The Mediating Effect of Career Satisfaction in the Predictive Relation between Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment of Teachers in Ghana

The study was conducted to assess the effect of employee engagement on the commitment of teachers in the Cape Coast Metropolis of Ghana and also examined the mediating role of career satisfaction in the employee engagement and organizational commitment relationship. The estimated target population were 530 teachers. Explanatory survey design was used and 228 senior high school teachers were systematically selected and surveyed accordingly. Internal consistency of .863 was obtained for the instrument. Data processing and analysis were done through SPSS and Smart PLS (reflective model) to assess the effect of employee engagement on the four dimensions of organizational commitment (affective, continuance, normative and value commitment). The quality criteria were met by the measurement model. It was discovered that employee engagement positively influences all the four dimensions of organizational commitment. Likewise, employee engagement positively influences career satisfaction. Also, career satisfaction positively influences all the four dimensions of organizational commitment. Additionally, career satisfaction mediated the predictive relation between employee engagement and all the dimensions of organizational commitment except value commitment. It was suggested that the Government of Ghana, Ghana Education Service and headteachers in public senior high schools, must ensure that teachers are actively engaged at work based on scientifically-driven job designs and resource allocation. Also, all relevant stakeholders in the educational sector must constantly engage teachers on all labour issues in order to avoid unnecessary strike actions. Furthermore, there is the need for establishment of policies and systems that will reinforce the career needs of teachers to achieve careers satisfaction devoid of favoritism.


Introduction
In today's dynamic economic and business environment, employee engagement is seen as one of the effective means to avoid labour unrest in any organizational environment or country. Therefore, various governments and organizations in their quest to limit labour disputes see employee engagement as an appropriate means to meet the demands of agitating workers so as to ensure peaceful organizational environment for governmental and business activities to take place. In the public sector, one of the powerful tools use to safeguard and meet the interest of parties whenever disagreement arises is the use of employee engagement. Most teachers in Ghana are employed under Ghana Education Service and this is a prominent class of public sector institution. Berisha (2017) asserted that public sector is made up of government and publicly controlled or funded agencies and other bodies that deliver public services.
Based on the relationship that exist between the variables, the study will examine the effect of employee engagement on organizational commitment among public senior high school teachers in Cape Coast Metropolis, Ghana. Also the research seeks to assess the mediating effect of career satisfaction in the predictive relationships between employee engagement and organizational commitment.

Literature Review Concept of Employee Engagement
Traces to origin of the term engagement is not obvious (Buckingham & Coffman, 1999), however it is believed the first scholar to conceptualise the term employee engagement is Kahn in 1990(Akhund & Shamsul, 2017 and the first organization to use the term is the Gallup organization in 1990 (Buckingham & Coffman, 1999). According to Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) the expression employee engagement and worker engagement are used interchangeably. They further stated that there are some ways to conceptualized engagement. First of all, engagement has three basic scopes namely, cognitive -that has to do with the trust and support for the values goals and values of the institution, affective -that concerns the pride of attachment to an institution and the sense of belongingness, behavioural-that deals with the willingness and extra intention to be in an organization. Also, employee engagement is an affective state. And lastly, employee engagement is a psychological state. Kahn (1990) emphasized that engagement "is connecting organizational members to their various duties: such that workers express themselves cognitively, physically, emotionally and mentally during the performance of their roles". The physical aspect deals with physical efforts to reach goals, the cognitive aspect has to do with the notion employees have about their work and the organization and the emotional aspect relates to the feelings and attitudes an employee shows towards the firm (Akhund & Shamsul, 2017). Schmidt and Harter (1993) opined that employee engagement has to do with the workers commitment to, participation in their work as well as their satisfaction (as cited in Akhund & Shamsul, 2017). Thus, employees who are engaged puts in extra effort in performing their work because they feel they are part of it.
As emphasized by Rothbard (2001) attention and absorption are the two basic dimensional motivational concepts of engagement. Attention is the mental readiness and the time spent to think about a particular role whilst absorption deal with the degree an employee focuses on his role. Maslach et al., (2001) came out with a slightly differing method that considers engagement as a positive contrast of burnout. However, another school of thought regards engagement as a concept that has no relation to burnout. Rather, when an employee is engaged there is fulfillment, vigor and dedication which replace the burnout dimensions namely; cynicism, exhaustion and ineffectiveness (Schaufeli & Taris, 2005). Therefore, engagement has to do with vigor (behavioral energy), dedication (emotion) and absorption (cognitive) connected to the role performance workers (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).

