Does job crafting always lead to employee well-being and performance? Meta-analytical evidence on the moderating role of societal culture

A new perspective on balancing life domains: work-nonwork balance crafting

BACKGROUND

Self-initiated and proactive changes in working conditions through crafting are essential for shaping work and improving work-related well-being. Recently, the research stream of job crafting has been extended to other life domains. The present paper aims to study a novel crafting concept-work-nonwork balance crafting-investigating the role of its antecedents and identifying relevant outcomes. Work-nonwork balance crafting is defined as individuals' unofficial techniques and activities to shape their work-nonwork balance, here considering their life domain boundary preferences.

METHODS

In the study, 1,060 employees in three European countries (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) were surveyed in a longitudinal three-wave study with three-month intervals. We explored the influences of job/home demands and resources as antecedents of work-nonwork balance crafting. Important constructs for employee health and well-being (i.e., work engagement, work-related burnout, mental well-being and detachment from work) were investigated as outcomes.

RESULTS

The findings suggest that resources and demands in the context of work or home are key antecedents of work-nonwork balance crafting. Work-nonwork balance crafting was also predictive for important employee health and well-being outcomes over three months, mainly in a positive and health-promoting way.

CONCLUSION

This study provides insights into the antecedents of proactive efforts to balance the complex interplay of life domains. By studying work-nonwork balance crafting, we provide a new perspective on crafting beyond job crafting, which may help maintain or improve employees' mental health and well-being.

Going the extra mile for patients: Service-oriented high-performance work systems drive nurses' job crafting and extra-role service behaviour

AIM

This study intends to investigate whether, how and when service-oriented high-performance work systems (SHPWSs) drive nurses' extra-role service behaviour.

DESIGN

This was a quantitative cross-sectional study conducted with matched nurse-patient participants.

METHOD

We tested hypotheses using data from 284 nurses and their matched 566 patients. The data were collected in 2019. We conducted a set of hierarchical regression analyses to test our hypotheses.

RESULTS

The results showed that SHPWSs have a positive impact on job crafting, which, in turn, mediates the link between SHPWSs and extra-role service behaviours. Additionally, the influence of professional identification moderates these relationships. Specifically, SHPWSs are significantly and positively associated with job crafting among highly professionally identified nurses. The indirect effect is significantly positive when nurses strongly identify with their profession but not significant when their professional identification is low.

CONCLUSION

The results indicated that SHPWSs can elicit job crafting among higher professional identifiers, which further increases extra-role service behaviours towards patients.

IMPACT

Our research emphasizes the significance of HRM themes in the healthcare service industry and their direct impact on healthcare personnel. Shifting from a management-centric to an individual-centric perspective, we focus on the proactive role of nurses. Furthermore, this study enhances the understanding of the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of SHPWSs.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

Nurses and their mated patients from a Chinese hospital contributed to this study by completing the survey.

The influence of daily life events on learning crafting and the intervening roles of academic emotions and regulatory focus in high school students

BACKGROUND

The adaptation of students to academic challenges in high school is crucial for academic performance. This study proposes the concept of "learning crafting," a previously under-researched area, and investigates its associated variables.

METHODS

Using a diary method, we studied 187 Chinese high school students (64% female; Mage  = 15.57) over a 9-day period. We examined the effect of daily life events on learning crafting, and considered academic emotions as mediators and regulatory focus as moderators.

RESULTS

Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that daily positive events were positively correlated with learning crafting at both within-person and between-person levels. Positive academic emotions served as mediators of this relationship. Furthermore, promotion focus had a positive moderating effect on the relationship between daily positive events and positive academic emotions. Conversely, daily negative events were only negatively correlated with learning crafting at the between-person level, and no additional significant relationships were identified.

CONCLUSION

This study elucidated the effect of daily life events on learning crafting, its mediating mechanisms, and conditional factors. These results not only contribute to crafting theory, but also provide theoretical underpinnings for future interventions targeting high school students' learning crafting.

