Exploring Employee Engagement in a Complex and Security-Sensitive Organizational Environment : A Case Study of SAAB AB’s Surveillance Products Department in Huskvarna

Sammanfattning

Employee engagement is an important topic in knowledge-intensive organizations, particularly where employees' motivation, involvement, and willingness to invest themselves in their work are central to organizational functioning. However, less is known about how engagement is experienced in highly regulated and security-sensitive environments, where confidentiality requirements, formal structures, and restricted information flows shape everyday work. This study explores how organizational conditions influence employee engagement within SAAB AB’s Surveillance Products Department in Huskvarna. Drawing on Kahn’s (1990) theory of personal engagement and disengagement, the study examines how employees describe conditions that shape psychological meaningfulness, safety, and availability. The study is based on a qualitative case study design, using semi-structured interviews with employees and managers, supported by internal employee engagement survey data used in the development of the interview guide. The empirical material was analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings show that employee engagement was strengthened by meaningful work tasks, opportunities to use competence, supportive communication, managerial support, collaboration, feedback, and role clarity. In contrast, unclear expectations, fragmented workdays, frequent meetings, coordination challenges, limited feedback, and uncertainty related to Activity-Based Working reduced engagement, focus, and employees' willingness to fully invest in their work roles. Security-related constraints did not automatically reduce engagement. Instead, confidentiality requirements and need-to-know principles could coexist with engagement when perceived as legitimate, predictable, and connected to the broader purpose of the organization. The study contributes to employee engagement research by showing that structural constraints do not have a uniform effect on engagement. Their influence depends on how employees interpret them in relation to the legitimacy of constraints, clarity and predictability, recognition and visibility, competence resource, and coordination and work design.