Enhancing emotional engagement through relational contracts, management receptiveness, and employee commitment as a stimulus for job satisfaction and job performance in the public sector

Research background: In the private sector and on social media, corporate emotional interaction has lately become a hot topic. In the background of the public sector, however, it has scarcely been discussed and very little is known about its determinants and implications. Purpose of the article: This research investigates the role of organizational emotional engagement through relational contracts, senior management receptivity, and upward communication of employees in the public sector in stimulating work satisfaction and job efficiency. Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, 16(1), 203–224 204 Methods: This research was based on data collected between April 1, 2020, and May 31, 2020, from 335 state employees from various governmental organizations in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. To evaluate the hypothesized model, partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used. Findings & value added: Our results illustrate that relational contracts have a powerful effect on emotional engagement. Positive relationships were confirmed between employee engagement and the voice of employees and between employee engagement and job performance. Moreover, the findings also support the role of senior management receptiveness in stimulating organizational emotional engagement. This study addresses questions about absence of academic studies on organizational emotional engagement in the public sector. The results highlight the important role of emotional engagement in stimulating job satisfaction and job performance through relational contracts, senior management receptiveness, and upward employee communication.


Introduction
Employee engagement within organizations has increasingly become an issue of concern. A report from the human resource (HR) consultancy Anphabe indicated that Vietnam's employee turnover rate reached 24% in 2019. In recognition of the importance of job design, researchers have investigated the effects of age and job characteristics on job engagement, satisfaction and performance (Truxillo et al., 2012).
A relational contract is one type of psychological contracts (Rousseau, 2000). There have been few bodies of research on the effect on employee engagement of relational contracts. Three outstanding studies have examined how psychological contracts relate to engagement, mainly focusing on relational contracts (Bal et al., 2013;Chang et al., 2013;Yeh, 2012), and found that relational contracts are positively connected to the participation of employees. The most recent study also confirms the positive effect of relational contracts on long-term participation (Soares & Mosquera, 2019). However, the separate relationship between relational contract and emotional engagement has not been deeply investigated.
Like relational contracts, employee voice (as measured through senior management receptiveness and upward employee communication) has received little research attention. This gap has been pointed out by Gruman and Saks (2014). The voice of workers is a serious problem in HR management (Marchington, 2015). Employee voices have been recognized as a determinant of employee engagement in terms of raising upward feedback (Ruck & Welch, 2012). Employee engagement is positively associated with senior management receptiveness and upward employee communication, and both dimensions can be considered antecedents of engagement (Ruck et al., 2017). In addition, prior studies have confirmed essential associations between emotional organizational commitment and job performance (Yongxing et al., 2017;Rich et al., 2010).
Specifically, a few studies have been carried on the alleged link between work engagement and job satisfaction. As such, this subject represents a novel area of investigation. A common subject in the research field has been the work satisfaction-job performance relationship since knowing more about the factors that can boost employee satisfaction and performance is important, especially for managers. In general, studies on the influence of employee engagement through receptiveness, communication, job satisfaction and job performance in the public sector are minimal in many countries, of which Vietnam is not an exception.
This study aims to support previous research, fill the pointed gaps in the literature, and more closely examine relationships of emotional engagement with relational contracts, senior management receptiveness, upward employee communication, satisfaction with jobs, and job performance. Based on the results of a questionnaire collected from 335 public employees who are working at 19 governmental organizations at the district level in HCMC, Vietnam. We pursue with an overview of relevant previous studies to develop a conceptual framework regarding how emotional engagement stimulates job performance and satisfaction through relational contracts, management receptiveness, and employee commitment. This study used the partial least squares structural equation model method to test six hypotheses in the conceptual framework.
In the remainder of this paper, we conduct literature review in line with hypothesis development in the second section. In third section, we present research methodology. Research results and discussions are presented in the fourth section. Finally, the last section concludes our findings, provides limitations, and suggests for future studies.