Do I want to work from home today? Specific job crafting strategies of public service employees working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: a qualitative study

Background

After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees in Europe increasingly worked from home. In the German public sector, many employees experienced working from home for the first time. Concurrently, employees could use job crafting activities to alter job demands and resources while working from home. This exploratory case study aims to shed light on how public service employees craft their job demands and job resources, and how they perceive job satisfaction and productivity while working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. A novel theoretical approach is applied to explore crafting activities that target specific job demands and resources when working from home, using a combined framework of resource-based job crafting based on the Job Demands-Resources model and time-spatial job crafting.

Methods

Qualitative telephone interviews were conducted with employees from different public sectors in Germany between December 2021 and February 2022. According to the COREQ guidelines, the 12 semi-structured interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and content-analyzed using MAXQDA.

Results

The results suggest that employees, who were new to working from home, developed personal crafting strategies for their flexible work environment. These strategies supported them in coping with hindering job demands (e.g., measures regarding work-related availability or interruptions) by optimizing their working conditions. Additionally, employees used strategies to increase their social resources (e.g., initiating meetings with colleagues) and structural resources (e.g., installing additional work equipment, planning of office days and working-from-home days). The use of given job resources and optimization of job demands are closely linked to the time-spatial demands fit. Thereby, the time-spatial demands fit is used to combine workplaces, work hours, or work tasks with the provided resources and demands to achieve an optimal work environment, which also facilitates employees' productivity and satisfaction.

Conclusion

The results enrich the resource-based and time-spatial demand job crafting research by adding specific job crafting strategies utilized by public service employees. Furthermore, the results highlight job crafting strategies for enhancing job satisfaction and productivity when working from home in the post-pandemic world, thus offering valuable insights for researchers and practitioners.

When does cognitive crafting matter more in enhancing employee thriving at work? The moderating role of skill variety and job autonomy

The job crafting literature has not devoted much attention to the effects of specific forms of job crafting, particularly cognitive crafting. The present study builds on Conservation of Resources theory to explain how cognitive crafting might influence work meaningfulness for employees, and in turn, increase their experienced thriving at work. Moreover, we hypothesise that the impact of cognitive crafting on these outcomes is influenced by two motivational job characteristics: skill variety and job autonomy. To test our hypotheses, we collected three-wave survey data from 223 employees employed in a variety of occupations and industries in China. Results indicate that engaging in cognitive crafting enhances employees' work meaningfulness, resulting in thriving at work. Furthermore, skill variety and job autonomy are crucial moderators of these relationships. Specifically, when employees perceived low levels of skill variety or job autonomy, engaging in cognitive crafting was more likely to lead to enhanced work meaningfulness, which in turn resulted in higher levels of thriving at work. Implications for research, theory and practice are discussed.

Job crafting strategies of nurse mentors as mentors and nurses and their impact on missed nursing care: A cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

Nurse mentors face challenging circumstances because of their dual role as nurses and mentors. As nurses, they are expected to provide high-quality care for patients and as mentors, they are concomitantly engaged with developing the next generation of nurses.

OBJECTIVES

To examine the relationship between job crafting strategies and missed nursing care among nurse mentors, in their roles as nurses and mentors.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional design.

SETTING

Various wards and hospitals during 2021.

PARTICIPANTS

Eighty nurse mentors responsible for supervising nursing students.

METHODS

Participants completed on-line survey, including the MISSCARE questionnaire, the Job Crafting Scale, and control variables. SPSS was used to conduct two multivariable linear regressions.

RESULTS

As a nurse, higher enhancing structural job resources was significantly associated with lower missed nursing care, while higher enhancing social job resources was significantly associated with higher missed nursing care. As a mentor, higher enhancing structural job resources was significantly associated with lower missed care, while higher enhancing challenging job demands was significantly associated with higher missed care.

