Search

The rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have significantly shifted the landscape of work, altering the roles of experts and knowledge workers across various domains (Humala et al. 2023). This paper explores the pivotal role of key competencies -- self-efficacy, job crafting, and proactivity -- in navigating the technological transformation brought about by AI in work settings. The three key competencies were previously identified as the main building blocks of the entrepreneurial spirit that is necessary for the successful use of AI in knowledge work and organizations (Humala & Lahtinen 2023, Ruohonen & Humala 2022). The research paper draws insights from a quantitative nation-wide survey that was carried out among knowledge workers in Finland. The survey was conducted during February-March 2024, with the insights gained from 474 informants. The research was funded by The Finnish Work Environment Fund and conducted by Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences based in Helsinki. Results show that while the integration of AI in knowledge work environments generally supports self-efficacy, job crafting, and proactivity, the effects are varied, showing both enhancement and, in some cases, diminishment. The findings indicate that AI's positive influence is most pronounced among those engaged in high levels of knowledge-based tasks and who maintain a positive outlook toward new technologies. This research also highlights some disparity in experiences between different groups, particularly between younger and older knowledge workers with early- and late-careers as well as those in different work positions, pointing to the need for tailored organizational support to ensure equitable benefits from AI technologies. The research reveals that AI can significantly foster proactivity in the workplace, particularly when employees are equipped with sufficient information and resources. Ultimately, this exploration aims to provide insights into developing AI-supported business models that not only leverage the human entrepreneurial spirit but also foster an inclusive environment that enhances organizational competitiveness and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companies increasingly rely on algorithmic management (AM) to efficiently control and coordinate workers, especially in the quick commerce sector, where workers are required to work particularly fast. AM often implies that workers face cognitive demands, such as behavioral constraints imposed by a tight management regime, or significant physical demands, such as a high work pace. Against this backdrop, we interviewed 18 food delivery couriers about how they try to cope with these demands. We find that, despite AM-induced behavioral constraints, workers engage in job crafting to better cope with demanding work conditions, to enrich work roles, and to add or extend resources, thereby increasing their job satisfaction and the perceived meaningfulness of their work. In contrast to previous studies where job crafting is strategically enacted by workers for long-term benefits, our study finds that jobs can also be successfully crafted short-term in an ad hoc manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-initiated actions employees take to modify their jobs currently attract considerable attention. The construct of job crafting was coined to describe self-enacted physical and cognitive changes in task or relational work boundaries. Distinguishing between situation-directed and self-directed components, a model of individual, interpersonal, and organizational antecedents and psychological outcomes of task and cognitive job crafting was tested in a sample of N = 1196 telecommunications employees, based on structural equation modeling. Growth need strength and transformational leader behavior were confirmed as antecedents of both task and cognitive crafting. Situational constraints related to situationdirected task changes but not to self-directed cognitive modifications. Differential motivational effects were captured with the multidimensional model of psychological empowerment. Task crafting related primarily to the control-oriented dimensions of self-determination and impact. Cognitive crafting was associated with the self-oriented aspects of meaning and competence. Results contribute to quantitative research on job crafting; unique are the view on job crafting as selfempowerment and the differentiation of situation-directed and self-directed strategies. Limitations include cross-sectional data, ad hoc scale development, and exclusion of relational aspects. Theoretical and practical implications for motivational processes and well-being at work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, two different concepts regarding the relation between organization members and their working environment are examined. The first concept is job crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001; Wrzesniewski, Dutton & Debebe, 2003), and represents a paradigm shift in management theory from a passive attitude-bearing worker to an (en)active worker who, through reflection and interaction, crafts the images of his or her job, role and self in organizational contexts. The second concept is metaconversation (Robichaud, Giroux & Taylor, 2004), which unveils how the image of an organization emerges through the recursive nature of language. We will compare the concepts of job crafting and metaconversation to show parallels between the concepts, and explore ways in which the two different perspectives on these sensemaking processes can take advantage of the efforts and tools that are used in the study of the other perspective. