Employee engagement among public employees: examining the role of organizational images

Abstract

Employee engagement has recently emerged as a management tool that has spawned active interest among researchers, human resource management practitioners, and policy makers. While engagement has been linked to job attitudes such as job satisfaction and turnover intention, public management scholars have not yet examined the role of organizational images. We examine how two different organizational images (external and internal) influence employee engagement, and find that employee engagement is indeed influenced by these images, but in opposite directions, in addition to being mediated by job identification. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.