Psychological empowerment, job insecurity and employee engagement
Abstract
Orientation: The psychological empowerment of employees might affect their engagement.
However, psychological empowerment and employee engagement might also be influenced by job
insecurity.
Research purposes: The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between
psychological empowerment, job insecurity and employee engagement.
Motivation for the study: Employee engagement results in positive individual and organisational
outcomes and research information about the antecedents will provide valuable information for the
purposes of diagnosis and intervention.
Research design, approach and method: A correlational design was used. Survey design
was conducted among 442 employees in a government and a manufacturing organisation. The
measuring instruments included the Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire, the Job
Insecurity Inventory, and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale.
Main findings: Statistically significant relationships were found between psychological
empowerment, job insecurity and employee engagement. A multivariate analysis of variance
showed that affective job insecurity had a main effect on three dimensions of psychological
empowerment (viz. competence, meaning and impact) and on employee engagement. Affective job
insecurity moderated the effect of psychological empowerment on employee engagement.
Practical implications: The implication of the results is that interventions that focus on the
psychological empowerment of employees (viz. meaningfulness, competence, self-determination
and impact) will contribute to the engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) of employees. If
job insecurity is high, it is crucial to attend to the psychological empowerment of employees.
Contribution: This study contributes to knowledge about the conditions that precede employee
engagement, and shows that the dimensions of psychological empowerment (namely experienced
meaningfulness, competence, impact and self-determination) play an important role in this regard
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/17897http://www.sajip.co.za/index.php/sajip/article/view/849
doi: 10.4102/sajip.v36i1.849
Collections
- Faculty of Humanities [2033]