A Cross-Level Investigation of Team-Member Exchange on Team and Individual Job Crafting with the Moderating Effect of Regulatory Focus

Digital Leadership and Employee Creativity: The Role of Employee Job Crafting and Person-Organization Fit

Industry 4.0 has changed the paradigm in the business practice and business model, and digital technology has brought radical transformations to enterprises. To support this transformation, digital leaders are required to help enterprises transform and lead them to a more promising future. Based on job demands-resources model and person-organization fit theory, this study examines the relationship between digital leadership and employee creativity. Based on a sample of 357 employees from various Chinese companies, this study used SPSS 22.0 and MPLUS 7.0 to examine the hypotheses. The findings indicate the following (a) digital leadership has a positive effect on employee creativity. (b) employee job crafting mediate the relationship between digital leadership and employee creativity. (c) person-organization fit positively moderates the relationship between digital leadership and employee job crafting. (d) person-organization fit positively moderates the indirect effect of digital leadership on employee creativity via employee job crafting. The findings reveal the effect mechanism of digital leaders on employee creativity and enrich the literature on antecedents of employee creativity. Practical implications and future research are also discussed.

A state-of-the-art overview of job-crafting research: current trends and future research directions

Purpose

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of Career Development International, a state-of-the-art overview of recent trends in job-crafting research was conducted. Since job crafting was introduced twenty years ago as a type of proactive work behavior that employees engage in to adjust their jobs to their needs, skills, and preferences, research has evolved tremendously.

Design/methodology/approach

To take stock of recent developments and to unravel the latest trends in the field, this overview encompasses job-crafting research published in the years 2016–2021. The overview portrays that recent contributions have matured the theoretical and empirical advancement of job-crafting research from three perspectives (i.e. individual, team and social).

Findings

When looking at the job-crafting literature through these three perspectives, a total of six trends were uncovered that show that job-crafting research has moved to a more in-depth theory-testing approach; broadened its scope; examined team-level job crafting and social relationships; and focused on the impact of job crafting on others in the work environment and their evaluations and reactions to it.

Originality/value

The overview of recent trends within the job-crafting literature ends with a set of recommendations for how future research on job crafting could progress and create scientific impact for the coming years.

Contextual antecedents of job crafting: review and future research agenda

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to critically review current studies on job crafting to identify contextual factors related to employees’ job crafting and to integrate the findings to help organizations improve employees’ job crafting.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the guidelines provided by Torraco (2016), the authors reviewed 44 quantitative studies on job crafting published between 2001and 2020.

Findings

The authors identified 35 contextual antecedents of job crafting at the job (11), group (6), leadership (12) and organizational (6) levels. The findings reveal that a significant number of studies have focused on contextual aspects related to employees’ job crafting. In particular, multiple studies discussed the important role of empowering leadership, servant leadership, transformational leadership, leader-member exchange in job crafting.

Originality/value

The authors emphasize contextual factors influencing job crafting including job, group, leadership and organizational levels. Based on the review, the authors suggest a future research agenda on job crafting in terms of job, group, leadership and organizational antecedents.

The Impact of Social Factors on Job Crafting: A Meta-Analysis and Review

Despite the considerable focus on job characteristics and individual differences in job crafting research, the influence of social factors on job crafting has not been well-acknowledged. Based on social interaction and job crafting literature, this meta-analysis estimates the associations between social factors (i.e., organizational insiders and outsiders) and job crafting, and how these social factors contribute to employee outcomes through their job crafting. Based on a sample of 51 empirical studies that included 54 independent samples (N = 17,863), we found that social factors of positive leadership styles (e.g., empowering and transformational) and coworker support were positively related to employee job crafting. Moreover, leadership showed a stronger correlation with employee job crafting than coworker support and Leader-Member-Exchange (LMX). Further, our study showed that employee job crafting positively mediates the relationships between social factors and work outcomes (e.g., job performance and well-being). Our study contributes to job crafting literature by integrating social factors into the job crafting model and demonstrating that the social context of work (in particular organizational insiders) plays a crucial role in shaping employees’ job crafting behavior. We also emphasize the critical role that job crafting plays in transmitting valuable social resources into improved work outcomes. Building on our results, we provide future direction for job crafting research and discuss how our results can imply practice in terms of job crafting training.