Impact of Talent Management on Work Engagement: Mediating Role of Affective Commitment

Abstract

With the ever-growing competitive atmosphere in the sphere of higher education, universities face an escalating pressure to effectively manage academic talent in order to improve faculty engagement and performance of the institution. As a strategic human resource practice, talent management has had a positive effect on positive employee attitudes and behaviors but limited empirical studies indicate the mechanism underlying such effects of talent management especially in the context of developing countries. Thus, this research explores the effects of the talent management on the work engagement and also explores the mediating effect of affective commitment on teachers in private universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan. Cross-sectional research design used was quantitative whereby a sample of 483 faculty members were used to collect data through structured and validated questionnaires. The measures of talent management were assessed on an adapted scale, which was developed on the basis of the existing frameworks; affective commitment was measured on the basis of the Affective commitment scale created by Meyer and Allen, and finally work engagement was assessed on the basis of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). The SPSS and AMOS were utilized to analyze the data with the help of reliability analysis, correlation, regression, and mediation analysis with bootstrapping methods. The results found out that talent management has a strong and positive influence on work engagement. More so, talent management was also discovered to contribute significantly to affective commitment which has a positive effect on work engagement. The mediation analysis established the fact that affective commitment mediates the correlation between talent management and work engagement. Such findings underscore the need to generate emotional connection by applying a proper talent management strategy. The research has a theoretical contribution, as it expands the scope of the theories of social exchange and commitment in the context of higher education and provides practical implications to the university leaders, who are interested in enhancing the involvement, retention, and performance of the faculty staff due to strategic talent management programs.