The Theories of engagement

Participation occurs when people commit to their work and organization and are motivated to achieve higher levels of productivity. It has two interesting aspects:

0      1)  Involvement in the work, when employees make diligent efforts, they find their work interesting, complex and useful.

0      2)  Organizational Participation identify the value and purpose of the organization and consider it the best place to work and continue working.

Components of engagement

The institute for Employment studies has modeled the components of engagement as shown below.

·         Commitment - the relative strength of the individual’s identification with, and involvement in, an organization.

·         Organizational citizenship behavior – as define by Organ (1988), is employee behavior that goes above and beyond the call of the duty and contributes to organizational effectiveness. It is discretionary and not explicitly recognized by the employing organization’s formal reward system.

·         Motivation – the force that energizes, directs and sustains behavior. It can be

intrinsic	Extrinsic
behavior is afforded by affected by factors that may arise from the work itself and are self-generated	Which occurs when things are done to or for people to motivate them

                Table 1 – Motivation

The motivation element in engagement is intrinsic. As Macy et al (2009:67) observed “when the work itself is meaningful it is also said to have intrinsic motivation”

Facets of engagement

According to Alfas et al (2010: 5) engagement as having following three core facts:

Intellectual engagement	Affective engagement	Social engagement
Thinking hard about the job an how to do it better	Feeling positive about doing a good job	Actively taking opportunities to discuss work-related improvements with others at work

Table 2- Facts of Facets of engagement

Balain and sparrow (2010: 183) considered that engagement should be seen as a ‘belief’ and not an attitude, ie it is largely a cognitive construct (intellectual engagement) rather than an affective or behavioral one. They suggested that engagement will have effective and behavioral outcomes but it is necessary to separate the cause from the effect.

Discretionary behavior

 As described by Purcell et al (2003), discretionary behavior refers to the choices that people at work often have about the way they do the job and the amount of effort, care innovation and productive behavior they display. It can be positive when people ‘go the extra mile’ to achieve high levels of performance.

Conclusion

Employee the theory is affirmed simply as common sense. In theory, the leaders of the organization should ensure that all personnel are fully involved and have completely changed their jobs.

Reference/Bibliography

Armstrong, M. (2012) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 12th edition

Armstrong,M.Brown,D and Reilly,P(2010) Evidence-based reward management, London, Kogan Page

Balain, S and Sparrow, P (2010) understanding the value of engagement