Authors
Daniela Gutermann
Publication date
2019/3/5
Institution
Jacobs University Bremen
Description
Since people spend around one third of their day at work, the question of which factors enhance their well-being and their motivation at work is an important one. Moreover, organizations have to face several challenges, such as a quickly changing global economic market, digitalization, and continuous need for innovation (Cascio & Montealegre, 2016; Frese, 2008; Leibold & Voelpel, 2006). This means that employees are needed who want and can deploy their competences and capacities. Work engagement is a construct that is an asset for both employees and organizations. As such, it is related to several positive outcomes, such as employees ‘well-being (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010), commitment (Halbesleben, 2010), individual performance, and reduced turnover intentions (Gutermann, Lehmann-Willenbrock, Boer, Born, & Voelpel, 2017). Accordingly, work engagement is often regarded as a competitive advantage for organizations (Gruman & Saks, 2011), resulting in attention from both researchers and practitioners (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2010). The question that arises is how work engagement can be fostered in organizations. Related to this question, this dissertation tackles four overarching scientific challenges: conceptualizing and analyzing work engagement at different organizational levels (challenge 1), accounting for the role of leadership as a driver for employee engagement (challenge 2), providing a measure of behavior-focused engagement that bridges scientific and practical needs (challenge 3), and illuminating causal relationships between work engagement and performance (challenge 4). These challenges are addressed by …
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