Deconstructing the Privilege and Power of Employee Engagement

A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Employee Engagement, Power, and Privilege

Employee engagement is a positive psychological state (Nimon et al., 2015; Parker & Griffin, 2011). If engagement is positioned as a state, it must be distinguished from (and connected to) those antecedents that influence the state. The formation of engagement is dependent on the experience of its known antecedents.

Kahn (1990) proposed an overarching social constructivist perspective of employee engagement—highly subjective and grounded in the experience of the employee and their context—identifying three psychological, antecedental conditions connected to the full experience of employee engagement. Largely influenced by psychologists, sociologist, and group theorists of the mid- to late sixties, Kahn argued that to the degree a person experienced the defined conditions of meaningfulness, safety, and availability, they would be more likely to proportionately experience higher levels of personal engagement.

Meaningfulness was defined as feeling that one’s work is worthwhile and accompanied by a sense of personal and professional value (Kahn, 1990). A sense of meaningfulness is about achieving perceived balance with work and the feeling of value one gets from contributing significance (Chalofsky, 2003; Kahn, 2010). This perception of meaningfulness is critical, as human beings rarely invest energy into tasks that are likely to be fruitless, empty efforts. Employees who see their contribution as meaningful to themselves, their team, and/or the organization engage with work proportionally. Work, however, comes in a variety of forms and measures.

Safety was defined as the ability to be one’s preferred self without fearing negative consequences to self-image, professional identity, or the balance of well-being needed for survival (Chalofsky, 2003; Kahn, 1990). Kahn (1990) theorized that employees needed to personally and authentically trust their working environment in ways that allowed them to bring their full selves to work, as well as reasonably understand what was expected of them when they were working (physically, socially, and emotionally). Often focused on as physical well-being, an employee’s perception of safety can be just as much about fearing emotional and psychological harm (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Kahn, 1990). Work environments that are unable to provide protective boundaries for employees can be experienced as threatening, intimidating places of work.

Availability was defined as having the physical, emotional, and psychological resources necessary for the completion of work (Kahn, 1990). To experience engagement, employees must feel that they have the tools to complete their work—or at a minimum that required tools can, and will, be obtained. Job resources have been operationalized as the “physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of a job that (a) may reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs, (b) are functional in achieving work goals, and (c) stimulate personal growth, learning, and development” (Hakanen, Schaufeli, & Ahola, 2008, p. 225).

In later work, Kahn (1992) suggested it was unreasonable to expect employees to be fully engaged at work when they felt their basic needs (i.e., meaningfulness, safety, and availability) were not being met as a result of their work experience. How employees socially construct perceptions of meaningfulness, safety, and availability, as well as integrate feedback from their environment with those constructed perceptions, have been linked to matters of resource and demand (Kahn, 2010). A psychologically safe environment, for example, could be framed as a resource, whereas the lack of personnel to complete an arduous task or a lack of social support from unsupportive coworkers could be framed as a demand. Both systems—resource and demand—act interdependently to create the subjectively constructed experience of employee engagement. These three psychological and antecedental conditions are proportionately tied to perceived resources and consequently, to the construction of the experience of employee engagement (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008; Bunderson & Thompson, 2009).

The Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model of engagement provides an empirically tested and well-grounded model for understanding resources and demands in the context of engagement. The JD-R model assumes that every occupation comes with both resources and demands and that every employee experiences a combination of the two as a natural element of their work. Job demands refer to those “physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort or skills . . . and are therefore associated with certain physiological and/or psychological costs” (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007, p. 312) while resources refer to “physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that are functional in achieving work goals, reduc[ing] job demands and, . . . stimulat[ing] personal growth, learning, and development” (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007, p. 312). The unique combination of these elements presents two sides of a similar phenomenon: motivational and health impairment processes that originate from environmental cues (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008). Moreover, resources and demands buffer one another (Bakker et al., 2008). The JD-R model assumes that heightened levels of engagement are likely to manifest even when job demands are high if employees can draw positively from job (i.e., social support, performance feedback, rewards) and personal resources (i.e., optimism, psychological health). Recent research has emphasized the utility of the JD-R model as an explanatory framework for understanding how employees experience engagement at work (Crawford, LePine, & Rich, 2010).

