The Role of Psychological Empowerment on Work Engagement: The Development of Conceptual Framework

In recent years, there has been growing interest in exploring work-related behaviours that go beyond the core tasks for which is voluntary effort of the employee towards the organization and eventually improves the effectiveness of the organization. Despite the importance of psychological empowerment and work engagement, researches that investigate these concepts in Higher educational sector are very limited. The main purpose of this conceptual paper is to examine the relationship between psychological empowerment and work engagement in the context of Malaysian Higher educational sector. The study intends to review the existing literature and eventually develop the conceptual framework. Consider the factors that positively influence empowerment would be useful to identify gaps in knowledge of work engagement and the aspects of academics' work engagement that requires more investigation are described. This paper serves as introduction to clarify the relationship between psychological empowerment and work engagement and to develop a conceptual framework to explain the relationship between the variables of the study.