Organizational emotional engagement
Increasingly, engagement has become a central concern and has drawn academic attention in the field of business psychology. Organizational emotional engagement, or work engagement, refers to employees' emotional commitment to their company. Engagement is described as the harnessing of the self of organization members to their job roles; people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally in engagement during role performances (Kahn, 1990).
Furthermore, work engagement is described as a positive, fulfilling state of mind that is characterized by dedication, vigor, and absorption while at work (Schaufeli et al., 2002). Dedication means being strongly embraced in one's work and feeling a sense of importance, passion, and challenge. Vigor is described by high levels of energy and mental toughness as working. Absorption is described as being completely focused and happily engaged in one's work with time passing quickly and difficulty detaching oneself from it. In short, engaged employees have a lot of enthusiasm and energy about their jobs (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008).
Employees are considered engaged to their organizations when they put all of their effort into their work and feel concern for the company where they are employed. Welch (2011) restated Saks (2006)'s claim that employee engagement comprises both job and organizational engagement. This study adapts the concept of engagement developed by Saks (2006).

Relational contract
A psychological contract is an obligation between an individual and an entity based on shared trust in the sense of business psychology (Rousseau, 1989). Rousseau and Tijoriwala (1998) describe the belief of an individual in contractual responsibilities between that person and another party, such as an employer, is another concept. When an organization fulfills all obligations agreed upon in the contract, employees may recompense the organization by expressing their loyalty to the company (Saks, 2006).
Legal and psychological contracts differ in that psychological contracts are subjective and not explicit, as they rely only on individual perceptions. Based on variations in employment arrangements in psychological contracts, a typology of four dimensions was developed: relational, balanced, transactional, and transitional by Rousseau (2000). In a recent study, Soares and Mosquera (2019) have shown that the transitional and transactional contracts have a negative effect on work engagement, meanwhile the relational and the balanced contracts have a positive effect on work engagement.
In this study, we focus only on employees' relational contracts. Relational contracts are a type of long-term arrangement based mainly on a relationship of trust and loyalty. In such contracts, contingency rewards are not specified. According to Rousseau (2000), relational contracts include two sub-components -stability and loyalty -which are associated with remaining in and supporting the company. These two factors can contribute significantly to employees' career advancement opportunities in the long term, whether within or outside the organization.
To date, only three studies have concentrated on the relationship between styles of psychological contracts and employee participation (Chang et al., 2013;Bal et al., 2013;Yeh, 2012). Their results showed that relational contracts are positively linked with engagement. This study continues to explore how relational contracts and organizational engagement affect one another. As such, the following hypothesis is proposed: H1: Relational contracts positively impact on organizational emotional engagement.

Senior management receptiveness and upward employee communication
Senior management receptiveness can be understood as managers' willingness to consider new opinions and ideas from employees. In any projects when employees are not allowed to put forward their ideas, they may be discouraged from raising suggestions, which in turn will be likely to result in a decline in employee engagement (Beugré, 2010). On the other hand, if employees refuse to speak out, they will no longer feel connected to their organization. An organization's lack of real commitment to listening could generate frustration, disillusionment, and disengagement among employees (Price et al., 2001).
One of the required conditions for developing personal engagement is psychological safety (Kahn, 1990). The most important forerunner of engagement is the ability to raise one's voice and be listened to (Purcell & Hall, 2012). Engagement involves the contribution of new ideas, information and opinions. However, employees may not be confident enough to contribute if they feel that their opinions are not generally respected. Therefore, the next hypothesis is suggested: H2: Senior management receptiveness positively impact on organizational emotional engagement.
Upward contact gives staff and managers the ability to share and express thoughts on current issues in their organization (Wilkinson et al., 2004). In a company, first-line, middle, and senior managers are the direct recipients of employees' messages. Receiving feedback from employees is an important factor in developing and improving an organization as well as solving internal and external problems (Tourish & Robson, 2006). They also claim that the upward contact of workers provides a more objective view of each person to members of an organization. Understanding employees enables managers to avoid conflicts by adjusting their behavior when working together. It ensures a contributive work environment, where everyone is respected and has the ability to raise their voice.
The receptiveness of senior management and upward contact of employees are two components of the speech of employees. The relation between employee engagement and communication has been stated in the conceptual model of a previous study (Welch, 2011). The voice of employees is significantly correlated with engagement (Rees et al., 2013). The literature review in Ruck et al. (2017) research involves consideration of a conceptual model of employee voice-engagement, which led to the conceptual context for this study. Therefore, we hypothesize: H3: Upward employee communication positively impact on organizational emotional engagement.