CONCLUSION

The results indicate that not all job crafting strategies are effective in maintaining high-quality care among nurse mentors. In their dual role as nurses and mentors, nurse mentors often face a Catch-22 situation, namely, meeting expectations of both students and patients. Thus, they increase their job resources and challenging demands; however, not all strategies improve the quality of care. Nursing policymakers and managers should provide tailored interventions that enhance the structural job resources of nurse mentors and avoid the use of challenging job demands and social job resource strategies when mentoring nursing students.

Can intrinsic motivation be attained through psychological detachment and job crafting: the mediating role of emotional stability

Purpose

This paper conceptualizes the broaden-build and self-determination theories that act as the major theoretical framework to investigate the role of psychological detachment and job crafting behaviours in predicting intrinsic motivation through emotional stability. It was hypothesized that emotionally stable employees are better able to detach themselves from work and craft their job according to their preference and abilities, which would inculcate experience and make them intrinsically motivated.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample comprised 396 employees, who are employed in different organizations across India. To test the hypotheses, the authors conducted structural equation modelling on SPSS AMOS 22.

Findings

The results highlight the partial mediating role of emotional stability in the association of psychological detachment with intrinsic motivation as well as the fully mediating role between job crating and intrinsic motivation.

Research limitations/implications

The study is conducted in a non-western collectivist culture and it makes significant contribution to the available literature on intrinsic motivation by proving that psychological detachment and job crafting act as predictor and highlighting the psychological state through emotional stability. The study further adds toward theory building around the construct of emotional stability, as it is still in its infancy.

Practical implications

This study has depicted that emotionally stable employees who are psychologically detached and have proactive job crafting behaviour can achieve higher intrinsic motivation.

Originality/value

On the basis of the recovery process (i.e. the effort-recovery model), the broaden and build theory and self-determination theory (SDT), this paper demonstrates that emotional stability plays the role of mediator that drives psychological detachment and encourages job crafting, which has the ability to intrinsically motivate the employees.

The Effect of Job Crafting on Performance and Satisfaction: Physical Engagement as a Mediator and Cognitive and Emotional Engagement as Moderators

This study explores the relationship between job crafting on task performance and job satisfaction among faculty members in higher educational institutions. A conceptual model was developed wherein the moderating role of cognitive and emotional engagement and the mediating role of physical engagement in influencing the task performance. Data was collected from 592 faculty members from higher educational institutions in southern India. First, the instrument’s psychometric properties were checked by performing structural equation modelling using the LISREL package. The hypothesized relationships were tested using Hayes’ PROCESS macros. The findings indicate that (a) job crafting and physical engagement are positively related to task performance, (b) job crafting is positively related to physical engagement, (c) physical engagement mediates the relationship between job crafting and task performance and (d) task performance mediates between job crafting and job satisfaction. The results also suggest that cognitive engagement moderates between job crafting and physical engagement.

Furthermore, emotional engagement (second moderator) moderates the relationship between job crafting and cognitive engagement (first moderator) in influencing task performance mediated through physical engagement. The three-way interaction between task crafting, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement in influencing physical engagement is a novel contribution of this study. The implications for theory and practice in human resource management and personnel psychology are discussed.

Encouraging job crafting in the workplace for newcomers: A two-year multi-wave study

It is important to identify the antecedents of newcomers' job crafting as it assists with their adjustment in the workplace. This study made use of transformational leadership and newcomers' calling as organizational and personal resources that predict job crafting. We hypothesized that transformational leadership would have an indirect relationship with newcomers' job crafting after 2 years through their occupational self-efficacy and that their calling would moderate this mediational path. A multi-wave approach was employed wherein data from 280 new employees were collected three times during the first 2 years of their careers. The survey was completed by 150 participants. The results illustrated that transformational leadership was positively related to newcomers' job crafting after 2 years of entry through their occupational self-efficacy. Additionally, newcomers' calling moderated the mediating effect of occupational self-efficacy between transformational leadership and job crafting. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

It Is Better for Younger Workers: The Gain Cycle between Job Crafting and Work Engagement

