Engaging leader – Engaged employees? A cross-lagged study on employee engagement

The goal of this study is to provide a cross-lagged examination of the relationships between engaging leadership, job resources and employee work engagement. We propose a mediation model and we postulate that engaging leadership can increase perceptions of three specific job resources (i.e. autonomy, support from colleagues and opportunities for learning and development) which theoretically correspond to the three facets of engaging leadership (i.e., inspiring, connecting and strengthening, respectively). Subsequently, in keeping with the extant body of Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) research, we link job resources to employee work engagement. Our hypotheses were tested on data collected at two time-points – T1 (N = 759) and T2 (N = 273) –from employees working for a hotel chain in the Netherlands. In line with our expectations, engaging leadership showed a significant cross-lagged relationship with autonomy and support from colleagues, but did not predict learning opportunities and work engagement across time. While we formulated specific hypotheses, we also tested reversed causation relationships. We found no direct effect from engaging leadership on employee work engagement, however, the reversed effect was significant; employee perceptions of engaging leadership were shaped by their own engagement experiences. Importantly, engaged employees at T1 reported more job resources at T2. By providing a cross-lagged examination of our model, we showed that engaging leaders as well as employees’ positive affective state of being engaged, are essential to shaping a resourceful work context. A comprehensive view on the triggers and outcomes of work engagement and engaging leadership is needed, as the traditional unidirectional cause-effect rationale fails to explain how these concepts relate to one another and to employee experiences of job resources.     

“Dirty” research in “real” places: A practitioner's guide to program evaluation in the human services

Traditional models of evaluation have often fallen short of their potential for improving services to clients. Using illustrations from a study of client turnover in group homes for troubled youth, this paper discusses practical ways to increase the impact of program evaluation in human service settings.     

Political and organizational preconditions for application of the standards for educational evaluation : The standards for educational evaluation seen in a wider perspective in relation to policy making and organization

Some of the standards for educational evaluation refer to the political and organizational context in which evaluation projects take place: “conflicting interests,” “political viability,” and various standards which have to do with the identification of the evaluation object and of the most important groups and persons involved. Whereas the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation seems to focus on the level of the individual research project, the present authors feel that in addition, contextual influences on evaluations should be analyzed at a higher level of aggregation. Political and organizational factors at the macro level can even be seen as preconditions for the application of the standards at project level. This point of view is illustrated by referring to a study of the functioning of evaluation research within some innovative programs in Dutch education.