Job performance
Job performance is defined as a means of measuring whether an employee in an organization reaches a goal based on certain standards (e.g., accuracy, effectiveness, speed, cost). The term refers to an employee's accomplishments that -positively or negatively -contribute to the company's progress as a whole. It has been identified as behavior related to the results of one's job in terms of success and productivity. In any firm or organization, employee performance has significant power of determination in generating profit and improving company reputation.
In order to investigate the relationship between success and engagement, a number of previous studies were carried out. Higher work engagement leads to greater worker innovation (Hakanen et al., 2008). For example, in a hotel study, researchers found that customers judged the quality of services more favorably when the hotel workers were more involved in their jobs (Salanova et al., 2005).
To clarify this positive relation, related concepts that have previously been found to affect performance should be investigated more closely. Job engagement is advantageous for both workers and employers. The more that employees engage at work, the better their job performance is expected to be (Demerouti & Cropanzano 2010). We therefore hypothesize: H4: Organizational emotional engagement positively impacts on job performance.

Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction describes a person's positive responses to their job in terms of cognition, emotion, and behavior (Locke, 1976). In other words, job satisfaction reflects a relationship between employees and their working environment throughout measuring the congruence between what they expect from their job and what they believe they receive. Job satisfaction has been long supposed to have essential impact on organizational productivity. It is believed that the benefits received by employees from their organization have an effect on their effort, skills and creativity (Wright et al., 2003). Similarly, job satisfaction is described as an affective response to a job, resulting from the comparison of the incumbent's actual results with those desired, anticipated and deserved (Castaneda & Scanlan, 2014).
Employees in the public sector are typically more unhappy with their jobs than those in the private sector (Steel & Warner, 1990). One reason for this frustration is that, while public organizations have missions that also provide employees with more opportunities to fulfill altruistic or higherorder needs, the very structure of these organizations, which is said to be recognized by more red tape and conflict, prevents these opportunities from being realized. Some obvious contradictions in public administration research can highlight this inconsistency between intent and structure (Wright et al., 2003). In fact, while there is a substantial amount of empirical evidence of differences in specific aspects of job satisfaction between the public and private sectors, the magnitude and direction of these variations have shifted over time (Wright, 2001). Specifically, Vigan and Giauque (2018) conduct a review of public servants' job satisfaction in Africa between 1990 and 2014. Their findings indicate that work environment characteristics are the most significant antecedents of job satisfaction among African public servants; meanwhile individual and work attributes have only a minor effect.
Employees who are actively involved in their jobs tend to have positive feelings and cognitions from an emotional perspective because they feel a sense of purpose in the work they do and connect strongly with the role they hold within the company (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008). They invest resources and professional skills to complete their job as a result of their emotional states (Côté et al., 2020). Several studies have shown that work engagement is positively associated with job satisfaction (Alarcon & Lyons, 2011;Tejpal, 2015). Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H5: Organizational emotional engagement positively impacts on job satisfaction.
Job satisfaction is a substantially optimistic mediator of occupational job performance. Several studies have shown a positive correlation between work satisfaction and job performance (Talukder et al., 2018). This relationship has been examined both work and non-work factors. If employees enjoy their job and are satisfied with their working conditions (e.g., pay, colleagues, promotion), their productivity tends to be high, leading to better overall company performance. In contrast, low levels of job satisfaction often lead to decreased effectiveness in job performance (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Thus, we propose: H6: Job satisfaction positively impacts on job performance.