Important in contextualizing a more critical view of engagement, Bakker and Demerouti (2007) demonstrated that resources are subjectively constructed, dependent on the meaning assigned by an employee within the current context. Because resources and demands are relevant in a subjective context, we operationalized the symbiotic nature of resources and demands (as depicted by Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) as socially constructed perceptions of meaningfulness, safety, and availability to fully explore the issues of power and privilege embedded within the experience of employee engagement at work.

Framing Power and Privilege

As we have noted, the examination of engagement as privilege is also an examination of power (Tatli & Özbilgin, 2012). In her work around power as a discourse for framing organizational incivility, Callahan (2011) suggested several kinds of power within an organizational context. Two of the most salient revolve around the power of the organization and the power over the less powerful. In both instances, the issue of power is used to preserve systematic order in ways that maintain structures and constraints that detract from the possibility of employee engagement. For example, from the power of lens, organizations increasingly construct the norms of employee engagement and dictate what engagement should be and feel like (Shuck & Rose, 2013). The power over is related to outcomes connected to performance and gives to those with status the power to control others with less power. From a manager to an employee, it might sound like, “You need to be more engaged.” This declaration objectifies engagement—consequently detaching any semblance of humanness—and is an overt declaration of power. Callahan goes on to suggest a third kind of power that is useful to consider: the power to facilitate. This source of power reframes the conversation between a manager (a positional state of privilege and power) and an employee from control to one of possibility. This source of power is interdependent, transforming the environment from a state of privilege where someone has power over another person to a state of collaboration were two people work together to facilitate the formation of engagement through the experience of its known antecedents (i.e., meaningfulness, safety, and availability; Kahn, 1990).

Privileges are assets, either earned or unearned, that help individuals advance or benefit over, and often at the expense of, others (Bailey, 1998). Earned privileges are “any earned conditions, skill, asset, or talent that benefit its possessor” (Bailey, 1998, p. 109). Earned privileges are often obtained through work, education, or learning how to capitalize on a particular skill set (Rocco & West, 1998). Unearned privileges are awarded by birth into a particular group, type, or classification of people. Both earned and unearned privileges provide a source of power of and power over. Rocco and West (1998) named eight attributes that determine privilege: (a) class, (b) gender, (c) race, (d) religion, (e) sexual orientation, (f) able-bodiedness, (g) ethnicity, and (h) age. Manifestations of privilege include “power, access, status, credibility, and normality” (Rocco & West, 1998, p. 173). These manifestations play out in taken-for-granted ways, for instance, through the credibility and status of gender in the medical profession, where historically most nurses are women and most doctors are men. Yet, as more women become physicians, instead of earning what male physicians earn, female physicians earn between 60% and 85% less annually and are required to see more patients to achieve equal pay status (Weeks & Wallace, 2002). This is an issue of resource and demand and the manifested experience of the power over.

Both earned and unearned privileges denote power, social order, and hierarchy, and both support and contradict one another. For example, heterosexual White men generally experience a great deal of unearned privilege, even from young ages. For some of these men, the additional earned privilege of being college-educated may stem in part from advantages experienced in relation to an already-privileged identity. Or, this additional earned privilege may simply mitigate the fact that the college-educated White male is the first in his family to attend college and to achieve middle-class status. Being a college-educated, heterosexual White man may result in different career and social outcomes than being a White woman or a gay White man or a person of color in a similar situation. Furthermore, earned and unearned privileges may become conflated. Individuals from dominant groups with unearned privileges may believe that their success comes solely as a result of individual merit. The notion of anything to the contrary could be “threatening to a person’s identity” (Rosette & Thompson, 2005, p. 272). An example would be a White, college-educated male believing anyone with the same education could enjoy the same career trajectory and believing the reason others at his level are also White males is because they work hard and others who do not look like them, do not. In this same narrative is the skeptical view that people with minority status advance within organizations because of favorable minority-based hiring policies rather than merit. The benefits of privilege—and manifested power—are often clear to those situated outside the dominant group(s) (Bailey, 1998). Power and privilege are, however, inextricably linked to context and time, dependent on social values, laws, geography, and demographics.