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents abstracts of several studies related to organizational behavior. Michael Humphreys and Andrew D. Brown argued that a narrative approach can assist researchers in their efforts to analyze organizational identities and sensemaking processes, as political maneuvers designed to legitimate certain interests while marginalizing others. Jenny M. Hoobler investigated whether abusive supervision may be a behavior not necessarily aimed at a specific subordinate, but instead the result of a displeasure by a supervisor with his or her organization. Hwee-Hoon Tan, Maw-Der Foo and Min-Hui Kwek proposed that customer traits play a part in the service encounter. Violet Ho adopted a dyadic-level perspective to examine the impact of social influence on employees' perceptions of psychological contract fulfillment. Kelly L. Zellars and colleagues used survey responses from restaurant employees and their supervisors to investigate linkages between the justice perceptions of employees and organizational citizenship behavior. Greg R. Oldham and Markus Baer proposed that employees exhibit creativity at work when conditions are present that facilitate both the generation of creative ideas and the sharing of these ideas with others.

The purpose of the study is to understand employees' proactive behaviors in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)-enabled environments. Firms to date employ BYOD as a digital transformation strategy aimed to enhance comprehensive enterprise mobility (Bradley et al. 2016; French et al. 2014), as well as meet a growing demand from employees (Harris et al. 2012). With the wide diffusion of BYOD used in organizations, employees are able to interact with enterprise and private technologies that may be leveraged at their work (Niehaves et al. 2013). Many studies suggest that employees would increase job performance if they would choose own software, familiar devices, familiar way of working, and less limitation on own devices (Harris et al. 2012; Lee et al. 2017). These studies have extensively studied BYOD use for employees from management-led perspective, i.e. from a top-down job design process. However, it fails to capture how individuals actually perform their jobs through BYOD use. We attempt to study a bottom-up process where employees proactively reconfigure their IT landscapes that help to approach their work. More specifically, when employees realize that they are unable to complete job tasks, they would either proactively make changes to improve current circumstances or passively accept present conditions (Bateman and Crant 1993). The proactive employees attempt to modify their current work routines or the materiality of the technologies accordingly (Leonardi 2013; Schmitz et al. 2016). This process can be captured by the concept of Job Crafting. Job crafting refers to "the physical and cognitive changes individuals make in the task or relational boundaries of their work" (Wrzesniewski and Dutton 2001, p. 179). It captures employees' proactive behaviors to reframe their jobs aimed to fulfill their idiosyncratic needs at work (Berg et al. 2013). Drawing on this theoretical lens, we want to understand how BYOD-enabled work environments allow employees to craft their work experiences in ways that are consistent with their individualized needs. In this ERF paper, we propose a conceptual model based on literature review. Moving forward, a mixed-methods research will be employed because to capture a rich understanding of this phenomenon (Venkatesh et al. 2013). First, we will employ an interpretive interview to identify its impact measures through in-depth discussions with BYOD users in an industry-leading biotechnology company. Second, we will revise our proposed conceptual model in accordance with findings from interviews and extended literature review. Then we will conduct empirical instruments to test revised model in a specific context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, we examined both the mediating and moderating roles of job crafting and family-role overload respectively in the relationship between Family Supportive Supervisor Behaviors and employee work interference with family (WIF.) In a three-wave field study involving 147 employees, our results showed that FSSB at Time 1 was positively associated with employee job crafting at Time 2, which in turn resulted in reduced levels of WIF at Time 3. Furthermore, our results also revealed a first- stage moderated mediation pattern whereby family-role overload moderated the mediating effect of job crafting, such that the effect of FSSB on job crafting was more pronounced when family-role overload is high rather than low. We highlight the implications these findings for both researchers and practitioners. Keywords: FSSB, Job crafting, work-family interference, family-role overload [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on team composition theory and job crafting research, this study built and examined a comprehensive moderated mediation model in a sample of 88 construction management teams consisting of 88 team leaders and 429 subordinates, linking team proactivity personality with team performance via collaborative job crafting and the moderating effect of empowering leadership. The results show that team mean proactive personality is positively related to team performance. In addition, collaborative job crafting fully mediates the relationship between team mean proactive personality and team performance. Furthermore, the relationship between team mean proactive personality and collaborative job crafting is moderated by empowering leadership. Finally, empowering leadership moderates the mediation effect, in that the positive mediation effect of collaborative job crafting is stronger