The proposal model
In this study, we examine and investigate links between factors in organizational emotional engagement and job performance among people working in public agencies. Although researchers in some previous studies have examined the relationships separately, we believe that a broader look at these elements can contribute to a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of job performance. The discussion of the above six hypotheses led to a conceptual structure, illustrated in Figure 1, for our empirical analysis.

Participants
The research involved 19 governmental organizations at the district level in HCMC drawn from a two-stage cluster sampling procedure. First, a sample of district people committees was established, 19 of 66 state organizations in HCMC selected at random, with their probability for the list identified by the number of state employees. In the second stage, with the valuable support from managers of human resources management department of each organization, we asked them to distribute 20 employees selected a random from each of the 19 organizations. A total of 380 questionnaires were distributed during April 1, 2020, and May 31, 2020.
All participants were required to complete a questionnaire measuring six elements: job satisfaction, job performance, organizational employee engagement, relational contract, senior management receptiveness, and upward employee communication. On a five-point symmetrical rating scale ranging from 1 ('strongly disagree') to 5 ('strongly agree'), all items were scored. Consequently, the final sample size of 335 usable responses (response rate 88.15%) has enough power and effect size for predicting in the proposed model. This sample size is adequate to detect even small effects (Cohen, 1988).

Measures
Quantitative methods were applied in this study. Our methodology included statistical techniques such as reliability assessment, convergent validity, and validity of discriminants.
An attitude scale to give an index of job satisfaction was measured by five items created by Williams and Anderson (1991).
An attitude scale to give an index of job performance was measured with five items developed by Brayfield and Rothe (1951).
An attitude scale to give an index of organizational emotional engagement was measured with four items selected from the scale created by Saks (2006).
With seven items selected from the 40 item Psychological Contract Inventory created by (Rousseau, 2000(Rousseau, , 2008, an attitude scale to give an index of relational contract was assessed. Four items measured loyalty, while the other three measured stability. An attitude scale to give an index of senior management receptiveness was assessed with three items from the scale developed based on the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Study (Wanrooy et al., 2011).
An attitude scale to give an index of upward communication was assessed with three items selected from the scale developed by Truss et al. (2006). Table 1 provides all items used.
Although covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) has been the most common method for analyzing complex interrelationships between observed and latent variables for many years, and it has variousextremely restrictive assumptions (Hair et al., 2019), partial least squaresstructural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has recently become the common portfolio of multivariate analysis methods (Hair et al., 2018). PLS-SEM enables scholars to predict complex models with various constructs, variables, and structural paths without enforcing distributional assumptions on the data. Many researchers propose that the advantage of choosing PLS-SEM in social studies without imposing distributional assumptions is the main reason (Hair et al., 2012). Therefore, we use PLS-SEM to test the research hypotheses due to nonnormal data.

