objectives, it must clearly understand and align these two important constructs. Therefore, theories of leadership, employee work engagement and relationship between these two constructs are reviewed in this study.


Keywords


Leadership, leadership behaviour, work engagement

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adlam, R. 2003. This complex thing, leadership. In Police leadership in the twenty-first century. Adlam, R. & Villiers, P, Eds. Winchester: Waterside Press. 204-222.

Anderson, T. D., Ford, R. & Hamilton, M. 1998. Transforming leadership: equipping yourself and coaching others to build leadership organisation. 6th ed. London: St Lucie Press.

Andreassen, C. S., Ursin, H., & Eriksen, H. R. 2007. The relationship between strong motivation to work, “workaholism”, and health. Psychology & Health. 22(5):615-629.

Armstrong, M. 2009. Armstrong’s handbook of management and leadership: a guide to managing for results. 2nd ed. London: Kogan Page.

Bakker, A.B. & Demerouti, E. 2007. The job demands-resources model: state of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology. 22(3):309-28.

Bakker, A.B., Schaufeli, W.B., Leiter, M.P., & Taris, T.W. 2008. Work engagement: An emerging concept in occupational health psychology. Work & Stress. 22:187-200.

Bass, B. M. & Avolio, B. J. 1998. Improving organisational effectiveness through transformational leadership. In Leading organisations: perspectives for a new era. G. Hickman, Ed. London: Sage Publications Limited. 135-139.

Bass, B. M. 1985. Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press.

Bass, B. M. 1998. Transformational leadership: industrial, military, and educational impact. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Marturano, A. & Dennison, P. 2003. A review of leadership theory and competency frameworks. University of Exeter: Centre for leadership studies. Available: http://www2.fcsh.unl.pt/docentes/luisrodrigues/textos/Lideran%C3%A7a.pdf [2016, February 03].

Burns, J.M. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

Christian, M.S., Garza, A.S., & Slaughter, J.E. 2011. Work engagement: a quantitative review and test of its relationship with task and contextual performance. Personnel Psychology. 64(1):89-136.

De Klerk, S. 2013. Investigation of leadership empowerment behaviour, psychological empowerment, work engagement and turnover intention in a chemical industry. Magister Artium (Industrial Psychology) Dissertation. North-West University.

Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Janssen, P. P. M., & Schaufeli, W. B. 2001. Burnout and engagement at work as a function of demands and control. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health. 27:279-286.

Dibley, E.J. 2009. The relationship between the transformational leadership style of officers and the levels of their followers’ work engagement in the South African army. Master of Arts Dissertation. University of South Africa.

Dubrin, A. J. 1998. Leadership: research, findings, practice and skills. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Fairholm, M.R. & Fairholm, G.W. 2009. Understanding leadership perspectives: theoretical and practical approaches. New York: Springer.

Fredrickson, B. L. 2001. The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychology. 56(3):218-226.

Freeborough, R. & Patterson, K. (2015). Exploring the effect of transformational leadership on nonprofit leader engagement. Servant Leadership: Theory and Practice. 2(1):49-70.

Hallberg, U.E. & Schaufeli, W.B. 2006. “Same same” but different? Can work engagement be discriminated from job involvement and organisational commitment? European Psychologist. 11(2):119-127.

Hamman, D. 2012. Transformational leadership and employee engagement amongst knowledge workers. Master of Business Administration Dissertation. Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria.

Hayati, D., Charkabi, M. & Naami, A. 2014. The relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement in governmental hospitals nurses: a survey study. Springer Plus. 3(25):1-7.

Hersey, P. & Blanchard, K. H. 1988. Management of Organisational behaviour: utilizing human resources. 5thed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Hoy, W. K. & Miskel, C. G. 2001. Educational administration: theory, research and practice. 6thed. New York: McGraw – Hill.

Jackson, L. T. B., Rothmann, S., & Van de Vijver, F. J. R. 2006. A model of work-related well-being for educators in South Africa. Stress and Health. 22:263-274.

Jaques, S. & Clement, S. 1991. Executive leadership: a practical guide to managing complexity. Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell Inc.

Kahn, W. A. 1990. Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal. 33:692-724.

Leithwood and Jantzi (2000:114)

Lussier, R. N. & Achua, C. F. 2001. Leadership: theory, application and skill development. USA: South- West College Publishing.

Maas, W.G.M. 2014. Leadership style and organisational commitment: a literature review. Bachelor Thesis – Organisation and strategy. Available:https://www.academia.edu/9673242/Leadership_style_and_organizational_commitment_A_literature_review [2016, September 14].

Malik, S.H. 2013. Relationship between leader behaviors and employees’ job satisfaction: a path-goal approach. Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social Sciences. 7(1):209-222.

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. 1997. The Truth about Burnout. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W.B., & Leiter, M.P. 2001. Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology. 52:397-422.

Maxwell, J. C. 1999. The 21 indispensable qualities of a leader: becoming the person others will want to follow. Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

May, D. R., Gilson, R. L. & Harter, L. M. 2004. The psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work. Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology. 77:11-37.

McHugh, M. 2001. Employee absence: an impediment to organisational health in local government. International Journal of Public Sector Management. 14(1):43-58.