when empowering leadership is high than it is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing the paradox of public employees who do dare to implement their self-starting innovative ideas, in a non-supportive environment, as it is the public sector during the financial crisis, was the cue to investigate the following research question: How do some employees go the extra mile and produce self initiated innovative outcomes in non-supportive environment while others do not? In order to unfold such behavior (namely extra-innovative behavior), we got inspired by the work of Hannah Arendt, where to act means taking an initiative while revealing ourselves to the human world. Her perspective along with transcendent behavior, extra role behaviors, institutional entrepreneurship, job crafting and innovative behavior was the theoretical base of our work. To further investigate the issue we performed an inductive qualitative study in 10 public organizations, consisted of 20 semi-structured in depth interviews and on site observations. Our results indicate that extra-innovative behavior is developed through three stages. Firstly, proactive, skillful and authentic employees jump from non-action to job crafting behavior. Secondly, courageous, other focused and supported employees engage themselves in individual innovative behavior and thirdly, persistent employees with job passion and sense of control of their life achieve extra-innovative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational researchers tout job crafting given its potential to enhance employee well-being through the creation of positive work environments. Previous research suggests that job crafting is most likely to occur in enriched environments replete with resources and challenging demands. The purpose of the current study was to examine if and why individuals job craft in unenriched work environments - work contexts low in demands and resources. We suggest that unenriched environments may only generate job crafting behaviors insofar as these environments are subjectively experienced as unpleasant by employees. Specifically, we offer state boredom as a mechanism through which unenriched environments can generate job crafting. Using a daily diary design, we found that low levels of job demands (i.e., workload) and job resources (i.e., task variety and co- worker social support) were associated with greater state boredom. In addition, and contrary to what we hypothesized, the results of our multilevel regressions indicated that bored individuals were less likely to job craft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite substantial progress in the empowering leadership literature, questions such as how and when empowering leadership affects employee job performance still need further investigation. We built and tested a model linking empowering leadership with job performance via job crafting and psychological ownership. Organizational tenure was theorized as a boundary condition for the effect of empowering leadership. Three- wave survey data were collected from a sample of 231 Chinese employees. Employee job performance data were obtained from company records. Job crafting included both expansion job crafting (seeking job resources and seeking job challenges) and contraction job crafting (reducing demands). Results from structural equation modeling analyses showed that empowering leadership was positively related to expansion but not to contraction job crafting. These relationships were moderated by organizational tenure such that empowering leadership was more strongly related to job crafting for employees with long organizational tenure than those with short or medium organizational tenure. Expansion but not contraction job crafting was positively related to job performance via psychological ownership. Thus, in this study, we advanced understanding of the underlying mechanism linking empowering leadership to employee job performance by drawing on the job crafting literature. Besides, implications of the findings for successful aging at work were also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how and when customer participation in service delivery promotes employees work-to-family enrichment. Using two-wave data collected from 160 employees in a hotel, we found that, when customers participate more in their daily work, employees would enrich their family role from their work role more through increased relational job crafting. In addition, employees organizational-based self-esteem (OBSE) accentuates the positive linkage between customer participation and employees relational crafting, and subsequently work-to-family enrichment. By taking different parties in one's work life (i.e., customers, work per se, and family) into consideration, this study makes important contributions to extant literature on work-to- family enrichment and job crafting as well. It also carries important implications for service organizations to support employees proactive participation in job crafting and enrich their family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the job crafting and activation theories, in this study we examine how accountants react to the precarization of their profession to maintain their motivation. More specifically, we examine whether job insecurity and perceived external prestige are significantly associated to professionals' tendency to engage in job crafting behaviors. A two-wave study was conducted among 321 accountants operating in Southern Italy, a region hit by a harsh economic recession. The results indicate that the relations between job insecurity and perceived external prestige are curvilinear, inverted U-shaped for job insecurity and U-shaped for perceived external prestige Accountants were more likely to engage in job crafting behaviors when they perceived moderate levels of job insecurity; whereas they were more likely to craft their job in presence of low and high perceived external prestige. