Leadership and Employee Engagement

Abstract

Leadership is one of the most studied topics in the organization sciences, and employee engagement one of the more recent. However, the relationship between leadership and employee engagement has not been widely investigated. As many organizations invest significant resources in retaining, developing, and engaging employees, human resource development (HRD) professionals are tasked to develop and partner with leaders to deliver those strategies effectively. Thus, a comprehensive understanding on the relationship and mechanism between leadership and engagement is essential to HRD professionals informing leaders on how best to cultivate positive results in followers. In this vein, this research conducted an extensive review of empirical and conceptual studies that examined the relationship between leadership and employee engagement, analyzed/synthesized the studies into integrated frameworks for the leadership–engagement relationship, and proposed future research agendas.