In a case study on older workers and retirement options at a university, researchers found that older workers with more education and status (faculty and higher level administrators) within the organization had the privilege of being offered opportunities for flexible work with the organization after their formal retirement (Stein, Rocco, & Goldenetz, 2000) whereas office workers and support staff had no possibility of additional employment with the university after their formal retirement. The faculty and higher level administrators were White men and the support staff White women; all were above 55 years of age. The focus of the study was on older workers, and recognizing the division of men and women was an outcome of the analysis. One group was composed solely of White men who benefited from a source of power through the unearned privilege of their gender and race, as well as an earned privilege through education and rank. The unearned privilege (being male and White) was bound by context and defined by the positionality of an earned privilege (i.e., faculty and higher level administrators).

Other examples of power connected to privilege are demonstrated when employees are forced to disclose disability, sexual minority, or a religious status different from the status quo. The person forced to disclose lacks privilege and power and makes the disclosure to a person with earned privilege because that person represents a source of power within the organization. In the case of a person with a disability, law requires disclosure if an accommodation is needed (Rocco, Bowman, & Bryant, 2014). A sexual minority might need to disclose to use benefits or to counter a work culture that assumes heteronormativity (Collins & Callahan, 2012). Religious beliefs become an issue when work culture and religious practices conflict (e.g., work parties with alcohol or events on Saturdays can violate specific religious tenets). As employees disclose their disability, sexual orientation, or religion (i.e., often minority status lacking privilege), coworkers may view them as different and with diminished capabilities, despite any earned privilege they may have, such as education or rank. They can become victims of incivility, harassment, and other manifestations of power used by those with privilege in an organization. Again, we raise issues of resource and demand in ways that influence how an employee experiences work and subsequent engagement.

This experience is time dependent and subjective. We argue that if a person who does not benefit from unearned privilege and lacks sufficient earned privilege experiences inconsistent decision making, bias in evaluations, and/or a lack of resources necessary to do the work, the employee will experience this as a form of organizational injustice (Colquitt, 2001) and as a manifestation of their lack of power. Ultimately, this experience influences how engaged an employee is/or can become. However, a person with earned and unearned privilege, we argue, has greater access to resources, favorable decision making, and thus power, and that this naturally builds toward the positive psychological state of employee engagement. It is possible that those with privilege are more engaged because they do not need to navigate the micro-aggressions (small acts such as short or dismissive communication) and macro-aggressions (larger acts such as blatant racism) that minorities with less power– however minority is defined in context and time–experience routinely (Sue & Sue, 2003). In reciprocal fashion, a privileged status increases employee engagement and the resulting engaged state supports privilege rewarded through power.

Privilege can be examined through the unique vantage point of an individual’s experience of his or her work, rather than at the more general, organizational level. Issues of power connected to privilege emerge at the individual level. Privilege situates an individual’s personal attributes into a context while power denotes the operationalization of privilege organizationally—for example, the experience of resource denial, inequity, or positionality that may influence the experience of engagement. This may be easily seen in the well-understood and little-documented “old boys club.” The old boys club enhances the power individual members enjoy due to their privileged status. Members of the club enjoy both earned and unearned privilege. Some members are well aware of the club and believe in their right to belong, while others are unwilling to acknowledge that privilege bestowed power and, instead, view others as not worthy because they are deficient. People who exist outside the “old boys club” may perceive members as receiving greater compensation, better perks, information, and access to decision making more often. Consequently, encountering “the old boys club” as an outsider can be disorienting and, we argue, disengaging. We might assume that only White men have the benefit to this sort of club—certainly that might be more prevalent historically—but because privilege is context and time dependent, this assumption does not hold. Other groups, with a myriad of earned and unearned privileges, manifest their own versions of the club. Few would argue that any version of the “old boys club” is not an explicit artifact of privilege operationalized through the conduit of power. Furthermore, naming the “old boys club” as an explicit artifact of privilege and power might seem a pedestrian example—that is, until you encounter some manifestation of the club and find yourself an outsider experiencing disorientation, frustration, and disengagement.

Ultimately, employees who gain advantage, intentionally or unknowingly, from an earned or unearned privilege create states of privilege within an organization that often wield power. Such a privileged state is an organizational condition created as a result of the collected experiences of privilege among a group of employees who benefit over, and at the expense of, others. States of privilege are omnipresent and interwoven within the fabric of an organizational culture. The personal attributes of privilege can be understood in their experienced form as the demonstration of power.

