Publication Date
2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Committee Members
Yoka Miura (Co-chair), Sharon Heilmann (Co-chair), Suzanne Franco (Committee Member), Carol Patitu (Committee Member) Barry Milligan (Committee Member)
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Abstract
Since the early 2000s, employee engagement has become a growing point of interest for scholars, organizations, and consultants alike due to its association with a variety of organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intent. Though there is much focus surrounding the measurement of employee engagement within the literature (Saks, 2019; Saks & Gruman, 2014), there is a notable absence in the literature related to a leader’s own level of engagement. This study aimed to address this gap, utilizing the Employee Engagement Scale (EES; Shuck, Adelson, & Reio, 2017), which was developed in response to the lack of a preferred employee engagement measure grounded in Kahn’s (1990) framework of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate if the EES could assess leader-level engagement on data from 147 formal leaders. Although the model goodness- of-fit indices did not provide irrefutable evidence that leader engagement could be assessed with the 12-item, three-factor structure of the EES, review of regression weights and reliability coefficients provided evidence for the overall structure of the measure, and modification indices provided opportunities to improve the EES model with a sample of leaders. Future research focused on leader-level engagement and its impact on organizational outcomes would benefit both academics and human resources practitioners.
Page Count
128
Department or Program
Department of Leadership Studies in Education & Organizations
Year Degree Awarded
2019
Copyright
© 2019, all rights reserved. This open access ETD is published by Wright State University and OhioLINK.