Results
The demographic structure of the sample in terms of gender, age, and educational level in detail (numbers and percentages) was presented in Table 2. Table 3 displays factor loadings larger than 0.7, which indicates the reliability of the measure. Reflective indicator loadings must be higher than or equal to 0.708, which suggests that the results explained greater than half of the variable's variance and thus ensures reliability (Hair et al., 2019). Loading factors between 0.4 and 0.7 should be considered for elimination in case their elimination increases average variance extracted (AVE) and composite reliability (CR) (Hair et al., 2019). To comply with the requirements, the item RC7 from the relational contract scale was removed, based on its low factor loading. The alpha of Cronbach is also used to assess reliability and internal consistency based on similar thresholds. Cronbach's alpha and CR confirm convergent validity and reliability. Thus, the results and scales show appropriate internal reliability. Table 3 also displays that the AVE values -which varied from 0.640 to 0.857 -are acceptable, as they exceed the requirement of 0.5 (Hair et al., 2019). Equally important, the rho_A value is higher than 0.70, further supporting the convergent and consistent validity.
In addition, Table 4 shows that discriminant validity is achieved if the square root of the AVE exceeds the association between the suppressed variables of every pair (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). And Table 5 illustrates the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratios are less than 0.850 (Clark & Watson, 1995, Tabri & Elliott, 2012. Therefore, these two evaluation measures thus verify the model scale to confirm a distinguished value. Table 6 shows that almost values of fitness indexes satisfy the criteria. Particularly, SRMR (Standardized Root Mean Residual) is less than the threshold of 0.08; and NFI (Normed Fit Index) is approximately equal to the threshold of 0.9. Hence, the model is good enough for implementing PLS-SEM.
PLS-SEM is more related to the prediction than to the evaluation of a model and can calculate equivalent statistics that are highly problematic. Table 7 and Figure 2 demonstrate the estimated results. As shown in Table  7, all six hypotheses are accepted, with p-values below 0.05. The results illustrate that of the measured variables, organizational emotional engagement most strongly influences job satisfaction, with an evaluated coeffi-cient of 0.761. Relational contract also has a considerable impact on organizational emotional engagement, with a standard coefficient of 0.568. Organizational emotional engagement also has a substantial association with job performance (0.542).

Discussion
The study's first contribution is that it offers clear evidence that relational contracts have a positive effect on emotional participation in the public sector based the example of Vietnam. Previous studies have not separately concentrated on relational contracts. Our findings resemble those by Pohl et al. (2016) and Soares and Mosquera (2019), who determined that relational contracts contribute to employee engagement. Therefore, to enhance engagement within organizations, managers should arrange work contracts based on loyalty to each individual.
Second, our results support the effect of employee voice on organizational engagement seen in other research, indicating that employee participation is strongly linked to engagement (Robinson et al., 2004 ;Truss et al., 2006). Saks (2006) also notes the positive correlation between the voice of employees and organizational engagement. An organization that always considers and responds to the opinions of an employee or employee representative and that practices decentralized decision-making eventually creates lasting positive feelings among employees. When employees encounter difficulties or criticisms, they are more likely to form a long-term connection with the organization if they receive support from it. This, in turn, ensures greater emotional attachment and better work efficiency in the public sector.
Third, this study supports a positive relationship between engagement and job performance as indicated in prior studies (Bakker & Bal, 2010;Halbesleben & Wheeler, 2008 ;Yongxing et al., 2017). Having positive emotions towards an organization catalyzes employees to deliver their work with adequate outcomes, as they can complete their tasks, engage in workoriented activities, and provide constructive suggestions for overall performance and continuously look for ways to improve their work efficiency in the public sector.
Fourth, individuals who are more happy with their jobs appear to contribute better to the organization's work (Caprara et al., 2003;Saks, 2006;Wilcock, 2001, De Simone et al., 2016. There is substantial evidence that employees who are happy with job satisfaction tend to contribute more to the improvement of their own job performance. Job satisfaction is a potential cause of job performance (Judge et al., 2001).

Conclusions
All conclusions are backed by data analysis. The findings of this study can be applied in the context of HR management. HR managers are encouraged to enhance job performance and satisfaction by engaging employees in their organizations through forming relational contracts and encouraging employees to raise their voices. Our findings show that, together with the relational contract, employee voice is the dominant factor that determines the level of emotional engagement with an organization; engagement is closely related to employee performance and satisfaction. Engaged individuals are likely to express gratification and perform more efficiently and effectively. Through a survey of employees in certain public organizations in Vietnam, this research fills the gap in the literature regarding the link between the communication elements of organizational engagement and job satisfaction and their relationship with the direction of job performance. This research has some limitations. As we surveyed only state employees in particular public organizations in HCMC, Vietnam, the findings only indicate patterns among employees in a niche location. Thus, the findings may not be applicable to all organizations in Vietnam.
In order to improve generalizability, future studies should deepen the comprehensive of the dynamic interrelationships and their contributing factors. Moreover, future data sets should conduct the diversity of employees in different public sectors and provide more relevant advice for each sector.