Deconstructing the Framework of Employee Engagement Through the Lens of Privilege and Power

Here, we argue that employee engagement can, at times, be positioned without regard for privilege or without regard for individuals’ sense of meaning in work or, in some cases, without regard for both. When employee engagement is considered without regard for privilege, we believe this calls into question the context of the work itself. Similarly, when employee engagement is considered without regard for individuals’ sense of meaning in their work, we believe this calls into question the experience of engagement. When employee engagement is considered without regard for either privilege or individuals’ sense of meaningfulness in work, we contend that it is critical to question who is defining the value of engagement. Finally, we argue that when privilege, employee engagement, and meaningful work are considered alongside one another, employee engagement can be viewed not as a product of privilege but as privilege itself providing promising answers to the question of who benefits from high levels of employee engagement. In the following sections, we unpack these four primary statements in the form of questions, all bound within the intersection of privilege, power, and engagement.

Who Controls the Context of Work?

Perhaps the trouble with existing perspectives on employee engagement is a lack of sensitivity toward an understanding of how work conditions prohibit performance, create competing responsibilities that contest performance, and generate uncertain realities that challenge employees in ways that affect their experience of being engaged. Take, for example, those industries where turnover is annually upward of 100% (i.e., fast food, retail, quick service, etc.). As a matter of survival, some industries purposely develop jobs to be learned quickly and repeated until assumed turnover occurs and a new employee is trained. Often, employees who take such customer-facing jobs are those with the least power and privilege and are often supervised by those who, more often than not, have the power of and power over (Callahan, 2011) and who use this privilege to maintain a certain status quo. The formal and informal structures of the position create an especially difficult situation when the employee is viewed as a disposable resource. In such instances, a manager’s privilege and power work to erect obstacles that require astonishing persistence to overcome, ultimately influencing how an employee experiences meaningfulness, safety, and/or resource availability in their work. We contend that it is possible some employees find great meaning in their work (for a variety of reasons, including disposition, external motivations, and so on, despite conditions, industry, or how others might socially construct their identity from a position of privilege) and thus persist through obstacles that are manifested through their lack of privilege and powerlessness; we suspect these employees might also report higher level of employee engagement. However, an employee might also find little meaning in their work (they cannot see how their work contributes to larger goals, experience a task as busywork and/or unimportant, and so on, or see it as unsafe or lacking appropriate resources) and encountering the obstacles of the power of and power over (Callahan, 2011) push that employee toward (dis)engagement and connected outcomes.

Related is the idea that a vast majority of employees in most organizations lack appropriate positionality (i.e., status, power, credibility) to alter or influence their experience. Consequently, employees may become disengaged by no real fault of their own but by virtue of an uncontrollable condition of work and the discriminatory exercise of power (Callahan, 2011). If we assume that all employees pull toward experiences that allow the expression of a full range of creativity, productivity, excitement, discernment, and autonomy (e.g., full personal engagement; Kahn, 1990), then we can assume all employees naturally gravitate toward opportunities that are engaging. If employees naturally seek engaging opportunities, why do some employees find it so difficult to be engaged?

Privilege takes different forms, both the obvious and concealed, and often involves the amassing of resources, which can be the ultimate source of organizational power. Actions, language, and intentions can be powerful tools. Those in the majority hold additional positional power within the context of work that those in the minority (however minority might be defined) do not have. This can cause employees to experience privilege individually and respond proportionately.

Ultimately, employees who are in positions of privilege create the structures and conditions of work, determine who will be in positions of influence and power, and sanction conditions. Employee engagement must be considered with regard to privilege and within the context of the work itself. Because these actions eventually determine the context of work and create the unique environmental conditions of the workplace itself, we propose the following:

Who Controls the Experience of Employee Engagement?