The Need for Employee Engagement at the Workplace
There is the need for employee engagement at the workplace. Vance (2006) argue that "the higher a worker's level of engagement, the more likely he will go extra mile to excel on his job. Obviously, engagement and commitment can lead to valuable organizational outcomes". Robertson-smith and Marwick (2009) stressed that when organizations have a culture that engages their workers, it would lead to increase in performance. Vance (2006) asserted that engagement of employees is a vital force for business successes. Thus, it gives competitive edge over rivals, enhances productivity, lessens employee turnover and causes customer satisfaction to increase. Markos and Sridevi (2010) opined that employees who are not engaged are likely to waste their effort, will not demonstrate commitment to their work and will also not stick around for things to get better in their workplace. Further, Branham 2005 (as cited in Heikkeri, 2010) stated when workers are disengaged it affect their morale negatively, negatively affect their revenues and such workers often cause troubles and complain a lot. Gallup (2006) also found that disengaged employees negatively influence others as they create confusions within teams and destroys the successes of engaged colleagues. They may as well have problems with engaged workers (Heikkeri, 2010). Vajda and SpiritHeart (2008) found that disengaged workers speak badly to customers which negatively affect customers' satisfaction and can lead to loss of business customers. Employees who are not engaged are usually more prone to anxieties and depression, unhappy about their own lives and are more likely to have accidents at the workplace (Robinson & Gahagan, 2010).

Strategies to Engage Employees at Workplace
Forstenlechner and Lettice (2008) were of the opinion that making employees feel important is another way to engage them. Kahn (1990) commented that respect and care, showing passion for success and growth, increasing employee morale, giving organizational assistance and having a transparent strategy and set goals are the real factors for employee engagement. A two-way communication channel is a means to enhance employee engagement (Macey & Schneider, 2008). Whelan 2014 (as cited in Sant, 2016) believed employees can be engaged by three different ways which include: informative engagement-which is one-way information; reciprocal engagementwhich deals with two way of information, and dynamic engagement-which deals with actual time and efficient way of using information. Reilly 2014 (as cited in Sant, 2016) opined that creating an engagement measurement tool and having a good leadership philosophy would increase employee engagement. Robinson (2006) asserted that engagement of employees can be achieved by building a strong organizational setting. According to Macleod and Clarke (2009) (as cited in Sant, 2016) certain tactics are to be in place to engage employees. They suggested that some of the strategies include: honesty and integrity, effective and strong commitment to adversity, identifying solutions and setting achievable goals. Mowday et al., (1979) expressed organizational commitment as "a strong wish to maintain membership in a certain organization; a desire to apply maximum effort on behalf of the company; and a convinced belief in, and approval of the goals and values of that particular organization" (as cited in Akhund & Shamsul, 2017). Meyer and Allen (1991) defined organizational commitment as "a mental and emotional state that embodies worker's association with the company, and this has consequences for their decision to remain as members in such organizations. It involves mental and emotional attachment to a company by the perspective of organizational behavior and industrial and organizational psychology (Akhund & Shamsul, 2017). Also, Narteh (2012) defined commitment as "a state of workers attachment to their companies and this encompasses their readiness to adopt the goal and values of the organization and accept it". Thus, it is a bond employees experience with their organization (Akhund & Shamsul, 2017). There are many scales and models developed to measure employee commitment and according to Allen and Meyer (1990); Jaros et al., (1993) there are basically affective commitment, continuance commitment, normative commitment and value commitment. Weng et al., (2010) defined affective commitment as the emotional relationship that connects an individual to his company, which in turn encourages him to remain in the company. Meyer et al., (2004) believe strongly that when an individual is emotionally involved in a company, then it implies that he believes and shares in the values, goals and interest of that particular company, aims to stay in the company and also work hard to achieve the goals of the organization. According to Kinnie et al., (2005) affective commitment is associated with four antecedents': (i) individual characteristics (ii) operational characteristics (iii) work experiences (iv) job-related characteristics. Individual characteristics deals with personality, values orientation, education, age among others. On the other hand, operational factors involve ensuring that workers job duties and goals are well defined as well as regard for employee's job performances. Job-related characteristics clearly include skills and knowledge, physical and intellectual demands as well as conditions of work that can be identified, defined and evaluated while work experiences included the proficiency gained from the work. Meyer and Smith (2000) who pointed out that workers with continuance commitment tend to engage in a cost-benefit analysis of leaving the company. Scarcity of employment opportunities causes employees to remain with their organization (Hitt, Miller & Colella, 2006). Legge (2005) asserts that continuance commitment has two elements namely (a) sunk cost refers to loss of salary and benefits, loss of social relationships and skills and decrease in value parting with the organization (b) lack of attractive opportunities. Continuance commitment is all about the negative implication an employee would suffer for parting with an organization (Taduvana, 2017). Allen and Meyer (1990) defined normative commitment as workers feeling of duty to stay with the company. Wolowska (2014) stressed that these workers feel that it is the moral duty to remain in the company. In the view of Dordevic (2004) when it comes to normative commitment, organizational members believe they need to maintain membership with the company since they believe it is just and ethically right to do that. In addition, McDonald and Makin (2000) revealed that the root of normative commitment is the social exchange theory. Thus, an organizational member who has received some form of benefit from the organization may feel obliged to remain in the company since he thinks he needs to reciprocate such benefit he has derived from the organization.

