Hotel Employee Work Engagement and Its Consequences

Although the popularity of employee engagement among business operators has inspired many practitioner studies, theory-based academic research from the organizational behavior perspective has been relatively limited, especially regarding how employee work engagement benefits employees themselves as well as their organizations. This study empirically tested a theoretical relationship model using the potential consequences of employee engagement in the hotel setting: intrinsic rewards, leader-member exchange (LMX), job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Results of structural equation modeling showed that employee engagement was directly associated with all hypothesized consequences. This study also demonstrated that LMX mediated the relationships of employee engagement with job satisfaction and organizational commitment, while job satisfaction mediated the relationships between employee engagement and organizational commitment and between LMX and organizational commitment.