Millennials’ experiences of well-being and work engagement in virtual teams
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi
Authors
Date
2017
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
62
Series
Abstract
Virtual teams continue to increase their popularity in modern-day organizations and earlier research also reflects this change as can be seen from the extensive literature reviews in this area. This thesis builds on the virtual team literature by elaborating on two emerging research opportunities: the millennial generation’s impact and team member well-being. The aim is to deepen our perspective in virtual teams and increase our knowledge about these two phenomena that currently influence and change organizations. The main research question is as follows: How do millennials experience well-being and work engagement in virtual teams. In order to answer this research question, three sub- questions are asked. 1) How is well-being negotiated and embodied in the mind of the millennials working in virtual teams, 2) What job resources do millennials perceive as most important, and 3) How is the virtual team context associated with work engagement. This thesis is a qualitative case study, conducted at a globally operating information technology company. To gain a deeper understanding of the individual millennials’ perceptions of well-being and work engagement drivers in virtual teams, 7 semi- structured interviews were used for data collection. The objective was to collect as rich material as possible about the phenomena in order to understand how individual millennials make sense of these three phenomena, i.e. well-being, work engagement and virtual teams. The main findings of this thesis show how millennials emphasize the social environment at work. They appreciate friendly co-workers and a fun, motivating and supportive work environment. Four job resources emerged during the interviews and they are described to influence individual-level work engagement. These are the culture of feedback, the social environment, meaningful work and opportunities for development. The study concludes how the virtual team context provides positive variation to work, making it more interesting because of the possibility to interact with people from diverse backgrounds. However, the lack of the social environment and feedback is seen to challenge the work engagement and many of the interviewed millennials would not be ready to work purely in a virtual team. The findings illustrate how millennials relationship with virtual teams is contradictory, which calls for further research on this area of interest.Description
Thesis advisor
Rossi, MattiKeywords
virtual teams, work engagement, millennials, employee well-being