Job resources and employee engagement: a cross-national study

Abstract

Purpose

In light of increasing globalization of workforces, the purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating effect of country on the relationship between job resources and employee engagement.

Design/methodology/approach

Questionnaire responses from 19,260 employees of a large multinational financial services corporation in Mexico, the Netherlands, and the USA are analyzed using regression analyses and a study of effect sizes.

Findings

The results show that certain job resources (financial rewards, team climate, participation in decision making) positively influence engagement in all three countries. However, the study also shows distinctions between the strength of relationships between these job resources and engagement per country which are explained through cross-cultural theorizing.

Research limitations/implications

National-level variations in relationships between job resources and employee engagement are evidenced, and these can be explained to a considerable extent by applying a cross-cultural theoretical lens.

Practical implications

The study highlights the importance for firms to be aware of and learn from the equivalence of constructs and their relationships across countries: although similar relationships were observed across the three countries studied here, the differences may be sufficient to require alternate approaches to appropriate job resources to engender engagement.

Originality/value

Although there has been considerable empirical investigation into the relationship between job resources and engagement, little has focussed on different national settings simultaneously.

Citation

Farndale, E. and Murrer, I. (2015), "Job resources and employee engagement: a cross-national study", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 610-626. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-09-2013-0318