HRD CLIMATE AND OCCUPATIONAL SELF EFFICACY AS PREDICTORS OF WORK ENGAGEMENT

Abstract

With complexity flooding into every aspect of business, the traditional four P‘s of business have become less important and a fifth P—people—has become increasingly important as a competitive factor (Colan, 2009). It is the people and the passion with which they perform provides an organization an edge over others. What can organizations do to siphon the best out of their employees? How to ignite the passionate performance for organizational excellence? In this context, the phrase ―employee engagement‖ has received a great deal of attention in recent years from both the practitioner and academic community. Available research evidences clearly suggest that engaged employees outshine their disengaged counterparts on a number of organizational metrics (Shuck and Reio, 2011). With the link between engagement and performance outcomes being well recognized, developing and enhancing engagement could prove to be a keystone to talent management and business success (Shuck and Reio, 2011). In fact, work engagement has become strategic business imperative for the organizations in 21st century characterized by highly turbulent and unpredictable business environment (Shuck and Reio, 2011). At the same time, it has also been reported that global employee engagement is on decline and that there is a deepening disengagement among employees in both developed and emerging economies (Bates, 2004; Richman, 2006; Gebauer and Lowman 2008). Given the substance and importance of work engagement, combined with intensifying disengagement among today‘s workforce, the key question is how to build an engaged workforce? In order to arrive at the state of engagement, research has suggested that focusing on predictors of engagement could enhance, and conceivably assist in the development of an engaged workforce. Since both situational and personal variables are critical to the understanding of workplace attitudes and behaviors, it is impossible to fully understand the attitudes and behaviors in the organization without understanding the interaction between the organizational context and the personal characteristics of the individual (Ostroff, 1993). However, only a few studies have concomitantly measured the role of environmental and personal variables along with their interactions in shaping work attitudes and behaviours for one or the other reasons (D‘Amato and Zijlstra, 2008). With this backdrop, the present study aims at developing and examining a multilevel framework wherein work engagement will be ii studied as a combined function of personal and situational factors. The study utilizes a multilevel approach to investigate the relative impact of individual/personal (psychological human resource development climate (HRD climate), occupational self efficacy) and organizational/situational (HRD climate quality & HRD climate strength) factors on employees‘ work engagement. In addition, the study attempts to unfurl the mechanisms underlying the relationships among study variables by proposing and testing mediation and moderation hypotheses. The target population for the present study consisted of junior, middle and senior level business executives from select business organizations in India. A total of 375 employees from 30 different organizations participated in the study. Since, the study involved predictor and criterion variables at different levels of analysis, hierarchical linear modeling using HLM7 software was used to test the study hypotheses (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002). Bootstrap analysis was used to examine the level 1 mediation effects and significance of indirect effects. Further, structural equation modeling was employed to confirm the mediation role of occupational self efficacy. Shared employee perceptions of HRD climate i.e. HRD climate quality was found to predict work engagement above and beyond psychological HRD climate and occupational self efficacy. Occupational self efficacy partially mediated the relationship of psychological HRD climate, HRD climate quality with work engagement. Psychological HRD climate displayed partial mediation effects on the relationship between HRD climate quality and work engagement. The interaction of HRD climate strength with psychological HRD climate, HRD climate quality and occupational self efficacy was found to be significant in predicting work engagement. However, occupational self efficacy failed to moderate the relationship of work engagement with both psychological HRD climate and HRD climate quality. This study is innovative and extends previous research in numerous ways. For instance, independent studies have been undertaken to demonstrate the impact of psychological and organizational climate perceptions, with very few examining the relative impact of similar compositional constructs at different levels of analysis on individual level outcomes (Schulte et al., 2006). In addition, independent studies which have examined the relative impact of individual and organizational factors on individual and organizational outcomes have either included different constructs at individual (mostly demographic and personality constructs) and organizational level of analysis (cf. Liao and Chaung, 2004) or same compositional constructs at different levels of analysis (cf. Schulte et al., 2006). No study to iii the best of our knowledge is available where different constructs (occupational self efficacy in present study) in addition to similar compositional measures at different levels (psychological HRD climate and HRD climate quality) of analysis were included in same study to analyze their relative impact on employee level outcomes. Rather than simply examining the impact of psychological HRD climate, which represents an individual level construct, the study demonstrated the impact of HRD climate quality, which represents an organizational level construct, on work engagement. Thus, the study by examining the impact of aggregate level HRD climate on work engagement fulfils the gap in the academic literature where studies examining the simultaneous impact of personal and organizational factors on work engagement have failed to specify the conceptual framework of cross level relationships and have largely examined organizational factors at individual level of analysis. The study, by investigating the role of HRD climate strength in understanding work engagement process also addressed to the call for more empirical research around the construct of climate strength as only a few studies have attempted to investigate the role of climate strength in determining individual level outcomes. Importantly, the study has extended work engagement literature where studies from West have largely dominated the arena, by examining a unique combination of variables as predictors of work engagement in a unique collectivist cultural setting. The incremental value of the present study lies in the fact that, in addition to examining the direct relationships between study variables, it made an attempt to unfurl the psychological mechanisms underlying the relationships among study variables by establishing mediation and moderation effects. In this direction, psychological HRD climate was found to partially carry the impact of HRD climate quality on work engagement. Further, the study showed how individual and shared employee perceptions of development climate influenced work engagement among Indian business executives directly and indirectly via their occupational self efficacy beliefs. Further, the study provided significant insights on the dynamics of the relationships among study variables by providing preliminary evidence for the reciprocal relationships among organizational resources (HRD climate), personal resources (occupational self efficacy) and work engagement on a sample of Indian business executives, in addition to a few studies in West, where such reciprocal relationships have been investigated (cf. Salanova et al., 2010). This assisted greatly in understanding the process of work engagement. However, to iv confirm the reciprocal relationships among study variables longitudinal research in the area is recommended. This research has not only made a theoretical contribution but has also provided managers and employers with greater insights into what really predicts work engagement. This could benefit them in that they can plan focused and effective strategies and initiatives to promote work engagement. Once they gain an understanding of the factors affecting engagement in a particular context, they know which levers to pull to enhance engagement (Fleck and Inceoglu, 2010). The study by adopting a multilevel perspective illuminated both top down and bottom up effects on organizational behaviour, where top down approach signifies the need to study the impact of organizational and group level factors on individual perceptions, attitudes and behaviours and bottom up approach signifies the importance of the processes to reduce inconsistency in individual perceptions and attitudes and facilitate the emergence of collective phenomena (Kozlowski and Klein, 2000; as cited in Liao and Chaung, 2004). In essence, by adopting a multilevel perspective, the study presented a more comprehensive sketch of organizational life by determining what kind of employees are likely to display greater work engagement and what kind of situations facilitate work engagement among Indian business executives (Liao and Chaung, 2004).