CEO 's Influence on Top Management Team's Employee Engagement: A Qualitative Study

ABSTRACT This study explores how chief executives officers (CEOs) influence top management team (TMT) members' employee engagement. Using a constructivist phenomenological approach, the research examines ways CEOs shape TMT's employee engagement. Fifteen TMT professionals participated in semi‐structured interviews, and the data were analyzed through a three‐step coding process: open coding to identify key concepts, axial coding to refine categories by examining relationships, and thematic coding to organize the data into central themes. Findings revealed that CEOs influence TMT's employee engagement by addressing needs at three levels: individual, team, and organizational. Each level of needs aligns with specific CEO leadership styles and essential qualities required to meet these needs. These attributes were shown to enhance TMT's employee engagement, providing practical and future research implications for HRD.