Leadership/management factors impact on employee engagement and discretionary effort

Abstract

Purpose

There is strong and growing evidence of the importance of leadership and management factors influence on employee engagement and discretionary effort. However, the problem is that there has been limited recent effort to review where research gaps exit and provide a direction to guide future research. The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated perspective on the influence of leadership and management factors on employee engagement and discretionary effort.

Design/methodology/approach

The review of the literature includes empirical research and case studies related to employee engagement and discretionary effort from various databases such as Business Premier, Cambridge University Press, JSTOR, Springer, Emerald, Wiley, ProQuest and ISI Web of Science. Supporting material was also accessed from reference books regarding similar concepts and theories.

Findings

The review provides a current view of the key topics, identifies three key research gaps, suggests a refined, up-to-date definition of both employee engagement and discretionary effort, and proposes a conceptual framework to inform future research. In doing so, it offers new directions for progressing studies on these critical workplace practices and behaviours particularly the inclusion of national culture as a moderating variable when investigating or implementing employee engagement and discretionary effort strategies.

Research limitations/implications

Findings are based on existing literature and require empirical testing. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Originality/value

Undertaking a review of the literature is an important part of any research and this review aims to organise, describe and appraise the current literature with a view to gaining a critical perspective for the benefit of researchers.

Citation

Sharafizad, J., Redmond, J. and Morris, R. (2020), "Leadership/management factors impact on employee engagement and discretionary effort", International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 43-64. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOTB-12-2018-0134