Conclusions
Our work provides an empirical investigation of how the work engagement of a manager affects their firm performance. The results indicate that managerial work engagement explains a small yet statistically significant part of differences in performance between firms. From a managerial perspective, this indicates that work engagement can be understood as an important human capital resource, relevant to both the individual and the organization. This has practical implications at the firm level, since the findings imply that a firm is well advised to invest in resources which have been found to be drivers of managerial work engagement. We then link this finding to both regional and firm-specific contexts.
We show how regional factors, especially corruption and cultural leadership values, and firm-specific factors such as industry affiliation matter for individual work engagement, and thereby indirectly affect firm performance. Hence, we propose a channel though which regional contextual characteristics and firmspecific aspects affect firm performance through individual managers, who have to navigate within those specific contexts. We find widespread corruption to have a negative, and humane leadership as well as software sector to have a positive, effect on firm performance through work engagement. This is a substantial contribution to the literature on work engagement, its relevance to firm performance and its dependence on contextual characteristics.