Concept of Organizational Commitment
According to Ritzer and Trice (1969) the term value commitment refers to the state of mind that arises as a result of the existence of individually distinct rewards linked to an explicit position in which the individual desires or finds himself. These rewards that are subjectively defined may be the lack of certain cost. Brehm and Cohen (1962) emphasized the need to study value commitment. Various Scholars in an attempt to find the value commitment level of individuals ask the question: "what attracts an individual to a position?" Based on these divergent opinions, Mayer and Schoorman (1998) proposed that value commitment is individual's readiness to exert an effort. It is also important to emphasize that value commitment has been the subject of many different research under diverse labels: "identification with position" (Stone, 1990), "attachment" (Golf-man, 1990).

Concept of Career Satisfaction
Career satisfaction is a person's emotional state that occurs as a result of their desires, interest, goals, abilities and employment. It is therefore based on positive feelings concerning one's work involvements (Fellers, 1974). Mariani (2012) highlighted the benefits of career satisfaction and said that it can contribute to retaining workforce and also provide future leaders with opportunities. Through supportive culture, workers career satisfaction can be enhanced which in tend will reduce turnover intention because such workers feel motivated and committed (Joo & Park, 2010). Workers also compare their career achievement with that of the coworkers and this has the likelihood to either increase or decrease their level of commitment, or turnover intention contingent upon how they value the career successes of their colleagues (Eddleston, 2009).

Social Exchange Theory
The social exchange theory is an important theory which best explains the behavior of workers in the organizational setting. Homans (1961) promulgated the theory. The researcher defined social exchange theory "as the exchange of tangible or intangible item which is more or less satisfying or costly between two or more parties". Researchers like Bambacas and Kulik (2013) have utilized the social exchange theory as an important theory behind the relationship between workers and their employers. Similarly, Blau (1964) opined that the social exchange theory "involves undetermined duties in which certain favours have establish future duties exist and the nature of the future return cannot be negotiated but must be decided by the person who makes it". Aselage and Eisenberger (2003) asserted that, what is exchanged can either be tangible or material (like financial rewards) or intangible (like care, respect, or loyalty). Correspondingly, Cropanzano and Mitchell (2005) postulates that the theory offers a chain of relations which are dependent on the other party's interaction process which subsequently generates some level of commitment. Homans (1961) made some important assumptions about human nature with respect to the social exchange theory. These critical assumptions include: i) human's look for reward and evades punishment, ii) the rational nature of human beings, iii) the criterions that human utilize to assess costs and rewards change over time form one person to another. Zhang and Jia (2010) asserted that social exchange theory is based on the premise of norm of reciprocity. The transactions begins when one party provides benefit for another. Coyle-Shapiro and Shore (2007) indicated that the chain of exchanges is created when the recipient of a benefit return the favor than him or her, hence, establishing common feelings between the concerned parties. Asalage and Eisenberger (2003) believes that the exchange between parties becomes heightened when both parties to the exchange have resources treasured by one another. This was clearly captured by Eisenberger et al., (2001) who stated that, in a situation where organizational members seek fair and beneficial treatment, the organization or employers, on the other hand, may seek for some level of obligation and trustworthiness form workers.
The question of who starts the exchange process is one that has attracted attention in recent times. But several researchers have stated that it behooves the organization to start with the exchange process (Wayne, Shore, & Liden, 1997;Eisenberger, et al., 2001;Kaur & Bedi, 2017). By implication, it behooves the organization take the 'first step' or initiative when it comes to the exchange process. Zhang and Jia (2010) hypothesize that benefits or favorable outcomes (training, rewards, participation in decision making, etc.) provided to organizational members by their employers have the tendency to generate high exchange relationships which later becomes the chronological order of the exchange process.
Therefore, based on the social relationship that exists between employers and employees, employees who are engaged in their work are likely to return this favour in the form of organizational commitment because they have a positive feeling that their career satisfaction is being improved as a result of employee engagement. Based on this point of view, we expect career satisfaction as a mechanism to explain how employee engagement elicits employees' commitment in the organization.

