Abstract
Orientation: Organisations are constantly battling to attract, retain, and keep their employees engaged
to keep ahead of their competitors. Since maintaining a high level of work engagement among
employees is such a challenge, many organisations are looking to find ways to increase work
engagement within the workplace. In addition to that, organisations have placed emphasis on the
development of career adaptability among employees and are increasingly creating environments that
foster cooperative behaviour such as working in teams. The goal of placing emphasis on work
engagement, career adaptability and cooperation is to increase productivity among employees and
contribute to the success of the organisation. As millennials are steadily outnumbering other generations
within the workplace, the researcher of this study deemed it necessary to use millennials as a sample to
determine whether there is a relationship between their levels of career adaptability and work
engagement among South African, and whether cooperative behaviour mediates this relationship.
Research purpose: To determine the relationship between career adaptability and work engagement,
and the mediating effect of cooperation on this relationship in a sample of South African millennials.
Research approach and design: This study adopted a cross-sectional research design and a
quantitative research approach. A non-probability purposive convenient sampling method was utilised
to gather the sample of n= 301 millennials.
Main findings: The results indicate that cooperation partially mediates the relationship between career
adaptability and work engagement, which means that a relationship between career adaptability and
work engagement exists without the influence of cooperation, but if cooperation comes into play, there
is still a relationship between career adaptability and work engagement.
M.Phil. (Industrial Psychology)