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A STUDENT’S ANALYSIS OF “ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVEN
A Student’s Analysis of “Organizational Effectiveness as a Function of Employee Engagement”
Anthony W. Mills
ORG502 – Effective Organizations: Theory and Practice
Colorado State University – Global Campus
John Johnson
March 25, 2018
A Student’s Analysis of “Organizational Effectiveness as a Function of Employee Engagement”
In an initial course toward a postgraduate degree in Human Resource Management, it is imperative and highly instructive to understand key concepts such as employee engagement and organizational effectiveness and how one relates to the other. As an introduction to those concepts and the relationship between them, Kataria, Rastogi, and Garg (2013) provide a framework for understanding the definitions of the terms and an overview of the history of past research in order to set the stage for the work conducted in their study. The authors examined “the relationship between employee engagement and perceived organizational effectiveness” and considered “employees’ perceptions of the effectiveness of their organizations” (Kataria, et al., 2013).
Kararia, et. al. (2013) used measures of employee engagement and organizational effectiveness to test the hypothesis that employee engagement would relate to organizational effectiveness both generally and in the individual components of productivity, adaptability, and flexibility. While the results of the study suggested that “engaged employees perceive their organizations to be effective” and that criterion such as employee vigor, dedication, and absorption may significantly impact organizational effectiveness (Kataria, et al., 2013), they also agree that the finding are broadly consistent with previous studies.
While instructional in definition, context, and history, the aforementioned study strikes this author as confirmation of the obvious and leads to a desire for answers to perhaps more relevant questions.
Definitions
In order to understand the research into the both the individual topics (employee engagement and organizational effectiveness) and their relationship, it is necessary to understand the working definitions for each term and the context under which those definitions were applied.
Employee Engagement. While the formal term was coined over twenty years ago during studies by the Gallup Research Group (Little and Little, 2006), researcher William Kahn provided the first formal definition as, the harnessing of organizational members’ selves to their work roles” (Kahn, 1990). However, the definition that appears to be most popular comes from Schaufeli, et al. (2002) and establishes engagement as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.” As such, Kataria, et al. (2013) utilize those characteristics (vigor, dedication, and absorption) as key measures of employee engagement and their impact organizational effectiveness.
Organizational Effectives. Throughout ...