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this diary study, we examined whether employee job crafting behaviours (i.e., resource seeking, challenge seeking, demand reducing) act as a substitute for lack of managers¢ influence tactics during turbulent times of organizational change. We hypothesized that daily job crafting behaviours relate positively to daily adaptive performance, particularly when managers¢ influence tactics are absent. Twenty-nine hotel employees completed a questionnaire to evaluate their managers¢ influence tactics, and then used a diary for five consecutive working days to assess daily job crafting behaviours and daily adaptive performance. Multilevel analyses revealed that daily seeking resources related positively to adaptive performance only in conditions where managers do not use influence tactics, and was unrelated in conditions where managers do use influence tactics. These findings imply that employees compensate for the absence of managers¢ influence tactics by seeking resources in order to facilitate their own adaptation to organizational changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether different supervisory styles are relevant in facilitating or inhibiting job crafting, and whether job crafting has a significant role in promoting self-competence and work performance. Data were gathered from 162 employees in a large manufacturing company and analyzed through a regression methodology. Our theoretical approach to job crafting is based on the job demands-resource model. We found a positive relationship between promotive control and job crafting behaviors such as increasing structural and social resources, and increasing challenging demands, and a negative relationship between restrictive control and job crafting behaviors such as increasing structural resources and increasing challenging demands. Job crafting behaviors such as increasing structural resources and challenging demands positively affect both self-competence and performance, while decreasing hindering demands negatively affects self- competence and performance. Our results have significant implications for organizations interested in facilitating job crafting and increasing employees' self-competence and performance, as they should encourage a promotive style of managerial control and avoid a restrictive style of control, which we found to be deleterious for job crafting, self-competence and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have adopted different theoretical perspectives to explain the influence of perceived HR practice on employee outcomes. However, few studies have investigated the role of HR practice in fostering higher in-role and extra-role employee performance by encouraging employee participation in job design, a process referred to as job crafting. Drawing on HRM process theory and the job crafting literature, this study examines how work engagement and job crafting mediate the relationship between employee perceptions of HR practice and employee performance. Based on an analysis of 455 employees working in five Chinese manufacturing firms, the results indicate that where management maintain a strong HR system, employees are more likely to be engaged in their work and participate in job crafting. In addition, job crafting on its own, and work engagement and job crafting together, are shown to mediate the HRM- performance relationship. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study develops a process model demonstrating how supervisor-subordinate guanxi relations contribute to subordinate performance. The proposed model was tested on a sample of 599 subordinate-supervisor dyads from seven manufacturing firms in China. The results indicate that two process variables job resources and job crafting sequentially mediate the influence of supervisor-subordinate guanxi on performance. Our study makes a noteworthy contribution to guanxi theory as it relates to organizational behaviour with important implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between work engagement and performance, research needs to more fully explore the network of linkages involving the antecedents and consequences of engagement, including important questions of mediation and moderation. This study proposes a comprehensive model of such linkages. Using latent moderated structural equation modelling on a sample of 320 permanent full-time front-line employees in an Indian organization, we find that having a more supportive supervisor and better personal resources (measured here as core self-evaluations) are positively associated with the work engagement of employees. More engaged employees are then more likely to report that they craft their jobs, a relationship that is strengthened when employees enjoy greater autonomy. Greater job crafting is associated with better task performance. Reinforcing the importance of employee control in their working environment, the mediating role of job crafting between engagement and task performance is enhanced by greater autonomy and whether greater work engagement leads to better task or contextual performance is influenced by the degree of autonomy that employees enjoy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we highlight the role of job crafting as a job redesign approach in the process of newcomer adaptation. The existing literature has focused on either individual differences or work contexts as drivers of job crafting by employees. Taking an integrated approach, we propose