Employee engagement also differs from OCB, as engagement is concerned with the passion for one's role, while OCB is concerned with extra-role and voluntary behaviour. .
The Context for Analyzing the Employee Engagement Phenomenon .
The employment relationship is the arena in which employee engagement will either be fostered of negated. The employment relationship has been through much iteration through the years with the employment level as well as union presence and strength exerting an influence over the relationship. Harbison and Myers (1959) discuss the shift among employers in the early nineteenth century where employers were beginning to come to the realization that in order to create satisfactory conditions for capital accumulation they would need to utilize subordination, loyalty ( a characteristic of the unitary perspective) and increased productivity (combating ˜Saint Monday') among workers. Pollard (1968) proposed three employer methods for managing and maintaining discipline among the workforce, (1) the proverbial stick (pp. 218-221),(2) the proverbial carrot (pp. 221-225), and (3) the attempt to create a new ethos of work order and discipline. These three methods were along a spectrum, the carrot at one end and the stick at the other. It was up to employers (and more so management) as to how they would utilize each element. .
Fredric Taylor was the author of a plethora of ideas which culminated in the concept of scientific management. Under Taylorism, organisations had to have a formalized structure and reporting line; tasks should be studied and redesigned to enable them to be separated into the most efficient workable elements. These tasks were carried out by the individual, as Taylor had a preference for designing the task around the isolated individual as opposed to the team, as he thought that ˜herding' workers into a gang resulted in each individual becoming less efficient.