Orientation: Job crafting can result in a number of positive outcomes for teachers, such as increased meaningfulness and engagement at work. Increased work engagement and psychological meaningfulness may yield positive benefits for the practice of teaching, thus highlighting the pivotal role of job crafting.Research purpose: The study’s aim was to investigate the relationship between job crafting and subjective well-being amongst South African high school teachers. Subjective well-being comprises psychological meaningfulness and work engagement. The potential mediating effect that psychological meaningfulness had on this relationship was further explored.Motivation for the study: Being in a highly stressful occupation, teachers need to continuously find ways to craft their working practices in order to deal effectively with their job demands and to capitalise on their available job resources. Furthermore, South Africa’s current education system calls for serious proactive measures to be taken to improve and rectify the current status, such as job crafting.Research approach, design and method: A quantitative, cross-sectional survey design was used and administered to a sample of South African high school teachers situated in Gauteng, South Africa (N = 251).Main findings: A positive relationship was found between job crafting (increasing structural resources and challenging job demands) and work engagement. Furthermore, psychological meaningfulness mediated the relationship between job crafting and work engagement amongst the sampled high school teachers.Practical/managerial implications: Teachers who craft their work to better suit their preferences and needs will obtain greater meaning in their work and experience increased levels of work engagement. Training programmes and/or group-based interventions targeted around job crafting techniques may be particularly useful in the South African teaching context.Contribution/value-add: This study highlights the importance of job crafting to the well-being of teachers. It further contributes to the literature pertaining to job crafting and teaching specifically, as well as to the limited job crafting research that has been conducted in the South African context.

Individual personality is known to have a direct impact on job performance. Yet, little is known about the behavioural processes through which personality unfolds and ultimately affects employee performance.Research purpose: This study set out to investigate the indirect relationship between personality and performance through job crafting behaviour. Job crafting, the proactive changes employees make to their task, relational and cognitive job boundaries, has been shown to relate to a number of positive employee and organisational outcomes.Motivation for the study: Individual differences, such as personality, affect the manner in which employees approach their work, be it in the tasks they complete or the relationships that they build with others. It is thus imperative to understand how unique personality traits have an impact on important business outcomes such as job performance.Research approach/design and method: A quantitative cross-sectional research design was conducted amongst a sample of South African working individuals (N = 580). Structural equation modelling (SEM) was the primary statistical technique used to investigate the research hypotheses. Main findings:The study results showed that the 'Big Five' personality traits indirectly influenced job performance (i.e. in-role behaviour, organisational citizenship behaviour) through job crafting as a mediator.Practical/managerial implications: Organisations who take the initiative to truly understand their employees and their unique personalities have a greater chance of leveraging valuable employee and business outcomes such as job crafting and job performance. Incorporating valid and reliable personality measures in an organisation's recruitment and selection process may thus prove beneficial in predicting proactive work behaviours and overall employee performance. Contribution/value-add:This study contributes to the limited knowledge surrounding the individual antecedents of job crafting behaviour and further shows how one's predisposition (i.e. personality) can have an indirect impact on performance through the behaviours employees engage in, such as job crafting.

A Rasch validation was performed on the Tims, Bakker, and Derks’s Job Crafting Scale (JCS) in the South African working context. The JCS, which has been linked to employee well-being and career-related outcomes, continues to be the most widely used measure of job crafting behavior. Data obtained from the JCS generally showed good fit to the Rasch model. Four items were flagged during the analysis for displaying misfit (1 item) or differential item functioning (3 items), warranting further research attention. The study disclosed the dimensionality of the JCS, the hierarchical ordering and fit of the items, the functionality of the response format, and the ability of the JCS to measure invariantly across men and women, yielding new and interesting insights into the psychometric properties of the scale. The study contributes to research concerning the validity of the JCS in a non-European context, particularly through the use of Rasch analysis as a validation technique.

Orientation: Investigating the psychological aspects associated with the coronavirus disease might be important for psychological interventions. The fear of coronavirus-19 scale (FCV-19S) has emerged as a popular measure of coronavirus-19-related fear. However, its psychometric properties remain unknown in South Africa.Research purpose: This study set out to investigate the internal validity of the FCV-19S in the South African context using the Rasch measurement model.Motivation for the study: There have been some mixed findings on the psychometric properties of the FCV-19S in international research and its psychometric properties are yet to be investigated in South Africa. Investigating these psychometric properties can provide psychometric information to practitioners who wish to use this instrument in the South African context.Research approach/design and method: A cross-sectional survey research design was used. The FCV-19S was administered to 159 adults. The Rasch partial credit model was applied to the item responses to investigate the measurement quality of the FCV-19S.Main findings: The FCV-19S showed somewhat satisfactory internal validity in the South African context within the boundaries of the current sample, and clarity was obtained on the mixed findings obtained in the previous research. Potential shortcomings of the scale were identified that might reduce its applicability to the South African context.Practical/managerial implications: Our results provide tentative support for the internal validity of the FCV-19S in South Africa. Suggestions for the improvement of the scale are made.Contribution/value-add: This is one of the first studies to investigate the internal validity of the FCV-19S in South Africa. Our results hold important implications for the continued use of this scale and have helped to clarify some of the mixed findings obtained in previous research.