that core self-evaluation and leader-member exchange (LMX) together impact newcomer job crafting over time, which in turn influence subsequent adaptation outcomes. Four-wave data were collected from 146 newcomers during their first year of working in a Chinese company. In accordance with our theorizing, the results indicated that core self-evaluation and initial LMX related positively to initial job crafting and job crafting change, which in turn positively related to subsequent LMX and task complexity. In addition, newcomer job crafting change also positively related to creative behavior rated by supervisors. These findings provide an integrated understanding of how and why newcomer job crafting evolves over time, as well as the unique influence that job crafting change has on important adaptation outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employees' proactive approach in their jobs and towards their careers has become focus of increasing interest among both scholars and practitioners. However, how the two approaches co- exist and contribute to employees' well-being remains unclear. This paper contributes to filling this gap. It offers an integration of two literatures by examining how proactive employees can optimize their well-being through both a job- (i.e., job-crafting) and career-related (i.e., career competencies) process. Specifically, we expect that employees with a proactive personality engage in job crafting behaviors by adjusting their job demands and resources in such a way that they accomplish higher levels of job satisfaction and better health. Additionally, we expect that proactive personality is related to the development of career competencies, which in turn is related to well-being. Data was collected among 574 employees working in various organizations. The results of structural equation modeling analyses offered support for the proposed model: job crafting and career competencies both mediated the positive relationship between proactive personality and well-being. The findings suggest that proactive employees can enhance their well-being through both job design and the development of career-related skills and abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We refine and extend the job demands-resources job crafting model with reasoning from regulatory focus theory to account for theoretical and empirical inconsistencies in relationships between the crafting of challenging and hindering job demands with employee motivation, health, and work outcomes. We tested our refined and extended job demands-resources job crafting model using meta- analytic structural equation modeling. First, we differentiated promotion-focused job crafting (i.e., job crafting through increasing job resources and challenging job demands) from prevention-focused job crafting (i.e., job crafting through decreasing hindering job demands). Second, we showed that promotion-focused job crafting consistently facilitates employee motivation, health, and work outcomes, whereas prevention-focused job crafting hampers employee motivation, health, and work outcomes. Implications for future research and practices are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study contributes to the literatures on FSSB and job crafting by highlighting employee job crafting as an explanation of the relationship between FSSB and employee health outcomes. Grounded in the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, we hypothesized that FSSB would be associated with employee mental and physical health through job crafting. Our propositions were tested using data collected at three points from 877 Chinese employees. The results demonstrate that FSSB (Time 1) was positively related to both employee mental and physical health (Time 3). Furthermore, the results also revealed that employee job crafting (Time 2) partially mediated this relationship. We highlight the implications our findings for both researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the nature of work is changing along with contemporary organizations, employees are increasingly being treated as free agents, left to shape their own work experiences and career trajectories that involve increased mental pressures in the current work environment. Work related or job stress is an increasingly common feature of the modern workplace. Indeed, in some sense, they are emblematic of working life in the 21st century. To keep pace, work design theory and research is undergoing a transformation. Despite the useful developments, the idea that employees actively design their jobs has not been studied in proportion to its importance. The job crafting concept focuses on what individuals actually do in their jobs, emphasizing the active role of individuals in shaping their experiences and outcomes. There is accumulating evidence that job crafting has a positive impact on employee attitudes and behaviors. However, most of the existing studies have predominantly examined antecedents of job crafting with a lesser focus on its outcomes, especially stress related factors. In the present study, we aim to expand this literature by investigating how job crafting techniques help in the self-management of work related problems and play an important role in contributing to employee engagement and performance through reduced levels of stress and burnout. Data were gathered from 268 full-time employees in the management consultancy services. The results of structural equation modeling offer strong support for the proposed stress model of job crafting. Findings show that role stress partially mediates the relationship of job crafting with work engagement, while burnout fully mediates the relation between job crafting and colleague rated in-role