Conceptual Framework
This study suggests that based on the logic underlying the social exchange theory and based on the trends of the empirical review in relation to the variables considered in this research, employee engagement positively impact organizational commitment. Also, career satisfaction will play a mediation role in the relationship between employee engagement and organizational commitment.

Hypotheses
The following hypotheses were tested with appropriate statistical tools and techniques based on the notion behind the conduct of the study and the empirical evidence adduced from the literature. H1: Employee engagement positively influences all dimensions of organizational commitment (i.e., affective, continuance, normative, and value commitment). H2: Employee engagement positively influences career satisfaction. H3: Career satisfaction positively influences organizational commitment. H4: Career satisfaction positively mediates the relationship between employee engagement and the four dimensions of organizational commitment.

Methodology
Explanatory survey design was use for the study because it sought to measure the extent and nature of cause-and-effect relationships. According to Creswell (2014) the emphasis of explanatory studies is to analyze defined problem so as to be able to clarify the nature of the relationships. Explanatory studies are characterized by research hypotheses that stipulate the nature and direction of the relationships between or among variables being studied (Spirtes et al., 2000). The approach is deductive in nature because inferences from tests of statistical hypotheses lead to general inferences about characteristics of the population. The population comprised of public senior high school teachers in the Cape Coast Metropolis of Ghana and excluded teachers working or employed in the private schools in the Metropolis. The target population consisted of 530 teachers and 228 teachers were systematically selected to participate in the study. Through the administration of structured questionnaires primary data was collected for the study. A 7-point Likert scale was used for all the variables in the study and it is rated from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
The employee engagement scale was adapted from Schaufeli and Bakker (2003). This construct had seventeen self-assessment items regarding employee engagement. The reliability of employee engagement is .903.
Organizational commitment construct was adapted from Meyer and Allen's (1991) scale, comprised of four dimensions of commitment: affective (3 items), continuance (8 items), normative (3 items), and value (2 items). Reliability value of .794 was recorded for composite value of organizational commitment.
Career satisfaction construct was adapted from Spurk, Abele, and Volmer (2015), comprised of five items. Reliability value of .893 was recorded for career satisfaction.
Data processing and analysis were done through the use of SPSS and Smart PLS 3, based upon reflective model specification within the structural model. The assessment of reflective outer model involves the examining of reliabilities of the individual items (indicator reliability), reliability of latent variables, and multiple aspects of validity, including construct, convergent, and discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2016). These applications have been recommended for data processing and data analysis in social science studies since they have the required statistical tests tools for such purposes (Ringle, Wende & Becker, 2015).

Analysis Demographic Information
The results of demographic information are shown in Table 1. Males represented 65.4% of the sample and 55.3% of the participants were married. All of the participants had graduated from university while 26.8% had attended graduate school. Most participants (64.9%) had worked as a teacher for at least five years.

Reliability and Validity
The correlation of variables in the conceptual model were all positive and significant (p < .01) and ranged between .296 and .567, supporting hypothesized relationships.
As shown in Table 2, the reliabilities of the study's measures were all above .70. Additionally, the composite reliabilities (CR), which are considered a preferred alternative to Cronbach alpha reliabilities to test convergent validity in reflective models, were all above the .70 threshold, while average variance extracted (AVE) coefficients were all above the .50 threshold, suggesting adequate convergent validity. Discriminant validity was measured with the Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT). The HTMT coefficient of all measures was below the threshold of .90, supporting the discriminat validity of the measures (Garson, 2016;Henseler et al., 2012).

