Employment Engagement

Employee engagement has been defined in many different ways. Most often it has been defined as emotional and intellectual commitment to the organization (Baumruk 2004; Richman 2006; Shaw 2005) or the amount of discretionary effort exhibited by employees in their jobs (Frank et al. 2004). In the academic literature, a number of definitions have been provided. Kahn (1990, p. 694) defines personal engagement as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.” Thus, engagement means to be psychologically present when occupying and performing an organizational role. It has been also defined as psychological presence but he goes further to state that it involves two critical components: attention and absorption. Schaufeli et al. (2002) define engagement “as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.” They further state that engagement is not a momentary and specific state, but rather it is “a more persistent and pervasive affective-cognitive state that is not focused on any particular object, event, individual, or behavior.