Engaging leadership and work engagement as moderated by “diuwongke”: an Indonesian study

Abstract

The current study investigates engaging leadership and work engagement among Indonesian employees and the role of diuwongke (Javanese-Indonesian term for employees’ perception of their leaders treating them with dignity and respect at work) plays in this relationship. We also included transformational leadership in order to show the added value of the novel concept of engaging leadership. Data were collected from 607 Indonesian employees working in one of the largest Indonesian state-owned companies in an agricultural industry. Both engaging and transformational leadership were positively related to work engagement and both types of leadership are similarly associated with work engagement without any of them has stronger association with work engagement than the other. Furthermore, the engaging leadership-work engagement relationship was moderated by diuwongke. That is, the engaging leadership-work engagement relationship was stronger at lower levels of diuwongke. In contrast, no moderating effect of diuwongke was observed for transformational leadership.