Doctoral students publish in Management Decision

The article Job crafting, meaningful work and employee engagement has been published in Management Decision (Emerald). Its first author is Jakub Holúbek, who defended his doctoral thesis at FSEV TnUAD in 2025. The co-authors are doctoral student Emília Lazarová, Gabriele Giovando of the University of Turin, and me. The article is open access.

We analysed data from 451 non-managerial employees in Austria, Czechia, Poland and Slovakia (PLS-SEM). We asked whether people who actively reshape their work – its tasks, relationships or the way they think about it (job crafting) – are more engaged.

The direct relationship between job crafting and engagement was relatively weak, and for relational crafting it was not statistically significant. The indirect relationship through work meaningfulness was markedly stronger. Crafting helps fulfil the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, which strengthens the sense that work is meaningful – and this translates into engagement.

For organisations, this suggests that supporting employee initiative and leaving room to find meaning in work is a better route to engagement than raising job demands.

The article shows that doctoral research can be taken through to an international journal.

Holúbek, J., Giovando, G., Lazarová, E., & Rozsa, Z. (2026). Job crafting, meaningful work and employee engagement. Management Decision, 64(13), 212–241. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-06-2025-1525

Summary of the article: Job crafting, meaningful work and engagement.