performance. Job crafting is certainly significant in decreasing ambiguity, conflict, overload and burnout and thus important for higher engagement and performance through reduced stress and strain symptoms among employees. Implications for job crafting and stress management theory, research and practice are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown the benefits of job crafting as a way for employees to actively create changes in their jobs. Recently, the importance of daily job crafting has been shown. Although researchers have suggested that everyone is capable of job crafting, the effect of (daily) job crafting behaviors may not be the same in every situation. Using conservation of resources theory, we add to current knowledge on the link between daily job crafting and daily well-being by examining the moderating role of flexible work designs as an organizational resource and task proficiency as a personal resource in this relationship. Results of a multi-source diary study among 139 employees over 5 days (n=512) showed that daily increasing structural job resources is associated with higher daily well-being. Furthermore, flexible work designs strengthen the relationship between daily increasing structural job resources and daily well-being, but at the same time negatively affect the relationship between daily increasing social job resources and daily well- being. Task proficiency weakens the relationship between daily increasing structural job resources and daily well-being. We discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a growing number of scholars argue job crafting holds important implications for both employees and organizations, little research has examined both individual and contextual factors that lead to job crafting and how job crafting may result in important outcomes such as organizational network centrality. Using survey data from 86 full-time employees at one of the largest Korean companies in the petrochemical industry, this study examines the antecedents and consequences of job crafting. The results show that both individual (regulatory focus and work orientation) and contextual factors (job complexity and hierarchical position) influence job crafting, such that people with a calling orientation, a promotion focus, or in higher positions are more likely to engage in job crafting behavior. In addition, job complexity positively moderates the effect of calling orientation on job crafting. Finally, job crafting influences informal network position (advice network centrality), and such behavior fully mediates the relationship between individual antecedents and network centrality. We discuss implications of these findings for proactivity at work, job crafting, and social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A research gap in the existing research literature on job crafting is the role of contextual factors on the proactivity of employees in redesigning and redefining their job at the task, social, and cognitive level. The purpose of the present mixed methods study was to address this gap by developing an organizational framework on job crafting focused on three main factors: a) autonomy and skill variety; b) organizational learning culture; c) HR policies and practices. Based on organizational learning and job characteristics perspectives, we collected both quantitative and qualitative data. We carried out a survey at the individual level (N=760) in order to test if organizational learning culture as well as autonomy and skill variety affect job crafting, and conducted semi-structured interviews (N=30) with managers in order to explore how HR policies and practices can foster job crafting. This study revealed that increasing employees' perception of autonomy and skill variety lead to an increase of crafting at the level of task. In addition, increasing organizational learning culture and adopting a set of HR policies and practices that maps onto the organizational learning culture model is associate with an increase in social and cognitive crafting. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations greatly benefit from employees that are highly engaged in their work and past research has examined a broad range of possible antecedents and consequences of employee engagement (Halbesleben, 2010). However, despite substantial advancements in our understanding of work engagement in general, scholars have argued for increased investigation into the dynamic and fluctuating nature of work engagement. Using a day-level design, the current study examines within- and between-person relationships between two employee-driven, resource building strategies (nonwork mastery experiences, job crafting behaviors) and daily work engagement. Employees from a U.S. technology firm provided responses in the morning, at lunchtime, and after work each day for five working days. Results provide support for positive associations between nonwork mastery experiences, job crafting behaviors (particularly those aimed at increasing resources), and daily work engagement. Further, positive affect was found to play a mediating role in these relationships at the within-person level. Differential results at the within- and between- levels suggest that daily nonwork mastery and job crafting behaviors may require an investment of resources that are not fully recuperated within the same or next workday. Rather, these types of behavior appear to have their effects at the between-person level suggesting that work engagement benefits when nonwork mastery behaviors and job crafting behaviors are habitually higher than average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job crafting refers to changes to a job that workers make with the intention of improving