McShane, S. L., & Glinow, M. A. V. 2010. Organisational behavior. 5thed. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Mendes, F., & Stander, M.W. 2011. Positive organisation: the role of leader behaviour in work engagement and retention. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology/SA Tydskrif vir Bedryfsielkunde. 37(1):1-13. DOI:10.4102/sajip.v37i1.9

Moodley, S.N. 2010. Personality and work engagement in a financial institution. Master of Arts Dissertation. University of South Africa.

Murphy, M.O. 2014. Theory of work engagement. In Theories guiding nursing research and practice: making nursing knowledge development explicit. Fitzpatrick, J.J. & McCarthy, G, Eds. New York: Springer. 183-200.

Nelson, S.A. & Shraim, O. 2014. Leadership Behaviour and employee engagement: a Kuwaiti services company. International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management. 14(1/2/3):119-135.

Norris. C. J., Barnett, B. G., Basom, M. R. & Yerkes, D. M. 2002. Developing educational leaders. New York: Teachers College Press.

Oyetunji, C.O. 2010. The relationship between leadership style and school climate in Botswana secondary schools. Ph.D. Thesis. University of South Africa.

Rana, S., Ardichvili, A., Tkachenko, O. 2014. A theoretical model of the antecedents and outcomes of employee engagement. Journal of Workplace Learning. 26(3/4):249 – 266. Saks, A.M. 2006. Antecedents and Consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology. 21:600−619.

Roux, S. 2010. The relationship between authentic leadership, optimism, self-efficacy and work engagement: an exploratory study. Master of Commerce (Industrial Psychology) Dissertation. Stellenbosch University.

Salanova, M., Schaufeli, W.B., Xanthopoulou, D., & Bakker, A.B. 2010. The gain spiral of resources and work engagement: sustaining a positive worklife. In Work engagement: a handbook of essential theory and research. Bakker, A.B. & Leiter, M.P, Eds. New York: Psychology Press. 118-131.

Sarti, D. 2014. Work engagement and leadership styles in human service organisations. Available: http://www.ufhrd.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Sarti-Daria-full-paper.pdf [2016, February 08].

Sashkin, M. & Sashkin, M. 2003. Leadership that matters. San Francisco: Berrett-koehler Publishers Inc.

Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. 2010. Defining and measuring work engagement: bringing clarity to the concept. In Work engagement: a handbook of essential theory and research. A. B. Bakker & M. P. Leiter, Eds. New York: Psychology Press. 10-24.

Schaufeli, W., & Salanova, M. 2007. Work engagement: an emerging psychological concept and its implications for organisations. In Research in social issues in management: managing social and ethical issues in organisations. S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner, & D. P. Skarlicki, Eds. Greenwich, CT: Information Age. 135–177.

Schaufeli, W.B. and Bakker, A.B. (2004). Job demands, job resources and their relationship with burnout and engagement. Journal of Organisational Behaviour. 25:293–315.

Schaufeli, W.B., & Enzmann, D. 1998. The burnout companion to study and practice: a critical analysis. London: Taylor & Francis.

Schaufeli, W.B., Martinez, I., Marques Pinto, A., Salanova, M. & Bakker, A.B. 2002a. Burnout and engagement in university students: a cross national study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 33(5):464–481.

Schaufeli, W.B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V. & Bakker, A.B. 2002b. The measurement of engagement and burnout: a two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies. 3:71-92.

Schaufeli, W.B., Taris, T.W., & Van Rhenen, W. 2008. Workaholism, burnout, and work engagement: three of a kind or three different kinds of employee well-being. Applied Psychology. 57(2):173-203.

Schermerhorn, J. R., Hunt, J. G. & Osborn, R. N. 2000. Organisational behaviour. 7thed. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Schuck, B. & Wollard, K. 2010. Employee engagement and hrd: a seminal review of the foundations. Human Resource Development Review. 9(1):89-110

Schyns, B., van Veldhoven, M. & Wood, S. 2009. Organisational climate, relative psychological climate and job satisfaction. Leadership & Organisation Development Journal. 30(7):649 – 663.

Sergiovanni, T. J. 1999. Rethinking leadership. Illinois: Skylight Training and Publishing Inc.

Siddiqi, M.A. 2015. Work engagement and job crafting of service employees influencing customer outcomes. Journal for Decision Makers. 40(3):277-292.

Storm, K., & Rothmann, S. 2003. A psychometric analysis of the Utrecht work engagement scale in the South African Police Services. South African Journal of Industrial Psychology. 29(4):62-67.

Tordera, N., Gonzalez-Roma, V. & Peiro, J.M. 2008. The moderator effect of psychological climate on the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) quality and role overload. European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology. 17:55-72.

Ubben, G. C., Hughes, L. W. & Norris, C. J. 2001. The principal: creative leadership for excellent schools. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Wu, M.T. 2004. A review of relationship between principal’s leadership style and teacher’s job satisfaction. Journal of Meiho Institute of Technology. 23(2):235-250.

Xu, J. & Thomas, H.C. 2011. How can leaders achieve high employee engagement? Leadership & Organisation Development Journal. 32(4):399-416.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2018 Journal of Marketing and HR

Copyright © 2015 Journal of Marketing and HR. All rights reserved.

ISSN 2455-2178

For any help/support contact us at editorial@scitecresearch.com.