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Much of the research associated with organizational politics has focused on negative outcomes such as stress, burnout, and turnover intention. Only a limited amount of research has focused on identifying the psychological mechanisms that explain the influence of negative organizational politics on individual and organizational outcomes. In this chapter, we propose a more positive conceptualization of organizational politics and explore potential associations between both positive and negative politics and employee engagement. More specifically, we propose a model showing how the psychological conditions of psychological safety, availability, and meaningfulness explain the relationship between perceptions of positive and negative politics and employee engagement. We conclude by suggesting practical interventions to assist organizations develop a more positive organizational political climate.

Simon L. Albrecht is a registered psychologist and has a PhD and a master’s degree in Organizational Psychology. Simon’s PhD focused on identifying the dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of organizational trust. Simon is a Senior Lecturer within the Organizational Psychology program at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. Teaching, research, and practice interests are in the areas of work engagement, organizational development and change, leadership development, culture and climate, and organizational politics. Simon has published in numerous international journals, has numerous book chapters in print, and has presented at international conferences. In addition to his academic and research interests Simon also has considerable consultancy experience. He has previously been a director of a human resource consultancy engaged in delivering a broad range of organizational development activities and programs.

The application of positive psychology to the context of work has attracted enormous interest within both academic and practitioner domains over the past decade (e.g., Keyes & Haidt, 2003; Linley, Harrington, & Garcea, 2010; Luthans, 2002). From a practitioner perspective, there has been a proliferation of organizational development, human resource, talent management, leadership development, team development and coaching programs, initiatives, and interventions that have positive psychological principles at their core. The Gallup organization, for instance, has administered the Clifton Strengths Finder in thousands of organizations across the globe, aiming to help people learn about and build upon their talents and strengths to enhance all facets of their working experience (see Clifton & Harter, 2003).

Worker well‐being continues to be fundamental to the study of work and a primary consideration for how organizations can achieve competitive advantage and sustainable and ethical work practices (Cartwright and Holmes; Harter, Schmidt and Keyes; Wright and Cropanzano). The science and practice of employee engagement, a key indicator of employee well‐being, continues to evolve with ongoing incremental refinements to existing models and measures. This study aims to elaborate the Job Demands‐Resources model of work engagement (Bakker and Demerouti) by examining how organizational, team and job level factors interrelate to influence engagement and well‐being and downstream outcome variables such as affective commitment and extra‐role behaviour.

Structural equations modelling of survey data obtained from 3,437 employees of a large multi‐national mining company was used to test the important direct and indirect influence of organizational focused resources (a culture of fairness and support), team focused resources (team climate) and job level resources (career development, autonomy, supervisor support, and role clarity) on employee well‐being, engagement, extra‐role behaviour and organizational commitment.

The fit of the proposed measurement and structural models met criterion levels and the structural model accounted for sizable proportions of the variance in engagement/wellbeing (66 percent), extra‐role‐behaviour (52 percent) and commitment (69 percent).

Study limitations (e.g. cross‐sectional research design) and future opportunities are outlined.

The study demonstrates important extensions to the Job Demands‐Resources model and provides researchers and practitioners with a simple but powerful motivational framework, a suite of measures, and a map of their inter‐relationships which can be used to help understand, develop and manage employee well‐being and engagement and their outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to argue in support of a model that shows how four key HRM practices focused on engagement influence organizational climate, job demands and job resources, the psychological experiences of safety, meaningfulness and availability at work, employee engagement, and individual, group and organizational performance and competitive advantage.

This conceptual review focuses on the research evidence showing interrelationships between organizational context factors, job factors, individual employee psychological and motivational factors, employee outcomes, organizational outcomes and competitive advantage. The proposed model integrates frameworks that have previously run independently in the HR and engagement literatures.

The authors conclude that HRM practitioners need to move beyond the routine administration of annual engagement surveys and need to embed engagement in HRM policies and practices such personnel selection, socialization, performance management, and training and development.

The authors offer organizations clear guidelines for how HR practices (i.e. selection, socialization, performance management, training) can be used to facilitate and improve employee engagement and result in positive outcomes that will help organizations achieve a competitive advantage.

The authors provide useful new insights for researchers and management professionals wishing to embed engagement within the fabric of HRM policies and practices and employee behaviour, and organizational outcomes.

This study seeks to extend research on the relationship between empowering leadership, empowerment and outcome variables by examining the mediating role of employee engagement. More specifically, the study sets out to test whether employee engagement mediates the effects of empowering leadership and empowerment on affective commitment and turnover intention.

The sample on which conclusions are based consisted of 139 employees of a community health service. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equations modelling (SEM) were used to test the measurement and structural models proposed.

CFA showed acceptable fit indices for the measurement model after respecifying a reduced number of items for the explanatory variables. Structural equations modelling of a respecified model also yielded acceptable fit indices and showed that empowerment mediated the influence of empowering leadership on engagement. Engagement was shown to partially mediate the influence of empowerment on affective commitment, which in turn influenced turnover intentions.

The use of cross‐sectional self‐report data suggests the need to replicate the findings in a longitudinal design with additional samples.

Results are discussed in terms of the importance of training and development initiatives aimed at promoting empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement in health service contexts. The results will be of interest to practitioners and researchers.

The research provides new insights in to the relationships between empowering leadership, empowerment, engagement, affective commitment and turnover intentions in health service contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an interpretation of the lived experiences of salespersons’ work engagement and work-related flow and how these states are related.

A mixed-methods qualitative investigation on a sample of 14 salespeople from a large Australian-based consumer goods enterprise was conducted. Using interpretative phenomenological analyses and ethnographic content analyses the antecedents and conditions for salesperson work engagement and work-related flow were investigated.

The data showed that affective, cognitive and conative dimensions underpinned the experience of work engagement and work-related flow. Work engagement was interpreted as an aroused and self-regulated psychological state of energy, focus and striving aimed to address the situational and task relevant opportunities and demands encountered. Work-related flow was characterized by passion, absorption, eudaimonia and automatic self-regulation of goal pursuit.

The sample was from a single manufacturing organization with sales roles focussed primarily on business-to-business selling, and as such the generalizability of results to salespeople working in different contexts (e.g. retail sales, telesales) needs to be established.

The research helps sales managers to take more account of the conditions that foster salesperson engagement and flow.

This study represents one of the first attempts to interpret, compare and contrast the lived experience of salesperson work engagement with that of work-related flow. The study also adds to the relative paucity of research published on work engagement using qualitative methods.