Psychological Underpinnings of the Work-Site Selection Process of Knowledge Workers

ABSTRACT As a result of technological advances, knowledge workers have become increasingly mobile; people can perform work in a variety of new locations via an assortment of new working arrangements. Knowledge workers are now faced with the question of where to work. We argue that the process of work-site selection depends on the relationship between a variety of individual factors such as motivation, cognitive and affective evaluation, and regulatory focus as they interact with self-regulatory resources. Specifically, we use a dynamic interactionist perspective to integrate components of social exchange, self-determination, regulatory focus, and self-regulation theories. The resulting conceptual model contributes to the existing literature by integrating different theoretical sets of predictor variables and examining their effect on self-regulatory resources, which have implications for productivity and well-being. We discuss implications and avenues for future work exploring these relationships.