Interpersonal leadership and job engagement: testing the mediating role of deep acting, initiative climate and learning goal orientation

Purpose Though employee job engagement has been one of the few most proliferated organizational concepts during the last two decades, evidence on how to achieve an engaged workforce is unclear. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the engagement literature by investigating the role of interpersonal leadership in developing job engagement through the relative importance of deep acting emotional labor skills, initiative climate and learning goal orientation as intervening mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach This study employed an online self-reported survey in data collection, gathering input from 438 frontline service employees in Malaysia. The data was then tested using the structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate the proposed parallel mediation model of the study. Findings The findings demonstrated that deep acting emotional labor skills, initiative climate and learning goal orientation were significantly effective in intervening mechanisms through which interpersonal leadership impacted job engagement. Practical implications This study offers insightful evidence that can be utilized by service organizations to improve employees' job engagement. The evidence derived from this study suggests that interpersonal leadership is a valuable organizational resource that can help carve pathways through which the objective of employee job engagement can be achieved. Therefore, while crafting organizational interventions for employee job engagement, service managers should address the findings of this study. Originality/value Despite the evidence presented in previous literature on the notable relationship between leadership and engagement, there is yet to be an apt understanding of the impact of new leadership perspectives and the intervening mechanisms in predicting job engagement. This study attempts to fill the research gap.