Hypotheses Analysis
SMART PLS was used to analyze hypothesized path relationships in this paper. This application was selected as it is recognized as a tool for estimating complex models in predictive studies (Hair et al., 2016). It also helps to avoid problems associated with small sample size as it efficiently and effectively handles complex models that have many variables (Henseler et al., 2012). Likewise, the approach enables researchers to use cause-effect relationship models to predict a specific construct. Figure 2 shows that, all of the predicted paths from employee engagement to organizational commitment dimensions and through career satisfaction as a mediator were positive and significant, except for paths to value commitment, which was not significant. These results supported our hypothesized relationships, except for value commitment.
Examining the explained variance (R 2 ) of career satisfaction and organizational commitment dimensions revealed that employee engagement accounted for 27.5% of the explained variance in career satisfaction among teachers and jointly with career satisfaction accounted 20.5%, 20.8%, 14.5%, and 19.1% of the explained variance in affective, continuance, normative, and value commitment, respectively. These results lend support for H1, H2, and H3.

Mediation Analysis
As shown in Table 3 Hypothesis 4 proposed that career satisfaction would mediate the effects of employee engagement on organizational commitment dimensions. Through SMART PLS, the indirect effects of employee engagement on commitment dimensions through career satisfaction were calculated, which indicated that employee engagement had a positive, significant indirect effect on all dimensions, except value commitment, ranging from a beta coefficient of .096 to .157. These indirect effects compared to positive, significant direct effects on all commitment dimensions, ranging from .297 to .445. Thus, the results lend support to H4, except for the proposed effects on value commitment.

Discussion and Implications
The outcome of this study contributes to the extant knowledge in the area of employee engagement, career satisfaction and organizational commitment especially in the developing country context. This is the first distinctive study that has examined career satisfaction as a mediating variable in such a predictive relationship between employee engagement and organizational commitment. This has therefore provided empirical justification for stakeholders in the educational sector to consider career satisfaction as an important variable in order to achieve greater organizational commitment of teachers.
The study has theoretical implications. The study provides strong support for the social exchange theory in that, when teachers are engaged effectively with regards to matters affecting their work, they increase their level of commitment towards the organization or institution in which they work. As both parties interaction process increases it consequently generates some level of commitment which improves the employment relationship. Also, from the perspective of social exchange theory, it is conclusively clear that by providing avenues where workers could be engaged, Ghana Education Service could reap some of the benefits associated with having committed workforce at work such as enhanced productivity, proper time management, employee satisfaction and so forth.
The study also has several practical implications. The Government of Ghana, Ghana Education Service and headteachers in public senior high schools must ensure that teachers are actively engaged at work based on scientifically-driven job designs and redesign, and resource allocation. All relevant stakeholders such as the National Labour Commission (NLC) and Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) must constantly engage teachers on all labour issues or disagreements in order to avoid unnecessary strike actions which has the potential to negatively affect the commitment level of teachers in their quest to perform their duties. Teachers should also take advantage of all internal engagement mechanisms in their institutions in order to build trust, confidence and proper structures which will support their careers satisfaction and commitment in their field of work. Similarly, the predictive capacity of the predictors (employee engagement and career satisfaction) to causing positive variance in organizational commitment shows that employers need to be concerned with providing enabling environment through proper human resource practices and systems that improve employee engagement and career satisfaction among workers (teachers).
This study has policy implications. There is the need for the formulation of policies and systems that ensure that teachers are actively engaged in their work. Also, such policies should incorporate proper structures that provides effective career development options for teachers to take advantage of. These policies could be spearheaded by the appropriate stakeholders such as the Ghana Education Service, Labour Commission, Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), etc. Moreover, there should be fairness in the proper administration of these systems and policies in order to avoid favoritism which has the tendency to lead to chaos and labour unrest. Furthermore, since teachers are very key in delivering quality education in Ghana, there is the need for policy that ensures that teachers in public senior high schools are engaged through periodic field research in order to be able to identify their needs, challenges and how to improve their satisfaction, commitment and performance. Such research could be sponsored by the Ministry of Education or other key stakeholders in the educational sector. Likewise, teachers should take advantage of career developmental policies introduced by their respective institutions so as to promote their level of career satisfaction and level of commitment.

Limitations
The study limited its scope to only public senior high school teachers in the Cape Coast Metropolis and therefore the results could not be generalized to all schools in Ghana. Also, the study excluded teachers employed in private senior high schools in the Metropolis. Besides, since structured questionnaire was used to collect the primary data for analysis, it was impossible to allow individual views of the respondents to be captured for analysis.

Suggestions for Further Studies
Further studies should be conducted across different public senior high schools across the various regions in Ghana. Future researchers should increase the scope of the study to include both private and public senior schools so as to increase the sample size.