Engendering High Performing Employees through Business Analytics, Organisational Social Capital Building (OSCB) and Employee Engagement: A Theoretical Review

Abstract

Contemporary HR entails the use, and the combination of modified HR practices and functions to ensure the integration of individual trust with organizational trust leading to accumulating and harnessing employee commitment, identification, and spirit of collectivism that are necessary for the achievement of organizational outcomes. Intensified discussions about the ever-increasing role HR practitioners have to play in harnessing, the inherent, capital in human social interactions provided the stimulus and inspiration for this research paper. More so, as contemporary HR, requires the bringing forth of a highly engaged organization workforce, sustainably. This paper approaches its aim in three strands: first, the paper explores the, hitherto unknown, symbiotic relationship that exists between business analytics (BA), organisational social capital (OSC), employee engagement (EE) and high performing employees (HPE). Secondly, it examines the causal role of BA in organisations social capital building (OSCB) initiatives; the multiplier effect of OSCB on EE and consequently high performing employees. Thirdly, this paper, theoretically, identified the specific area of BA that has a direct impact on OSCB, EE, and HPE, and suggest practical implications of how BA can enhance organisation performance via OSCB and EE. The paper employs literature-based analyses, and from these conceptual, theoretical and practical arguments are established.