Background- CSR is a highly relevant subject for corporations today, since there is an increased stakeholder demand to report corporate social, economic and environmental performance. CSR may convey numerous benefits for a firm, such as a competitive advantage, increased trust and improved corporate image, as well as many outcomes related to the employee. The automotive industry is facing high external pressures to lower their carbon footprint, and to become more sustainable, consequently, this industry is a suitable context for CSR research.   Purpose- The purpose of this study is to investigate different characteristics of employee’s and their perceptions and expectations of CSR, to find the most important aspects of the phenomena from an employee’s perspective, and thereby, engaging them in a company’s CSR initiatives. By investigating this field, it will be possible for companies to improve their CSR communication and meet the employee’s expectations. An effort will be made to distinguish different types of employees, to find out their main differences in terms of preferences and willingness to engage, and by that, find the most efficient ways to get them involved in CSR activities. These insights could help companies to successfully implement CSR programmes internally throughout their organization.   Method- A mixed method was used to fulfil the purpose of the study. A quantitative online survey was conducted and provided responses from 350 employees at a single automotive company. To acquire deeper insights, qualitative interviews with ten employees and observations as complete observers were used in a complementary manner at the same company.   Results and Conclusion- The main conclusions from the empirical results and theoretical background showed that the willingness to engage in CSR activities might diverge depending on the location and the functional area of the employee. The CSR aspect that the employees perceived as most important was an economic aspect “maintaining a solid financial performance”, followed by “providing product innovations that get ahead of market and customer needs”, and “satisfying customer needs in a measurable way”. The most efficient ways to engage the employees appeared to be mainly through training, community engagement, and accurate communication.   Practical Implications- The findings from this study provides implications and recommendations to both managers and marketers on how to market the CSR programme internally, which aspects of CSR to emphasise and how to get the employees involved. This will consequently strengthen corporation’s CSR programme and thus, benefit the society.   Keywords - CSR, Employee Engagement, Internal Marketing, Stakeholder

Given the prevailing ethical crisis and subsequent collapse of a number of modern organizations, the lapse in leader ethics as a determining factor of the proliferation of corrupt practices has come to dominate leadership discourse. Ethical leadership has been linked not only to avoiding organizational destruction but to fostering healthy, productive organisations. In line with this, the current study aimed to assess the role of employee perceptions of ethical leadership in promoting employee engagement, via the mediating mechanism of employee perceptions of psychological safety.. Having distributed an email survey to administrative employees of a technological goods producer, Kalshoven et al.’s (2011) Ethical leadership at Work scale, Carmeli and Gittel’s (2009) psychological safety scale and the 17-item version of Utrecht’s employee engagement scale (Schauefeli & Bakker, 2003) were completed by 139 participants. Using structural equation modelling, the findings supported the linkage between ethical leadership and employee engagement and confirmed the role of psychological safety in mediating this relationship.

Sixty-five percent of small business leaders indicated a lack of workforce engagement practices as an administrative strategy to mitigate the adverse effects of employee disengagement. Guided by Weber's organizational theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies some leaders used to increase employee engagement. Five small business leaders in the southwestern United States participated in semistructured interviews. The participants employed successful strategies to increase employee engagement. Data collection included the review of company documents, face-to-face interviews, and member checking to explore successful strategies to increase employee engagement. Data analysis included coding and organizing data and information according to Yin's 5-step process. Using topic coding, data were arranged into nodes grounded in the context of organizational theory. The study results revealed 3 principal themes: effective and honest communication, supportive leadership behavior, and implementation of employee engagement practices into the business culture and practices. The implications of this study for positive social change include that leaders can apply employee engagement strategies for emerging leaders and develop mentoring and leadership opportunities and programs to maximize the sustainability of the organization.

Introduction: Work motivation (intrinsic & extrinsic) and employee engagement is the hot issues for today’s management. Employee’s motivation has been in discussion for years, different compensation plans and strategies were adopted over years to make employees more productive. Recently, the introduction of employee engagement as a new construct to business, management, and human resource management fields make it an imperative to adopt in organizational settings. Many studies made indirect link between work motivation (intrinsic & extrinsic) and employee engagement. Moreover, motivational factors (intrinsic & extrinsic) are often considered a useful tool for employee engagement. But very few studies investigated the direct relationship between work motivation (intrinsic & extrinsic) and employee engagement. Purpose: This study explored the relationship between work motivation (Intrinsic & Extrinsic) and employee engagement. Moreover, the study also examined the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on employee engagement.   Methodology: In order to fulfill the research purpose, quantitative study was adopted. Questionnaires were designed using Google survey tool. 187 questionnaires were collected from employees of Allied Bank of Pakistan. Later on, SPSS was used to perform the required test of descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, bivariate correlation, ANOVA test and multiple regression analysis.   Findings: The results of SPSS revealed strong agreement of respondents to positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and employee engagement, and extrinsic motivation and employee engagement. Four intrinsic factors namely interesting work, job appreciation, satisfaction and stress, and four extrinsic factors namely job security, good wages, promotion & growth and recognition were considered important by respondents for engagement.   Conclusion: From the findings it is concluded that there is positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and employee engagement, and extrinsic motivation and employee engagement. Furthermore, it is also accomplished that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation has strong positive impact on employee engagement. From the results it is also concluded that the relationship and impact of extrinsic motivation was stronger on employee engagement as compared to intrinsic motivation.      The study will enrich the current literature of work motivation and employee engagement. On practical level this study will not only help practitioners and consultants but also bank management will also be equipped with useful information regarding work motivation and employee engagement in organizational settings.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychological Sciences / Patrick A. Knight / A significant body of academic work has amassed supporting the importance of employee engagement in the workplace and its ability to influence business outcomes. However, much of this research has been concentrated in high-contact occupations in which the relationship between the employee and the customer is prolonged and involved (e.g., financial consulting, nursing, etc.). The current study utilized movie theatre environments to determine if the ability of employee engagement to influence service delivery and business outcomes persists in low-contact service environments. This research found that even in settings characterized by brief and perfunctory employee-customer interactions, employee engagement at the business unit level significantly influenced service delivery as measured by the resulting overall guest satisfaction. Furthermore, this relationship was fully mediated by guest satisfaction with friendliness of employees, speed of service and cleanliness of the environment which previous research has found to be the primary drivers of overall guest satisfaction within this environment. Partial support was found for the ability of employee engagement to significantly predict reductions in employee turnover as well as reductions in operational inefficiency and negligence. No support was found linking employee engagement to the productivity/profitability of the business unit. Given these research findings which provide additional support for the importance of having an engaged workforce, we examined how employee satisfaction with various aspects of the company and occupational environment correlate to the employee’s level of engagement. We further segment these correlations by demographic groups to better understand the relationships and more effectively target future initiatives geared toward the improvement of employee engagement.

