B. Hypotheses Development − Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment
Several studies indicated that there is a positive relationship between employee engagement and affective commitment (e.g., Richardsen et al., 2006; Llorens et al., 2006; Hakanen et al., 2006; Saks, 2006; Demerouti et al., 2001; Maslach et al., 2001; Brown and Leigh, 1996), but none has looked at engagement’s impact on the other two components of organizational commitment (continuance commitment and normative commitment). Saks (2006, pp: 600-619) described employee engagement as “the degree which an individual is attentive and absorbed in the performance of their roles.” Saks (2006) categorizes employee engagement into job engagement and organizational engagement. Although there are two categories of engagement, with one relating to the job and the other relating to the organization, all questionnaires in these two categories solicit the degree of immersion of an employee into his job and organization arising from the employee’s personal devotion towards the job and organization. The questionnaires would presume this devotion as not coming from threats or risks such as “no outside jobs are readily available” nor “losing their investments in the bank.” On the other hand, Meyer and Allen (1991) define continuance commitment as the consciousness of the costs linked to leaving the organization.” Therefore, it can be argued that a higher level of immersion (or devotion) of employee engagement would be related to lower levels of awareness of the costs related to leaving the organization (continuance commitment).Taking this to the extreme, it would mean a higher level of devotion would create a much diminished level of awareness of costs related to leaving the organization. As such, it is logic to hypothesize a negative relationship between employee engagement and continuance commitment. In contrast, the employee who has a positive and pleasing work-related status of mind is likely to report positive attitudes towards working in the organization, and demonstrate greater affective commitment and normative commitment. Hence, it is expected that employee engagement will positively affect affective commitment and normative commitment and negatively affect continuance commitment. Therefore, this study hypothesizes that: