From Resources to Engagement: The Central Role of Employee Well-Being in Indonesian Higher Education
Employee engagement is increasingly understood as an outcome of how work-related resources are translated into sustainable psychological states, particularly employee well-being, in higher education contexts. This study examines how work-life balance, innovative work behavior, and workplace spirituality shape employee engagement among university lecturers in Indonesia, with employee well-being positioned as a central mediating mechanism and servant leadership examined as a contextual moderator. Using survey data from 275 lecturers and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the findings reveal that employee wellbeing is the most proximal and powerful predictor of engagement. Work-life balance and workplace spirituality primarily influence engagement indirectly through well-being, while innovative work behavior influences engagement mainly through a direct pathway, with no significant indirect effect via well-being. These results indicate that work-related resources are not translated into engagement uniformly: relational, value-based resources operate largely through well-being, recovery-oriented resources operate almost exclusively through well-being, and task-oriented behavior operates largely through direct pathways. The interaction between servant leadership and well-being on engagement was positive but did not reach conventional significance (p = 0.075) and had a negligible effect size; this pattern is reported as exploratory rather than confirmed. Overall, this study clarifies which types of work-related resources and behaviors are converted into engagement through employee well-being versus through direct pathways, extending human resource management research in higher education within a collectivist, emerging-economy context.
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