Firm performance in challenging business climates: does managerial work engagement make a difference?

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Asian Business and Management. The definitive publisher-authenticated version FRIESENBICHLER, K. and SELENKO, E., 2017. Firm performance in challenging business climates: does managerial work engagement make a difference? Asian Business and Management, 16 (1), pp.25-49 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41291-017-0016-4.Do more highly work-engaged managers contribute to firm performance? Leaning on the resource-based view, we propose managerial work engagement as a resource relevant to firm performance. Data from a representative survey of managers in Bangladesh support this and illuminate the role of the wider context in predicting work engagement. In less-corrupt environments with a more humane leadership culture, work engagement is more prevalent. In addition, individual work engagement is driven by firm-level factors and contributes independently to firm performance. This illustrates the mutual dependency between an individual manager’s work engagement and microeconomic determinants of firm performance