Thriving in modern knowledge work : Personal resources and challenging job demands as drivers for engagement at work

Abstract

The world of work is experiencing fundamental changes in the ways in which work is organized and conducted. These changes are increasingly affecting knowledge work and knowledge workers as well. The increase of autonomy in job design has resulted in greater expectations of self-leadership, the tendency toward temporary organizing has led to the introduction of alternative work arrangements, and digitalization has enabled work irrespective of time and place, blurring the boundaries between work and leisure time. All these changes are affecting not just the way work is being organized and performed but modern knowledge workers’ well-being at work as well.

Personal resources are an important self-management tool due to their malleability. Their positive relationship with work engagement has been established in numerous studies over the last two decades, and work engagement has been connected with positive performance results. This dissertation argues that the elements of psychological capital (self-efficacy, resilience, hope, and optimism) are especially important to modern knowledge workers’ work engagement and, furthermore, that other forms of engagement at work, such as organization engagement and social engagement, should be considered alongside work engagement as elements of knowledge workers’ well-being at work.

The methodological design in this dissertation is based on two quantitative survey datasets. In addition, a repeated measures survey was used in one publication. Research hypotheses have been tested with structural equation modeling, linear and logistic regressions, hierarchical cluster analysis, and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. Entrepreneurial passion for inventing is introduced as a previously unidentified driver for work engagement in the context of modern knowledge work. In addition, it is shown that challenging job demands reinforce the positive relationship between personal resources and work engagement. Finally, this dissertation shows that there are significant differences in the drivers of work engagement among various knowledge work-role clusters. These results lead to the conclusion that there is unexplored potential in how knowledge workers benefit from their psychological capabilities for beneficial job attitudes, such as engagement at work.