High levels of employee engagement have been linked to individual persistence (Sonnentag, 2003). However, we question—persisting against what and why—why not just do good work and be engaged as a normal function of employment? In most cases, management and organizations, through the creation and sustainment of an organizational culture, determine the experience of engagement. This experience is determined by providing, intentionally or unintentionally, obstacles that employees must overcome, disregard, or persist against to become and remain engaged—that is, to find or reframe meaning, develop a sense of safety, or amass resources. The JD-R model of engagement (Hakanen et al., 2008) explicitly examines the role of organizational structures and constraints that frame who determines the actual experience of employee engagement. For example, physical structures can be defined as the material layout and appearance of the building, psychological structures as the way formal titles are used, and social structures as organizational politics. Different break rooms for executives and front line staff, mandates for using formal titles when addressing superiors, and following unwritten rules of raising a hand in a meeting all send powerful messages of control and constraint—this despite any goodwill intention.

Organizations determine at least a portion of the experience of what it means to work in a particular place. An organization can be thought of as a macro-object, a living and breathing entity constructed and given meaning by those individuals who work within its bounds and that exists in a world whose ebbs and flows have consequences to their surroundings and manufactured workplace conditions (Schein, 1999). The organization creates culture by establishing an identity and setting standards. Within an organization, there are subcultures formed by informal groups (e.g., friendships), formal groups (e.g., departments, work flow, teams), occupations, or professions (e.g., management, accountants), and there are countercultures created by mergers, innovators or entrepreneurs, anti-establishment or authority, and social movements (Trice & Beyer, 1993). An organization can exist with several subcultures wrapped within one organizational frame that compete ferociously for resources, members, and authority while placing demands on others.

The culture an employee experiences on a day-to-day basis, however, is local and composed of socially constructed organizational cultures and subcultures. Engagement is experienced through this intersection of culture and subculture complete with competing demands at a very local level. Just as organizational culture and counterculture are local, the most distal experiences of employee engagement are local, as well. Because culture exists at both a macro and micro level, the responsibility for creating the conditions that lead to the experienced phenomenon of engagement falls within the purview of the organization and those placed in positions of influence to shape experiences of work.

In reaction to any one culture, employee engagement is predicated on a cognitive-affective appraisal (Xanthopoulou, Bakker, & Ilies, 2012). This appraisal is a perception of the demands and resources that exist within a culture. This perception is uniquely the employee’s and cannot be mandated, policy driven, or forced (Shuck & Rose, 2013). Like culture, employee engagement is individually experienced as a socially constructed phenomenon. Because social construction influences—if not determines—the experience of engagement, we propose the following:

Who Determines the Value of Engagement?

High levels of engagement are arguably valuable to both employees and organizations (represented by management). This value is intrinsic and extrinsic; measured in emotional attachment, increased salary, profits, innovations, competitive advantage, productivity, and well-being, among others. Employees and organizations differ, however, on what is meant by value and how value is operationalized within the context of work. On one hand, an organization has the ultimate power to define the value of employee engagement. For example, it is the organization that dictates the parameters of work and systems of practice, as well as denotes which outputs are important to performance. However, the experienced phenomenon of engagement is neither manufactured, or demanded, nor is it artificially inflated when certain prescribed antecedents are aligned. Full employee engagement is at its core individually offered by an employee to a manager and sometimes to the organization as a symbolic entity, at the moment in which he or she perceives that resources are available, meaning and purpose are experienced, and safety is in balance.

Employees engage when organizations (through organizational development and culture) and managers (through leadership) nurture the conditions of engagement. The only power an organization truly has in this context is to create conditions that cultivate the psychological state of engagement among employees (these conditions are well documented within the JD-R model, although the JD-R model is not exhaustive). Yet, organizations and managers struggle to create and operationalize the psychological antecedents of employee engagement (meaningfulness, safety, and availability) in practice. Organizations (and consequently managers with privilege within organizations) have very little power to manufacture high levels of employee engagement. Although organizations and managers cannot manufacture (or mandate) engagement, the organization creates and maintains a culture where employee engagement can occur. Still, the ability to define the value of employee engagement lies only within the individual employee. This is an interesting juxtaposition because what is experienced as valuable to one person may not be valuable to another. Meaningfulness, for example, denotes personally perceived significance that is unique to the employee (Barrick, Mount, & Li, 2013). This framing of value is subjective—again, socially constructed—and positions engagement as a shifting, complex, and varied target, often making it challenging to pinpoint in practice.