Job Crafting has been proposed as a new perspective, consisting in a bottom-up strategy to achieve person-job fit by emphasizing employees' active participation and spontaneous change in job design, which is specifically adequate for older workers. Despite this fact, the cyclical influence between Work Engagement and Job Crafting over time has been less researched. We postulated that a gain cycle could be observed in the relationships between Job Crafting and its outcomes. Hence, we tested a longitudinal moderated mediation model in which Work Engagement increases over time through an increment in Job Crafting behaviors (Hypothesis 1), while this process is moderated by workers' age (Hypothesis 2). The present study follows a three-wave design where participants (N = 126) responded to online surveys at three measurement waves, three months apart. At Time 1 and Time 3, we assessed Work Engagement, Job Crafting behavior, and demographic variables, while at Time 2 we only assessed Job Crafting. Our findings partially differ from what was expected. The findings supported that the relationship between Work Engagement at Time 1 and changes in Job Crafting behavior across time was negative and non-significant, failing to provide support for Hypothesis 1. Related to Hypothesis 2, our results are mixed. Although the interaction between changes in Job Crafting and workers' age did not demonstrate a statistical influence on Work Engagement at Time 3, our findings suggested that the direct influence was complemented by a negative indirect effect through the longitudinal increase of Job Crafting, which mainly affects aged workers. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Distinct Patterns of University Students Study Crafting and the Relationships to Exhaustion, Well-Being, and Engagement

Job crafting has been established as a bottom-up work design instrument for promoting health and well-being in the workplace. In recent years, the concepts of job crafting have been applied to the university student context, proving to be positively related to student well-being. Building on person-centered analyses from the employment context, we assessed approach study crafting strategy combinations and the relationships to students’ exhaustion, study engagement, and general well-being. Data from 2,882 German university students were examined, collected online during the summer term in 2020. Using latent profile analysis, we found five distinct crafting groups, which showed discriminate validity with regard to emotional exhaustion, engagement, and well-being. The results underscore the positive role of study crafting for students’ health and well-being. They further indicate a less important role of increasing social resources for emotional exhaustion when combined with a moderate increase in structural resources and a moderate increase in challenging demands. Our findings imply that interventions to promote study crafting should be considered to promote student health and well-being.

Suddenly Telework: Job Crafting as a Way to Promote Employee Well-Being?

COVID-19 confronted many people with an abrupt shift from their usual working environment to telework. This study explores which job characteristics are perceived as most crucial in this exceptional situation and how they differ from people's previous working conditions. Additionally, we focus on job crafting as a response to this situation and how it is related to employees' well-being. We conducted an online survey with N = 599 participants, of which 321 reported that they were telework newcomers. First, we asked participants to indicate the three most important advantages and disadvantages they see in telework. The subsequent questionnaire contained a comprehensive measure of working conditions before and during the pandemic, job crafting behaviors, and indicators of well-being. Based on the qualitative answers, we identified three major advantages and disadvantages. Quantitative results indicate perceived changes in all job characteristics for telework newcomers. Concerning working conditions and well-being, job crafting activities that aim to increase structural and social resources are important mediators. The findings underline the need to design appropriate telework conditions and encourage job crafting activities to foster occupational well-being.

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.

Tomayto, Tomahto?

Abstract. Although job crafting finds widespread application as a leading approach to bottom-up work design, the foundation of the construct is rather shaky: two different theoretical perspectives exist within the research field that have largely been treated separately. An empirical examination of their congruency is missing so far, threatening construct validity, the informative value of the emerging literature, and comparability of effects in practice. In two studies, we investigated the comparability and possible integrative approaches for the two perspectives, including different versions of existing measurement instruments. Our results, based on two large samples of employees stemming from diverse backgrounds and countries ( N1 = 295, N2 = 557), indicate distinct differences in terms of the internal structure of existing job crafting measures and with regard to theoretically anticipated relationships between subdimensions. A first empirical attempt to integrate both perspectives provided promising results for overarching approach/avoidance as well as targets of crafting factors. In general, our results provide cause for concern that the two perspectives should not be regarded as one uniform construct, nor should they be used interchangeably in theory or practice.

