Labor Involvement of Employees of Higher Education Institutions: Based on Corporate Projects

The article examines the concept of «employee involvement» in organizational management, presents the key characteristics and determinants of this involvement, shows how to manage labor involvement. The authors analyze the connection between labor alienation and employees’ «burnout», the advantages of high and the risks of low labor involvement.
The research focuses on the involvement of staff in the academic field. Given the ongoing processes of modernization and transformation of the higher education sector, which also cover Russian universities, a high level of employees’ engagement can potentially help to effectively cope with new challenges.
We analyze theoretical concepts of personnel involvement in the work of the organization and present the results of a longitudinal sociological study based on our questionnaire. Four monitoring waves were carried out: in 2018 (N=708), in 2019 (N=840), in 2020 (N=522), and in 2022 (N=552). The research is aimed at studying the involvement of scientific and pedagogical staff in the activities and corporate projects of the university (in comparison with other categories of employees). There are found out the types of employee involvement and the key factors determining the change in the level of their involvement in the activities of the organization and in the implementation of individual corporate projects. We have identified three types of employee involvement: high (unconditional), medium (labile) and low (avoidant) involvement. The highest labor involvement is noted among senior staff and line managers.
The study of employee involvement is of practical importance for researchers and practitioners in the sphere of human resource management. The article might be of interest for federal and regional authorities in the field of education, for heads of higher education institutions, for university human resource departments, and for university staffin general.

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