Understanding Worker Engagement and Disengagement - Annotated Bibliography Example

Annotated Bibliography: Worker Engagement/Disengagement Name Institution Name Course Name and Code Date Introduction Worker engagement is the association between an organisation and employee in which the employee is motivated or is enthusiastic in accomplishing tasks while disengagement is a lack of motivation or enthusiasm to complete a task. Some of the causes of worker disengagement include cognitive, physical and emotional factors. The level of disengagement is increasing because of changing working requirements, competition and globalisation of business activities. Understanding worker disengagement enables the creation of frameworks and models of ensuring the employees are motivated and ready to accomplish assigned duties and responsibilities. The paper presents an annotated bibliography on employee engagement and disengagement. Wollard, KK 2011, ‘Quiet desperation another perspective on employee engagement’, Advances in Developing Human Resources, vol. 13, no. 4, pp.526-537. The article discusses employee engagement, which attracts numerous scholars and practitioners but the engagement of employees is still low in the organisations and other sectors. The author builds on Kahn’s concept of disengagement and presents a framework on employee disengagement. The author proposes that organisations should address physical/behavioural, emotional, and cognitive needs. The consequences of disengagement have been presented, which includes employee theft, turnover, mental health, safety, productivity and profitability. The author recommends that the human resource development practitioners and researchers have to address engagement since low engagement facets the morale and contributes to high employee turnover. The article presents some of the areas in which the management of an organisation has to consider in addressing the requirements of the employees. For example, cognitive, emotional and behavioural needs are some of the effects affecting engagement. The management and human resource of an organisation should address these requirements in ensuring the organisation operates effectively. These factors (cognitive and emotional) affects the employees differently meaning continuous engagement is appropriate to identify the problem and resulting in solving the problem at the opportune time. The article is appropriate for the current study because it highlights some of the variables that contribute to employee disengagement. For example, shortcomings on the cognitive and physical requirements of the employees result in high employee turnover, employee theft and dipping productivity. Understanding these factors enables formulation and implementation of measures to address the problem. Hence, the article is appropriate since it identifies the problems and proposes mechanisms to address engagement and disengagement. Fairlie, P 2011, ‘Meaningful work, employee engagement, and other key employee outcomes: implications for human resource development’, Advances in Developing Human Resources, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 508-525. The author identifies the three dimensions of engagement, which are vigour, dedication and absorption. The author also discusses the importance of meaning work and the characteristics of meaning work, which includes turnover cognitions, organisational commitment, job satisfaction, burnout, and employee engagement. The author collect information from 574 employees employed in North America. In analysing the data, the author concluded meaningful work characteristics are important in determining engagement and future developmental requirements. Meaningful work contains numerous themes, which includes social impact and self-actualization, which creates strategic leverage to an organisation. Understanding the factors influencing the behaviour of the employees is important and includes the expectation of the work. Meaning means relevance of the issue to a wider component meaning employees can be tasked with “useless work” that does not motivate the employees. The growth and development of the employee through psychological and expectation models enables employees to be motivated to achieve specified aims. Hence, meaningful work has positive characteristics towards advancing the requirements of the organisation. Analysing engagement from different facets is important, and the article presents the significance of the work in engagement purposes. Through the research, it is possible to understand the significance of the work in the general engagement of the employees. The design of the work and job description have an impact on the effectiveness of the employee and the urge to continue working. The design should reflect the need and expectation of the employee, meaning the article advises on the significance of meaningful work. The article is appropriate in furthering information on organisational design and the role of human resource in developing and training the employees to achieved organisational objectives and aims. Nair, R 2013, ‘Disengagement to disillusionment’, Impact of EE Section II, pp. 40 – 44. The author discusses consequences of disengagement at the workplace. Some of the identified consequences include a feeling of helplessness, loosing values and beliefs, negative impact on the society, dipping productivity levels, rumour mongering, which results in quitting and reduction of effectiveness at the workplace. The author identifies some solutions to the problem, which includes constructive engagement, bonding whether individual or teamwork and effective communication. The article presents disengagement results in disillusionment, which affects the effectiveness and efficiency at the workplace. The author presents important consequences of disengagement, which results in disillusionment. The productivity is affected and identifying the solutions is also important. The management and other stakeholders should encourage engagement and addressing challenges that occur. The author is also right in identifying the causes and presenting some solutions, which includes bonding and solving the problem within the shortest time possible. The article is appropriate in discussing engagement and disengagement through highlighting the consequences and strategies to address these problems. For example, the aim of any organisation is to improve productivity, but disengagement affects the productivity. The paper is appropriate to matters