Employee Engagement and Leader Member Exchange: A Comparative Study of For-Profit University Staff Members

Abstract

The primary purpose of this quantitative non-experimental comparative study was to examine whether differences exist in the employee engagement of higher education employees based upon the perceived quality of employees’ leader-member exchange (LMX) interactions with their supervisors. The secondary purpose of this study was to identify if demographic variables moderated the effect on employee engagement together with LMX. This study was conducted at a for-profit higher education institution in the southwest United States. 458 online surveys were collected from frontline college staff members. Analysis of variance was used to discern differences in engagement levels between groups of employees based on their perceived LMX quality, and on demographic variables. The results showed that in all instances, LMX quality significantly affected the engagement levels of employees. On average, higher levels of LMX quality between leaders and employees corresponded with higher levels of engagement in those employees. Additional effects on employee engagement levels related to employee gender differences and employee education level differences. The results of this study may help to grow the field of knowledge on employee engagement based on perceived LMX quality in a population that had not yet been researched; for-profit higher education staff members. Implications and recommendation for leaders and for future research are also presented.