Job attitudes and employee engagement: A meta-analysis of construct redundancy

The employee engagement concept has faced scrutiny due to its near-redundancy with three classic job attitudes'job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job involvement. We address this scrutiny in four steps. First, we present a higher-order attitude factor, or 'A-factor,' that underlies job satisfaction, affective commitment, and job involvement. Second, we use metaanalysis to extend Harrison, Newman, and Roth's (2006) Attitude-Engagement Model, showing that the A-factor robustly predicts a broad work-behavior criterion (r =.51). Third, we metaanalytically review the strong overlaps between the higher-order attitude A-factor and attitudinal employee engagement, to show that typical employee engagement measures are essentially redundant with the A-factor (r =.77). Finally, factor-analytic evidence suggests engagement items likely measure the same construct, in the same way, as classic job attitude/satisfaction measures. Results are discussed in light of both the high empirical redundancy'and high practical utility'of employee engagement.