We need autonomy! The role of job autonomy and autonomous motivation in employees’ work engagement in the outsourcing sector: A systematic mixed-method illustrative case study

The outsourcing sector continues to experience significant growth but is still experiencing rising voluntary turnover due to loss of employees’ engagement. This systematic mixed-method illustrative case study focuses on how leaders can stimulate employees’ work engagement in outsourcing companies. This research is the result of 1 year of intensive fieldwork in an outsourcing organization and includes quantitative data from an online survey and qualitative data from focus group discussions. The results show that employees who have a higher level of work engagement also have higher intrinsic motivation, and the strength of this prototypical autonomous motivation in predicting work engagement is higher than that of other predictors. Leadership practices and relevant behaviors were identified that can be used in interventions in outsourcing companies to stimulate employees’ intrinsic motivation and work engagement.