Antecedents and consequence of work engagement: A literature review

Work engagement has emerged as a critical construct in human resource management scholarship and practitioner literature because of its positive outcomes for employees and organizations. In this paper, we review the role of work engagement in the relation between its antecedents and employee performance as the outcome. We also review the methodological choices, sample selection, analysis techniques, construct definition and measurement tools, used in 26 empirical studies of the last 7 years (2008-2015) on work engagement. The prime motivation for this review is the growing interest of existing scholarship in testing different organizational factors and human resource practices leading to higher work engagement and individual-level outcomes such as employee/job performance. We identified lack of empirical research using longitudinal, experimental and qualitative research design in extant literature on work engagement. Our review highlights that work engagement research needs better measurement tools apart from Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). We further recommend future research to explore more antecedents and performance outcomes of work engagement in different organizational settings and across different cultures and countries.