the job for themselves, and it may include physical, cognitive, social, technological, and procedural changes. Using theory and both qualitative and quantitative methods, data were collected on 433 job crafting episodes from interviews with 196 workers from 58 jobs in 6 industries. Study one develops a taxonomy of types of job crafting that has two general dimensions (a goal-directed effectiveness dimension and a withdrawal-oriented avoidant dimension) and seven specific dimensions (work role expansion, implementing work organization, metacognition, adoption of knowledge and technology, social expansion and facilitation, withdrawal, and work-role reduction). Study two examines the motivational properties and effectiveness of specific types of job crafting. Results support the two general dimensions of job crafting and show that effectiveness job crafting yields higher motivation and effectiveness than avoidant job crafting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on in-depth interviews and observations of 54 veterinary employees in five clinics to develop a grounded theory about how relationships influence the experience of meaningful work. We explain how the ways in which people think about their interactions with animals and people - a process we term cognitive relationship crafting - influences the meaningfulness of work. We identify three dimensions of cognitive relationship crafting and outline the processes through which they may link to meaningful work. We also explain how cognitive empathy can prevent the meaningfulness of employees' work from being undermined by challenging interactions with others, and may in turn enhance the experience of meaningfulness through the mechanism of self-transcendence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Job crafting" has emerged as an employee driven approach that expands perspectives on job redesign to include proactive changes that individuals make to their own jobs. However, job crafting theory is still in the nascent stage of development. For instance given, that the idea of employees working from a fixed job description is becoming less common over time, especially in 'dejobbing' contexts such as that of consultancy services characterized by project driven work, it will be intriguing to understand the micro-dynamics of job crafting at the ground level - e.g. how job crafting efforts differ between tasks that fall within/out of the formal job description; differentials in the process of job crafting on the basis of ownership of goals/task assignment; and the triggers behind the process of job crafting. Utilizing a one week daily diary study and in-depth interviews of 42 consultants, we find job crafting activities to be present even for tasks/roles beyond given job descriptions, and predominant for self assigned goals and tasks. The relational aspect of job crafting is a priority among consultants, especially in a flux of senior support and trust, while job demands and resource discrepancies were revealed as the core triggers to job crafting. Finally, a set of propositions are put forward, theoretical contributions and practical implications outlined, along with study limitations and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research argues that jobs should be designed a priori by managers but recent changes in the work environment challenge this position. A reverse job design theory is proposed: instead of designing enlarged jobs that enable individuals to interact with their social environment, organizations could design formal networks to make individuals enlarge jobs on their own through job crafting behaviors. An interest paradox emerges: while centrality in formal networks is beneficial to job crafting for subordinate perceptions, it becomes deleterious for supervisory perceptions. Furthermore, when informal networks are high, the relationship between formal networks and subordinate perceptions of job crafting is positive, while it turns to negative when informal networks are low. The exact contrary is observed for supervisory perceptions. The emerging theory explains why supervisors perceive the opposite of subordinates while offering novel managerial indications to job design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional job design is a major area of Organizational Psychology and the most well-known and dominant model is the Job Characteristics Model introduced by Hackman & Oldham (1976). In modern reality however, organizations are reacting and adapting to their changing surroundings, with jobs becoming more flexible, dynamic, virtual, and collaborative, resulting in informal bottom-up work design, such as job crafting, being increasingly recognised (Hornung, Rousseau, Glaser, Angerer & Weigl, 2010; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Organizations are changing their work structures and jobs without any input from academia i.e., practice is running ahead of and independently of research. The area of research into job design is therefore in danger of becoming moribund, with significant fragmentation between academic research and practice within evolving organizations. This symposium presents current research on the future of job design and discusses new opportunities, ideas, models, trends, techniques and insights for job design in the 21st century. Following an introduction to the area and the need for change in job design research, with particular regard to changing business models, the presentations aim to highlight a number of different approaches to job design. This includes the consideration of individual values and goals, the ability and issues around co-crafting in a collaborative manner, and the challenges of job design within entrepreneurial roles. An