Employee Engagement: Conceptual Clarification from Existing Confusion and Towards an Instrument of Measuring It

In the literature of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior, it seems that growing attention has been given to employee engagement which is an employee related outcome contributing to organizational effectiveness. There is a conceptual confusion with regard to the meaning of employee engagement, as there are several associated terms such as job satisfaction, job involvement, work involvement, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior which have been used in the literature either synonymously or non-synonymously in addition to the labels of engagement. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive conceptualization of employee engagement so as to develop an appropriate working definition for research purpose. Also an attempt was made to decide whether employee engagement is an attitude or a behavior, and to explore its dimensions and elements for the purpose of developing an instrument to measure the variables of employee engagement.