Engaged at work? An employee engagement model in public relations

Hongmei Shen, Hua Jiang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

47 Scopus citations

Abstract

Engagement has emerged as an important concept in public relations scholarship. Yet a theoretically informed model with a clear and coherent explication of the construct is still lacking. By situating our study in the internal organizational context, we provided an updated conceptualization and operationalization of employee engagement, proposing a strategy-engagement-behavior three-step employee engagement model. Results from an employee survey (n = 568) supported our conceptual model, showing that organizational engagement strategies positively predicted employee engagement, which in turn accounted for employees’ positive and negative messaging behavior, as well as their contextual performance behavior. After controlling for significant demographic variables such as gender, age, organizational size, number of subordinates, and level of management position, we identified a complete mediation effect of employee engagement in our two-step structural equation modeling analysis.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)32-49
Number of pages18
JournalJournal of Public Relations Research
Volume31
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019

Keywords

  • Employee engagement
  • contextual performance
  • negative messaging behavior
  • organizational engagement strategy
  • positive messaging behavior
  • structural equation modeling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Public Administration

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