The Effect of Shared Perception of Engaging Leadership on Employee Work Engagement – a Multilevel Framework

Engaging leadership is a recently introduced leadership style, assumed to facilitate employee work engagement through fulfilment of the three basic psychological needs; autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Using a multilevel framework, this thesis investigated the relationships of employee work engagement with four job resources (i.e. autonomy, participation in decision making, variety in work and learning opportunities). It further investigated the direct effect of shared perception of engaging leadership on employee work engagement. Lastly, the moderating role of the groups’ shared perception of engaging leadership on the relationship between job resources and employee work engagement was examined. Questionnaires were completed by 119 leaders and 846 employees, resulting in a response rate of 80%. The employees were nested within leaders, and the employees’ perception of the leader was aggregated to a group level, measuring the groups’ shared perception of engaging leadership. First, as predicted on the basis of theories concerning job resources and well-being, increased levels of job resources predicted higher levels of employee work engagement. Secondly, as predicted based on crossover theory and studies on transference of emotions, the groups’ shared perception of engaging leadership had a positive effect on employee work engagement. Lastly, the findings did not support the hypothesis that the groups’ shared perception of engaging leadership would positively moderate the relationship between the employees’ job resources and work engagement. The findings of this thesis shed a light on groups’ shared perception of engaging leadership. They also implicate a need to investigate leadership and work engagement from a multilevel theoretical perspective