Work engagement: current trends

Over the past two decades, the number of studies on work engagement has increased rapidly. Work engagement refers to a positive, affective-motivational state of high energy combined with high levels of dedication and a strong focus on work (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2010). It is highly desirable for contemporary public and private organizations to have engaged employees because engagement has been shown to coincide with high levels of creativity, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and client satisfaction (Bakker et al., 2014).

In this paper, we briefly discuss the state of the art of the work engagement literature, and then outline new research trends and research questions. After that, we introduce the articles that have been included in this special issue of Career Development International that is devoted to work engagement.