Original Article | Lasso Jorge the JD-R6,7 be able to, in a practical sense, help practitioners more clearly conceptualize engagement and distinguish it from related yet distinct constructs more appropriately identified as antecedents or consequences of engagement. As previously noted, whereas the bulk of the engagement literature is based on quantitative research methods, there has been limited qualitative research published on the topic. Kahn’s29 seminal thinking on engagement was derived from interviews conducted with camp counselors and employees of an architectural firm. Kahn argued that it is important to deeply probe people’s experiences and situations and that qualitative methods provide a powerful means by which to capture such experiences and situations. Furthermore, Kahn also argued that attitude surveys may not sufficiently help researchers go fully to the core of people’s lived experience of work. In addition to Kahn’s qualitative research, Schaufeli and colleagues54, Margolis and Molinsky36 and Engelbrecht18 are among the few researchers who have applied qualitative methods to the study of engagement. Bakker and Demerouti7, summarizing some of the key findings to emerge from Engelbrecht’s interviews, noted that an engaged midwife “is a person who radiates energy and keeps up the spirit at the ward, especially in situations where work morale is low… [;] is willing to do whatever needs to be done, and is viewed as a source of inspiration for herself and her colleagues…[;] has a positive attitude towards her work and is happy for the things she is doing” (p. 210). Words such as ‘energy’, ‘willing to do’, and ‘positive attitude’ not only corroborate extant academic views as to the nature of engagement but perhaps point researchers towards ways in which the construct can be further elaborated. Additional qualitative research might usefully inform and potentially progress some of the as yet unresolved issues in the conceptualization and measurement of work engagement as outlined above. Furthermore, qualitative research methods may play an important role in assuring the content and ecological validity of the theory, modelling and measurement of engagement that to date has been largely derived from the use and analysis of quantitative survey data. To sum up, and in light of the scarcity of published qualitative research on work engagement and the unresolved issues about how best to conceptualize and measure employee engagement, the study reported here had three main aims; first to determine how key human resources and operational employees of a major resource sector organization perceive and understand work engagement. Second, the research aimed to cross-reference these findings with established theories, models, and measures on work engagement and to therefore contribute to establishing the content validity and ecological validity of the existing engagement related research. Third, we hoped to uncover additional considerations in the study of engagement beyond those currently used and mostly derived using quantitative methods. More specifically, the study aimed to identify how the construct of engagement and the JD-R might be augmented or reconceptualized to better reflect the lived experience of engagement.
and their tenure ranged from six-months to 22 years. The interviewees had varying job roles broadly classified within operations (n = 25), human resources (n = 16), professional/technical (n = 6), or other (n = 4). The interviewees occupied senior level operational or human resource roles.
Procedure
The interviews were conducted by nine interviewers employed within the host organization. The geographical spread and the remoteness of some of the operations of the host organization precluded the researchers from conducting the interviews. Additionally, the decision to use in-house interviewers was in part made by the host organisation to be seen to be directly actioning the organization’s strategic focus on engagement. The researchers did, however, provide very specific guidelines for training the in-house interviewers, advised on sampling and communication strategies, and developed the semi-structured interview protocol and a set of interviewer guidelines. The questions included: ‘what does employee engagement mean for you’, ‘tell me about times when you have felt particularly engaged at work’, and ‘what are the conditions or factors which enabled you or your colleagues to be engaged’? The interviewers were trained to use, where appropriate, open-ended and non-leading probing questions to uncover deeper level characteristics of the lived experience of employee engagement. The 51 interviews ranged between 45 and 60 minutes in duration. Participant consent to record the interviews was obtained and each interview was transcribed in its entirety.
Data-analysis
The data analytic strategy aligned with that reported by Grant, Dutton and Rosso (2008) who used a qualitative data derived from 40 interviews to identify the “prosocial sensemaking mechanisms through which giving to a support program enhances employees’ affective commitment to [their] organization” (p. 901). Drawing on grounded theory methods21 and interpretative phenomenological analysis57, the first named researcher first read through all the transcripts and identified key words and key themes within which to classify responses. A coding scheme was finalized for each of the questions analysed before the first and second named researchers then independently coded the interviewee responses from the transcripts. The overall average interrater agreement across the different questions for the first and second named researchers, calculated using Spearman’s rho, ranged between 0,81 and 0,93. After calculating inter-rater reliability indices, coding discrepancies were identified and either resolved across the two researchers or omitted from the analyses.
RESULTS
The fifty one interviewees who agreed to participate in the study were Australian employees of a large multi-national resources organization which has operations in a range of locations across the globe. The interviewees ranged in age from 26 to 60 years
The data collected in the interviews were very rich and attest to the genuine commitment the interviewers and the interviewees invested in the process. Interviewee commitment to adhering to the semi-standardized process was clearly evident in the transcripts. Interviewer skill in probing and encouraging engagement in the interview process was also evident in the transcripts. The key findings for the key questions addressed in the research are described below.
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