interactive discussion assesses the best way to approach future job design research and ensure links with practice, for example is there a 'one size fits all', top-down approach vs. customised, bottom-up approach, or can there be a combination of these perspectives. Co-crafting Jobs in Collaborative Work. Presenter: John Cordery; U. of Western Australia. Customised Job Design through Employee Self-Concordance. Presenter: Kerrie Unsworth; U. of Western Australia. Presenter: Elisa Adriasola; U. of Western Australia. A Socio-Technical Approach to Job Design: Linkages with Changing Organizational Business Models. Presenter: Lucy Elisabeth Bolton; Leeds U. Business School. Presenter: Chris W. Clegg; U. of Leeds. Presenter: Lauren C Beaumont; U. of Leeds. Job Design and Entrepreneurship. Presenter: Michael Frese; National U. of Singapore [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Involvement in workplace networks generates career advantages. The explanations for why people develop or dissolve these valuable relationships tend to center around interaction tendencies, due to proximity, homophily, or reciprocity, for example. Alternatively, people may purposively change their network ties in an effort to improve their work experiences, as indicated by job crafting theory. Specifically, work pace pressures and emotional demands have been shown to produce stress and strain. People may respond to these job demands by turning toward or away from their coworkers, affecting their access to valuable resources. We study whether and how people craft their work-focused and socially-focused workplace networks in response to job demands in an R&D department of a large Scandinavian bio-technology company, through three waves of data collected over eighteen months. Our results indicate that people faced with a high pace of work tend to shrink, or reduce the size of their socially-focused and work-focused networks, even after accounting for alternative explanations for network change. In contrast, people who perceive high emotional demands tend to build, or increase the size of their socially-focused networks. This work merges theories of organizational networks, job crafting and job demands-resources to provide an agent-driven explanation for network change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on job crafting perspective, we theorized an integrative model linking perceived underemployment to three behavioral outcomes, creative performance, organizational citizenship behavior and destructive deviance. Using data collected from two sources (327 teachers and their immediate supervisors) via a three-wave time-lagged research design, we found support to our hypothesis that the joint effect of perceived underemployment and organizational identification on task crafting was curvilinear. When the teachers' organizational identification was high rather than low, they engaged in more task crafting for the organization at intermediate levels of perceived underemployment (an inverted U shape). Further, task crafting in turn positively related to creative performance and organizational citizenship behavior but negatively to organization deviance, indicating a curvilinear mediated moderation mechanism as a whole. Theoretical and practical implications of this study were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, we attempted to test the predictive power of job crafting and I-deals as employee proactive behaviors over team and individual level performance. Moreover, we also tested for the mediation of team resilience in the relationship between employee proactive behaviors and performance outcomes at both team and individual levels. We recruited full-time employees (N =254) who work in three different industries in Istanbul, Turkey. We collected our data in separate time settings. Findings from structural equation modeling analyses revealed that job crafting and I-deals predict performance outcomes in different strengths. Moreover, our results also emphasized that team resilience mediates certain relations between proactive behaviors and performance outcomes. With this research, we substantiate our arguments by building on different theoretical perspectives (e.g., proactivity, resilience research streams) and make contributions over previous research by going beyond the Western contexts. Our findings emphasized the practical importance of I-deals and job crafting for organizational settings. Further managerial implications and suggestions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elaborates a theory on the social context of job crafting. It is theorized that individuals proactively craft their own jobs through social interactions with their network contacts. Exploring the interplay between social networks and job crafting contributes to research as it highlights unexplored aspects of networking relationships. While previous research assumed that network centrality measures exercise convergent and mostly overlapping effects, I found that centrality measures exercise divergent and unique effects on job crafting. While previous research assumed that job characteristics exercise convergent and often overlapping effects, I found that the job characteristics of network contacts exercise divergent and unique effects on job crafting. While previous research assumed that proactive behaviors are beneficial to performance, I found that job crafting traces a non- monotonic relationship to performance, being positive when network centrality is high and negative when network centrality is low. Findings reinforce job crafting theory and suggest revising our current assumptions on the role of networks and acknowledging their ambivalent nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]