Psychological and relational conditions for job crafting to occur

This study aimed to provide a wider understanding of the determinants of job crafting by jointly considering employee well- and ill-being (work engagement and exhaustion) and socio-environmental factors (supervisor and colleague support) as possible levers to promote job crafting. A secondary goal of this research was to simultaneously explore the multidimensionality of work engagement and the potentially differentiated associations between the different facets of work engagement and job crafting behaviours. Questionnaire surveys were collected among 533 workers from various organizations located in France. Results from preliminary analyses showed the superiority of a Bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (B-ESEM) representation of work engagement when compared to alternative representations of ratings of this multidimensional construct. Specifically, employees' ratings of work engagement simultaneously reflected a global work engagement construct, which co-existed with specific vigor, dedication and absorption components. Results from a predictive model indicated that the different facets of work engagement held differentiated relations with job crafting behaviours, while exhaustion did not significantly relate to any job crafting behaviours. Colleague and supervisor support also held differentiated relations with the demands-related job crafting behaviours, while both forms of support were associated with employees' seeking more job resources. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Constructing Well-Being in Organizations: First Empirical Results on Job Crafting, Personality Traits, and Insight

The construct of job crafting is gaining increasing attention in the research and practice of work psychology in light of the positive effects it has on workers and the organizational context. On this basis, the present study aimed to explore the associations between the Big Five personality traits and job crafting (and its subdimensions, individual job crafting and collaborative job crafting), as well as investigating the role of insight in mediating these relationships. A sample of 159 Italian workers took part in the study and completed the self-report measures. Results showed a positive association between extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness and job crafting (total), individual job crafting, and collaborative job crafting, with significant mediations of insight orientation. Openness was positively associated with job crafting (total) and individual job crafting, but not with the collaborative subdimension, with insight orientation that mediated existing relationships. Emotional stability and job crafting (total) or its subdimensions were found to have no significant relationships. These findings suggest that insight orientation could represent a promising resource for job crafting, both in terms of primary prevention, strength-based prevention, and healthy organizations.

Job Crafting: A Challenge to Promote Decent Work for Vulnerable Workers

In recent years, the decent work agenda has called upon vocational psychologists to advance psychological research and intervention to promote work as a human right. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic is having disproportionate consequences on vulnerable workers, such as unemployment and underemployment, highlighting the need to enhance access to decent work for these workers. As a response, the present perspective article advances job crafting as a promising way to shape decent work for marginalized workers. To this end, the article deals with decent work and job crafting, starting with the definition of decent work according to the psychology of working theory (PWT) and examining the evolution of the construct of job crafting. Subsequently, the literature on job crafting is discussed, focusing on variables related to the PWT model of decent work and their effect on vulnerable workers. Finally, possibilities for further research and intervention aimed at promoting decent work through job crafting are discussed.

Meta-analysis and Scientific Mapping of Well-being and Job Performance

In this article, we present a meta-analysis and a scientific mapping about the relationship between different types of well-being and job performance. We followed The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses (Moher et al., 2009), and conduct the search in Web of Science, SCOPUS, Ebscohost, Proquest, and Jstor databases. We identified 43 studies from 1994 to early 2020 that represent 45 independent samples, 34,221 participants, and 77 correlations between four types of well-being and six of job performance. Meta-analysis results show that are different forms of relations between types and there is not only one form to explain the happy-productive worker hypothesis. The scientific mapping shows that there are seven clusters of topics about well-being and job performance in the Web of Science base articles: (I) Burnout and axiety, (II) Stress and depression, (III) Individual resources, (IV) Work context, (V) Work engagement and commitment, (VI) Justice, and (VII) Human resources practices. We organize the topics from each cluster in the different groups of variables of the contextual model of individual work, well-being and performance (van Veldhoven & Peccei, 2015) to explain their impact in well-being and job performance. We included the observations of our analysis and identified the future key directions for the field.