Abstract
Previous reviews on (work/job/employee) ‘engagement’ have neglected research within the context of entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We present a systematic narrative review of the empirical literature on ‘engagement’ within this industrial and employment context. Our aims are to a) determine the scope of research conducted, b) identify key insights, and c) uncover key gaps and problems. We searched four databases for material published between 2010 and 2023. From systematic sifting of 1155 items, 40 articles met our quality and relevance criteria. These articles derive from various disciplines, yet mainly adopt a psychological focus. However, the literature lacks methodological pluralism and cultural contextualization, and an underplaying of institutional/market factors. We find two distinct streams: i) studies focusing on employee engagement with SMEs, and ii) studies focusing on entrepreneurial engagement. There are opportunities to connect these streams in a more interdisciplinary way as well as to develop each in more meaningful ways.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | The International Journal of Human Resource Management |
| Early online date | 17 Mar 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 17 Mar 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Keywords
- empirical literature review
- employee engagement
- entrepreneurship
- productivity
- small business management
- wellbeing