We recognize the possibility for all work to be engaging as well as disengaging. If this is even partially true, then we wonder what influences variability in engagement levels within an individual employee, across groups, and within organizations. Clues to this can be found in research that has examined the ebb and flow of engagement in day-to-day work life. Cooper-Thomas, Leighton, Xu, Knight-Turvey, and Albrecht (2010) asked the question “Does engagement flourish, fade, or stay true?” (p. 87) across time and context. Xanthopoulou et al. (2012) suggested that even relatively positive people suffer losses of enthusiasm and fulfillment. The measurement of these fluctuations provides a context to engagement that is lost when using labels that connote being either engaged or disengaged as a general sentiment or global indicator of employee satisfaction with their work. Employees are rarely ever engaged or disengaged as a matter of being—we suspect, there are normal variations and fluctuations in an individual’s state of engagement from moment to moment. This is our point with regard to resources and demands being positioned as static in much of the employee engagement research. Resources are not static and nor are demands. Furthermore, issues of privilege can influence resources and demands, and manifested power can bring either ultimate control or vulnerability depending on positionality. How an employee encounters privilege (earned or unearned) can influence how they define the value of engagement as well as the experience of the psychological antecedents of engagement. Ultimately, we believe the power to define the value of engagement lies with the employee and that encounters with privilege and power shade this value.

Who Benefits From High Levels of Engagement?

The research is clear about the benefits of engagement. Organizations whose employees report heightened levels of employee engagement also report lower levels of turnover (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Saks, 2006; Shuck, Shuck, & Reio, 2013), higher levels of job performance, task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors (Rich, Lepine, & Crawford, 2010), productivity (Christian, Garza, & Slaughter, 2011; Richman, 2006), discretionary effort, affective commitment, levels of positive psychological climate (Shuck, Reio, & Rocco, 2011), job satisfaction, continuance commitment (Saks, 2006), and higher quality customer service (Fleming & Asplund, 2007; Rurkkhum & Bartlett, 2012). As if this was not enough evidence of organizational benefit, heightened levels of employee engagement have been further associated with increased profitability, revenue generation, and strategic growth (Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2009).

In supporting research, Doloriert and Sambrook (2011) and Jones (2012) used ethnographic approaches to examine the experiences of engagement among employees and the relation to performance. Collectively, their findings suggested engagement as benefitting the organization through a series of work-related experiences—in the end, engaged employees performed at higher levels than those who were not engaged. Shuck, Rocco, and Albornoz (2011) paralleled these findings, providing voice for back of the house team members whose high levels of engagement benefitted the organization in the form of motivation to perform, productivity, and an increase in the functionality of work units. The evidence seems clear-cut—organizations benefit from an employee base who reports high levels of employee engagement.

Emerging evidence is equally strong that employees benefit from high levels of employee engagement. For example, employees who report higher levels of engagement also experience lower levels of stress and burnout (Maslach et al., 2001; Schaufeli, Taris, & Van Rhenen, 2008) and higher levels of accomplishment in their work (Shuck, Shuck, & Reio, 2013). They also perform better and engage in more organizational citizenship behaviors (Rich et al., 2010), creating a more positive experience for coworkers. Employees who are highly engaged have also reported experiencing work more positively than their colleagues who do not report high levels of engagement (Shuck & Reio, 2013). In addition, the benefits of engagement have been found to extend beyond the boundaries of work. For example, employees who were engaged at work also reported lower levels of depression, loneliness, and ostracism, as well as lower levels of stress and depersonalizing behaviors (Maslach et al., 2001; Shuck, Rocco, & Albornoz, 2011). Engaged employees report higher levels of overall well-being and responding positively to statements such “I am able to have fun” and “I am able to forgive myself for my failures” (Shuck & Reio, 2013). Research would indicate that being engaged at work has a positive spillover effect into life outside of work that can be operationalized as a heightened sense of well-being and greater overall life satisfaction (Schaufeli et al., 2008).

The question of who benefits from high levels of employee engagement is difficult. A benefit of any kind can be a source of power. As something, or someone, benefits from another entity, it can be framed as a benefit over, and, at the expense of, others (Bailey, 1998) placing the beneficiary of high levels of employee engagement in a position of privilege. It is possible, however, that neither party benefits over another, but rather alongside each other.

