Employee Engagement as Human Motivation: Implications for Theory, Methods, and Practice

Area of Science:

• Human Resource Management
• Organizational Psychology
• Motivation Theory

Background:

• Employee engagement is a central concept in HRM, yet lacks clear theoretical and operational definitions.
• Current definitions often conflate causes with effects and psychological with organizational variables.
• Existing approaches tend to "snowball" constructs from diverse fields, leading to conceptual ambiguity.

Approach:

• This paper advocates for grounding employee engagement in the extensive psychological literature on human motivation.
• It reviews leading engagement definitions, demonstrating their reducibility to core human motivational concepts.
• A comprehensive model of twelve human motivations is proposed as a superior framework.

Key Points:

• Current employee engagement definitions are diverse and often unclear, hindering theoretical and practical application.
• The proposed approach integrates engagement with established motivational psychology, offering a unified framework.
• A twelve-motive model provides a robust structure for understanding and measuring employee engagement.

Conclusions:

• Adopting a motivational taxonomy enhances the theoretical development of engagement systems.
• This approach improves methodological rigor by providing clear, structural operational definitions.
• Clearer definitions rooted in motivation offer practical advantages for organizations and practitioners.