Magister Commercii (Industrial Psychology) - MCom(IPS) / The study examines three emerging salient themes. Firstly, it highlights the current perception of informal learning in the workplace which has multiple definitions and descriptions. The second theme draws attention to the sociocultural structures and the impact on individual engagement in workplace learning. The last theme illustrates the potential of informal learning and how individuals and their learning environment at work cannot function independently. Employees no longer have time for the inefficiencies of the past, old-style training they want to be co-participants in learning not simply receivers (Cross, 2007).By diagnosing the current status of informal workplace learning, the research examines the employee engagement, the perceived factors that affect learning engagement and explores the links between informal workplace learning and the performance of the organisation. Against the background of informal learning in the workplace, a learning organisation has been characterised, as an organisation that has development in place that supports learning and recognises the value of learning and extends itself towards the enhancement of employee’s proficiency and transfer of learning to others (Berg & Chyung, 2008).

Magister Commercii (Industrial Psychology) - MCom(IPS) / To gain further insight, the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of leadership styles, particularly the impact of transformational and transactional leadership on employee engagement. Within a business context, transformational leaders are those “extraordinary” individuals that have the ability to capture their employees’ attention, intellectually stimulate them and strategically align them with the vision and mission of the organisation. Contrary to this, is transactional leadership which is basically an exchange relationship between the leader and employee whereby the leader exchanges rewards and/or incentives for performance. Both styles of leadership are instrumental in engaging employees within the organisation, although a plethora of literature suggests that transformational leadership impacts more significantly on employee engagement (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).

Wisdom is very difficult to study due to the complexity of defining wisdom outright. Various models propose characteristics of individuals that are perceived as wise but wisdom finds its real application in decision making. People would characterise someone as wise if they believe that the decision made by the person (the manager in this instance) is informed by the values of all stakeholders and have long term validity. With increasing demands placed on managers to make decisions in contexts where various stakeholders and the natural environment have to be taken into consideration, managers have to make increasingly complex decisions. The decision then also has to take into consideration the values, beliefs and needs of the employees. By asking respondents to rate their manager‟s level of wisdom, why they perceive their managers as wise and what constitutes employee engagement in their minds, a relationship between employee engagement and the perception of wisdom can be deduced. The evidence suggests that especially the cognitive and emotional dimensions of employee engagement are correlated with the perception of wisdom of the manager. New models for the measurement of implicit wisdom and employee engagement are proposed. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Increasingly the competitiveness of organisations will depend on the level of service and quality of experience offered by the employees of the organisation. In short, it is the employees within an organisation that define how successful the organisation can be to the market. The opportunity to outperform competitors lies in the ability to innovate quicker, respond faster and better understand the needs of the consumer, in so doing, becoming the organisation that creates the next trend rather than follow it. The key to achieving outstanding performance, driving both bottom-line revenue and sustained growth in the long term is in harnessing the collective knowledge latent within the organisation and freely available just beyond the organisation in the external context. This can only be done through developing a strong Learning Organisational Culture. The impact this has on the organisation is in improving employee engagement providing the catalyst in which employees perform at an optimum, minimising the unproductive cycles of the organisation resulting from employee turnover, lost intellectual capital and general employee apathy. The study provides evidence that Learning Organisation Culture is positively correlated with Employee Engagement. Copyright 2010, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Knox-Davies, B 2010, The extent to which a learning organisation culture influences employee engagement in two service based organisations in the property sector of South Africa, MBA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03242012-174550 / > F12/4/208/zw / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This research is based on the premise that change management implementation is significantly related to employee engagement in post-merged organisations. The relationship between employee engagement and the demographic variables age and length of service, and variable change experience is also explored in the postmerged organisation. The study uses a quantitative design methodology to cover the objectives of the research and to answer the questions relating to the topics of the study. The sample was drawn from a mining industry within the private sector that has undergone a merger in the last five years. The sample for the study was selected using the convenience sampling method. Statistical tools that were used in this study included frequency analysis, measures of central distribution, t-tests, Friedman‟s test, and analysis of variance. The study found high levels of employee engagement in the dimensions emotional commitment and discretionary effort. The responses for the dimension intent to stay were above average while the response for rational commitment remained neutral. A significant difference was found between the levels of emotional commitment between the two merged companies. The extent of change management implemented differed significantly between the two merged companies. With regards to the demographic variables age and length of service and variable organisational change experience, no significant relationship was found with employee engagement. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted