Managers’ and Employees’ Perception of Social Climate: Implications for Employee Engagement

Research has pointed to the importance of social climate in fostering employee engagement at work. However, employees’ and managers’ perceptions can differ and these may have unique implications for employee engagment. We address this issue by developing and testing a mediation model in which perceived social climate augments individual engagement through the development of organizational identification and growth satisfaction. We tested this model using data collected at two points in time from both managers and employees. The findings indicate that managers' perceptions of social climate were serially related to organizational identification and growth satisfaction, which in turn fostered engagement at work. The findings also indicate no significant relationships between employees' collective perception of social climate and employee engagement. However, we found direct and indirect relationships between the deviation of individual from collective perceptions of social climate and employee engagement. These findings shed light not only on the mechanisms by which social climate helps foster employee engagement, but also on the differentiation between manager and employee perceptions of social climate and how they shape employee attitudes and behavior.