An investigation into the relationship between Perceived Leadership Behaviour and Employee Engagement

Kahn (1990) defined employee engagement at work as the process of organisational members tying their identities to their job responsibilities, as reported in the Academy of Management Journal. Schaufeli et al., (2006) considers leadership as one of the important variables influencing employee engagement. A strong leader may motivate their subordinates to achieve the company's objectives (Batista-Taran et al., 2009a). According to House and Dessler (1974), leadership is centred on how followers view their leader concerning three key areas of perceived leadership behaviour: initiating structure, leadership consideration, and leadership participation. One key educational leadership tactic is to maintain a good rapport between professors and the institution's head. Teachers' perceptions of the leadership styles employed by the Head of the Institution may directly impact their work and, in the long run, their involvement and ability to enhance student achievement. Employers may motivate their employees to perform at the highest level by rewarding and acknowledging their achievements. Teaching excellence needs to be acknowledged and rewarded if teaching quality is to be maintained and improved (Gupta et al., 2015). This study primarily aims to examine the relationship between employee job engagement and perceived leadership behaviour (PLB), as defined by Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, and Bakker (2002), and House and Dessler (1974), respectively. Using a standardised questionnaire, 514 faculty members from higher education institutions in Mumbai were surveyed to collect primary data, which was then analysed using SPSS version 26. The data were examined through multiple regression analysis, hierarchical regression, and Pearson correlation analysis. The results show that initiating structure (B=0.414, p=0.00) is a significant predictor of employee engagement.