Workplaces that support the conditions for engagement have employees who enjoy a positive psychological state of work—which lead to higher levels of performance, greater productivity, and experience higher levels of well-being (Christian et al., 2011; Rich et al., 2010; Shuck & Reio, 2013; Shuck, Rocco, & Albornoz, 2011). Because employee engagement is a psychological state dependent on a supportive workplace culture, the outcomes of employee engagement (i.e., higher performance) can be defined as a privilege for the organization. We have defined privilege as an asset, either earned or unearned, that helps one person benefit over, and often at the expense of, others (Bailey, 1998). When an organization nurtures the conditions of engagement, employees are more likely to engage at higher levels and consequently perform better. As we have noted, the outcomes of higher levels of employee engagement are as diverse as knowledge creation and innovation to profitability. Undoubtedly, these assets become earned organizational assets that help an organization advance and benefit over, and at the expense of, competitors. The willingness to nurture the conditions for engagement creates an authentic experience of engagement for the employee.

In organizations where individual privilege and power obstruct the conditions of engagement by placing increasing demands on, and over, the employee who does not have access to resources (Callahan, 2011), engagement transforms into a privilege for those fortunate enough to have access to the resources they need. In this context, experiencing the psychological antecedental conditions of engagement occurs over and above, and often at the expense of, the less privileged and less powerful. We agree with Guest (2013) that when employee engagement is a privilege only a select few experience, it can be unhealthy, exploitive, and a normative overextension of work.

We maintain that an organization is uniquely positioned to influence systems of earned and unearned privilege that enable the conditions for employee engagement to be experienced. Accordingly, if organizations desire high levels of engagement, those who influence organizational structures and culture have an obligation to create the conditions of engagement by confronting manifestations of privilege such as unequal states of power, access, status, credibility, and normality (Rocco & West, 1998). It would behoove managers to focus more on how work is getting accomplished and experienced not just how much work is completed. From our perspective, organizations deserve the engagement that they get.

Insights and Implications for Research and Practice

Roughly, 70% of the American workforce remains either unengaged or actively disengaged according to the 2013 State of the American Workplace Report (Gallup, 2013). This is the exact same number Gallup reported in 1999—more than two decades ago. Similarly, static numbers have been reported globally from a variety of other consulting conglomerates. Perhaps the static state of employee engagement is not due to an epic failure to win the hearts and minds of employees—rather, stagnation is a function of the privileged condition of employee engagement embedded within the very structures of work or, as highlighted in our argument using the JD-R model, the privledged interplay between demands and resources. This has gone unnoticed and under-researched. We are struck that for some employees, the resources to engage remain present, but something or someone is actively taking or withholding access. Organizational struggle, imbalance, and disengagement are conceivably the norm, not the exception. Perhaps there are structural policies that perpetuate this norm or structural policies that reward the privileged while oppressing others. For some organizations, there may be powerful motivations for maintaining the status quo.

The major contribution of our work has been the exploration of employee engagement using the JD-R model through the critical lens(es) of privilege and power. We have highlighted how the workplace conditions of privilege and power work to influence the antecedental conditions of employee engagement, which in turn affect three connected, psychological states: (a) full engagement, (b) (dis)engagement with reservations, and (c) disengagement. We propose that disengagement and full engagement are opposite experiences—each a complete psychological state—with employees often navigating, negotiating, and oscillating carefully between the two extremes and even experiencing engagement and disengagement simultaneously for different reasons. We recognize that at times, there are certain aspects of work that are disengaging, while other aspects can be experienced as engaging. The notion of (dis)engagement is the recognition that there is a middle space where the experience of work is both engaging and disengaging, concurrently. We maintain that it is possible for employee engagement and employee disengagement to be experienced differently yet practically co-occur simultaneously. Furthermore, the interplay of meaningful work, organizational justice, and privilege as conditional experiences define the positionality of the employee within the context of their work. This manifests itself through positive and negative self-perceptions nested within the context and identification of an employee’s work identity (see Figure 1). Layered within our propositions is the idea that despite widespread desire for high levels of engagement within an organization, engagement may actually not be possible in all places and at all times in equal parts.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Meaningful work, privilege, and organizational justice: Pathways to (dis)engagement.

