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This study integrates the resource demand and social exchange perspectives and assesses if employer brand, organizational politics, self‐efficacy, and family‐work conflict predict employee engagement. Furthermore, this paper examines the impact of boundary conditions of employee engagement by focusing on exchange ideology and gender. Data were collected using questionnaires from 411 managerial employees working in licensed commercial banks in Sri Lanka. The results revealed that employer brand, perceived organizational politics, and self‐efficacy were significantly related to employee engagement. The results, however, did not support the negative relationship between family‐work conflict and employee engagement or the moderating effect of gender on the relationship between family‐work conflict and employee engagement. But, exchange ideology moderated the relationship between employer brand and employee engagement albeit contrary to the hypothesized directions. The implications of this research, possible limitations and directions for future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social exchange theory (SET) has been used to explain employee engagement through rule of reciprocity. Reciprocity would influence employees to engage in work by responding to the economic and socioemotional resources provided by the organization. However, SET does not adequately explain why the degree of these reciprocal exchanges would vary among individuals resulting in varying levels of engagement, even within the same organizational context. This theoretical paper aims to address this lacuna by exploring the conditions under which organizational human resource management (HRM) practices would lead to high levels of engagement. Accordingly, the paper postulates that perceived organizational support (POS) will mediate the relationship between HRM practices and employee engagement. Further, based on the dualistic exchange structure of relational and contractual governance, it suggests that the norm of reciprocity and self-efficacy will moderate the relationship between POS and employee engagement. This highlights the individual difference, and conditions under which reciprocal exchange is most likely to occur. The main theoretical contributions of the paper is that it integrates two forms of reciprocity within the same conceptualization, and expands the boundary conditions of the organizational support theory (OST) by better positioning POS as a mediator within the HRM-engagement relationship. This also extends previous research where POS was mainly focused on as an antecedent of engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]