Employee engagement and two types of bureaucracy: An investigation into the top-four Iranian universities

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of bureaucratic structure on the employee engagement (EE). Our study extends previous researches by considering bureaucracy from two points of view: enabling versus hindering. We study the extent to which these two types of bureaucracy are related to the two forms of employee engagement: organizational (OE) and work engagement (WE). The viewpoints of the employees working at top-four Iranian universities have been examined through a quantitative survey. The results indicate the positive significant impact of enabling bureaucracy on both types of employee engagement with the stronger effect on work engagement among employees of universities. However, our findings show no significant impact of hindering bureaucracy on employee engagement, whether work engagement or organizational one.