Unfortunately, for those outside positions of power, engagement is a state of privilege they are simply unable to experience. It is, after all, a mark of privilege for an employee to be in a position to even ask questions regarding their experience of safety, meaningfulness, and availability—not to mention reflect on their own personal levels of employee engagement.

We connect our work with Schaufeli’s (2012) call for developing those workplace environments that support the psychological state of engagement. This is particularly relevant within the growing body of literature focused on the JD-R model (Hakanen et al., 2008). As Schaufeli articulated, little work has examined those conditions that lead to the state of engagement in ways that can help organizations leverage the construct of engagement fully. We agree with Schaufeli and wonder how could we have gone so long exploring a construct inside such a silo as to not think about those conditions that lead to the very phenomenon being studied? Although we note there exists research looking at the relation between the environmental conditions of work and employee engagement (see, for example, Shuck, Shuck, & Reio, 2013), most research is on the relation between an employee and their leader/manager (Arakawa & Greenberg, 2007; Hoon Song, Kolb, Hee Lee, & Kyoung Kim, 2012; Luthans & Peterson, 2002), issues of compensation and recognition (Fairle, 2011; Hackman & Oldham, 1976; Kahn, 2010), and appropriate levels of challenge within one’s job role (Brown & Leigh, 1996)—yet, not one study has looked at how privilege and power can influence the psychological state of employee engagement. In other contexts, disengagement may be an artifact of dysfunctional leadership (Rose, Shuck, Twyford, & Bergman, 2015).

Issues of privilege and power are admittedly not always obvious and, often, remain taboo topics within the organization. At a minimum, privilege and power inherently exist within organizational hierarchies; at times, the presence of a privileged groups’ power is palpable—employees, however, fail to explore this dynamic because those in positions of privilege rarely recognize, let alone discuss, their powerful advantageous state and will often argue for maintaining the status quo. Furthermore, those without an advantaged position know better than to bring it up or risk facing the consequences. When complete disregard of the issues associated with privilege and power occurs, voices fall silent, making engagement an unlikely outcome (Kahn, 2010). Examining the effects of privilege and power within organizational structures should be expanded to include the psychological and emotional experiences of employees at work—how encountering unjust structures as an outsider is likely to effect performance. Understanding how employees navigate issues of meaningfulness, safety, and the availability of resources provides yet another window into the experiences of both privilege and power within organizational settings.

We hope that our exploration of engagement as a privileged state could extend prior and future research by considering the ways in which employee engagement may be distributed unevenly in organizations—intentionally or unintentionally. We recommend research be undertaken around the four essential questions explored in this manuscript as well as the propositions we have offered. Such research could easily take place across an assortment of methodological choices. However, we offer that initial explorations of these questions may benefit from fully mixed-method approaches with qualitative inquiry (possibly from interviews or open-ended surveys) providing a strong basis for the formation of a well-positioned quantitative piece. One way to advance research on employee engagement in the context of privilege would be to gather employees’ and managers’ perceptions of the experience of engagement, its value, and the characteristics of an engaged employee. Perceptions could then be used to help inform variable selection and/or testing procedures.

Finally, we would encourage those in positions of influence to reflect on and explore the unique conditions of employee engagement within their workplace. Privilege and power can be invisible to those who possess them. For engagement to be fully leveraged as an outcome, employees within an organization—at all levels—must first define the discourse of employee engagement for that time, place, and context. This is too often a lost opportunity for managers to understand employee engagement as a positive psychological state from a perspective not connected with an outcome, but rather a very real, authentic, and experienced phenomenon tied to experiences of privilege and power. Because managers are an influential force in the development of engagement, they should examine their own experiences of power, both positive and negative (Callahan, 2011). The resulting awareness of employee engagement as a privilege could then guide managers as well as human resource professionals to consider non-traditional ways to engage employees not influenced through traditional intervention strategies due to their positionality. For engagement to be authentic at high levels, all employees, especially those employees who enjoy the advantages of privilege, must become more aware of the potential for employee engagement to be experienced as a privilege through the manifestation of power. Once acknowledged, steps can be taken to balance structures and distribute resources fairly. Engaging in such reflection can be uncomfortable; yet, the positive benefit of confronting issues of privilege and power can be equitable experiences of employee engagement for everyone.