An Attractive Company?

Abstract

This master’s thesis examines how Danish, knowledge driven organizations must adapt to the work lifedemands of the future academic workforce within the Copenhagen region to ensure their position, existence and sustainable competitive advantages. In the age of globalization and digitalization modern organizations’ agility is more pushed than ever. In combination, an economic boom in Denmark drives theincreasing competition for attracting young, newly educated academics among Danish, knowledge drivenorganizations which furthermore empowers the attractive workforce to endeavor more from their potentialworkplace than former generations.Through a quantitative survey of 191 respondents it is found that challenges, the opportunity of personaldevelopment, the social conditions of the workplace and the compliance between work tasks and personalvalues are the most desired and influencing factors when the future academic workforce of the Copenhagen region choses an employer.Based on theory by J. Kotter, this study finds that Danish, knowledge driven organization must build aguiding coalition to lead organizational change towards a culture adapted to the future academics in orderto be able to attract, hire and motivate the essential staff. When leading the change, the coalition mustspread motivation for change among all involved employees to thoroughly fulfill the adaptation of a neworganizational culture. Through theories of D. Rousseau and S. Tijoriwala, it is found that the motivationfor change in the knowledge driven organizations shall be implemented by the use of social accounts andmotivated reasoning. Hereby, the internal communication of the organizational change must be differentlyadapted towards the diverse groups of employees such as elderly colleagues with a presumed aversion tothe new and incessant focus on a younger workforce.Finally, based on the theory of D. Aaker, this master’s thesis concludes, that Danish, knowledge drivenorganizations are able to create essential, sustainable competitive advantages by being competent to attractespecially the most proficient part of the future academic workforce, as it has the ability to constitutevalue propositions, main assets and core competencies.