Moving Engagement Research To A Higher Level: The Impact Of Unit-Level Engagement On Business Metric Outcomes

MOVING ENGAGEMENT RESEARCH TO A HIGHER LEVEL: THE IMPACT OFUNIT-LEVEL ENGAGEMENT ON BUSINESS METRIC OUTCOMESbyTARA K. McCLUREAugust 2013Advisor: Dr. Boris BaltesMajor: Psychology (Industrial-Organizational)Degree: Doctor of PhilosophyAlthough engagement has been slow to take hold within the academicliterature, it has quickly become a hot topic within the applied and businessenvironments. Because of the rapid growth within these areas, there has been a greatdeal of conceptual confusion and mystery surrounding the engagement construct.Recent research within the literature has sought to define engagement, differentiate itfrom existing job attitude constructs, and link it with both personal and organizationaloutcomes. To date, a majority of the research demonstrating the impact ofengagement has been conducted at the individual-level. While individual-leveloutcomes are of use to organizations, the success of a company is usually measuredat higher levels of analysis. The purpose of the current study was to explore the factorstructure of a new engagement index, investigate its discriminant validity with twocommon job attitude measures (job satisfaction and organizational commitment), lookat various composition models for aggregating individual-level engagement to the unitlevel, and determine the relationship between work unit engagement and businessmetric outcomes (voluntary turnover, operating costs, and earnings). Results of the