engagement and disengagement because it presents the consequences and solutions of the problem. Moore, C, Detert, JR, Klebe, T, Baker, V.L. and Mayer, DM 2012 ‘Why employees do bad things: Moral disengagement and unethical organisational behaviour’, Personnel Psychology, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 1-48. The authors examine the reasons why “individuals morally disengage”, which contributes to unethical organisational behaviours. The authors begin with the identification of measure to measure individual’s propensity to morally disengage and comparison are done with other theoretical constructs. The authors also analyse four studies to understand reasons for moral disengagement and unethical behaviours. The authors found out that some reasons contributing to employee propensity include coworker or supervisor reported unethical work behaviours, self-serving decision making, decision to commit fraud and self-reported unethical behaviour. The authors state that to understand the reasons why employees behave in an inappropriate manner are attributed to individual’s propensity to disengage morally. Disengagement can be viewed from different perspectives which include moral and ethical perspective. Moral disengagement influences negatively the organisation and other stakeholders including the investors. Moral disengagement may contribute to employee disengagement: morality is important to an organisation because it advances the ethical requirements. Hence, addressing the sources of moral disengagement provides a framework for managing employees through creating modalities and approaches to address the problem. The article is appropriate because it raises important information on different forms of engagement. The article enables answering the reasons contributing to unethical behaviours, which sometimes worsens situations of the employees at the workplace. Hence, understanding individual’s behaviours are important in controlling or managing morality since the loopholes contributing to the problem have been sealed. Understanding the morality provides means of advancing teamwork and preventing or reducing chances of criminal intents from occurring. Jenkins, S and Delbridge, R 2013, ‘Context matters: Examining ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to employee engagement in two workplaces’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 24, no. 14, pp. 2670 - 2691. The article presents information on management approaches in addressing the external contexts to support internal context through the engagement of the management. The authors utilises contrasting organisations in analysing management’s ability in promoting engagement through combining practitioner capabilities with the job description and groups into ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches. In addition, the article discusses the constraints and tensions that inhibit promotion of engagement. Through analysis of different working conditions and employee engagement within organisations, the authors state that management practices are locally enacted, emergent, contested, context specific and complex resulting in a situation of understanding inherent challenges that affect employee engagement. The article identifies the role of management in advancing employee engagement. The management has to understand the external forces to determine the appropriate internal processes to advance employee engagement. The needs and requirements of the employees are different and taking an appropriate strategy is difficult meaning management has to employ numerous approaches including psychology in ensuring the employees are motivated. Hence, the management approach and style determines the effectiveness of employee engagement and tasked requirements. The significance of the article in employee engagement is understanding the role of management in ensuring the employees are either engaged or disengaged. Employee engagement involves numerous functions and without management at the workplace, tasking and working become a challenge. Therefore, understanding the processes and approaches of management enables appreciating processes advancing engagement while seeking answers to disengagement issues. Further, the article indicates that organisational structure and management contribute to engagement and disengagement and due to changing working requirements, it is imperative to understand the working and managing dynamics. Hence, the significance of the article is highlighting the role of management and environmental contexts in employee engagement and disengagement. Bhuvanaiah, T and Raya, RP 2015 ‘Mechanism of improved performance: intrinsic motivation and employee engagement’, SCMS Journal of Indian Management, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 92 – 97. The article collates numerous information from the literature based on task purpose and intrinsic motivation to determine processes associated with individual’s work engagement. The authors acknowledge the presence of numerous information dealing with employee engagement and role of engagement in accomplishing tasks with desirable outcomes, but the authors highlight the shortcomings of inclusion of psychological processes. To address the shortcomings, the authors present four important key engagement initiatives which are leadership, utilising employee talent, empowering the employees and decision making authority. The article presents important information in understanding employee engagement. The psychological process is important in ensuring the employees accomplishes assigned duties. Physical and managerial aspects can be utilised but without the intrinsic aspect, it is a challenge to engage the employees to accomplished assigned duties. Hence, reviewing the numerous processes of engagement are integral to advance efficiency and effectiveness at the workplace. The article is appropriate because it presents psychological aspect in understanding engagement and disengagement of the employees. Advancing intrinsic aspects are important in ensuring the employees accomplishes assigned duties. In addition, the processes of intrinsic motivation involve numerous processes and actions including decision making process, effective management approaches, and developing and mentoring employees talents. Understanding these components are integral in ensuring the employee is engaged in accomplishing assigned tasks and duties, which are appropriate to the current study of engagement and disengagement. Read More