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

Abstract

PurposeIn 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/approachTo 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).FindingsWhen 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/valueThe 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.

Individual Job Crafting and Supervisory Support: An Examination of Supervisor Attribution and Crafter Credibility

“… 55 Compared with the individual-level and team-level outcomes of job crafting, how leaders respond to individual job crafting has received scant attention in the literature. Considering the changes and impacts employees’ job crafting brings to the organization, 56 we examine the relationship between employees’ job crafting and supervisory support. Our research will further develop this literature by encouraging more future work to explore the impacts of job crafting from the view of other stakeholders.…”

“…By doing so, we address the knowledge gap arising from that "while jobcrafting outcomes and antecedents have often been studied, the studied mechanisms and boundary conditions are rather limited." 56 Finally, from a practical view, our work also offers insights for employees to engage in job crafting in an effective way, 42 and provides implications for managers to find better ways to improve employees' job crafting at work.…”

“… 32 Despite these benefits, recent research has argued that job crafting, as an individualized and bottom-up job re-design, elicits different reactions and responses from managers owing to the status quo being challenged and the environment being changed. 56 For instance, studies have suggested that supervisors do not always appreciate employees’ job crafting, and even have negative reactions to such self-initiatives if the activity is perceived as an image risk. 34 , 50 Therefore, leaders’ response essentially depends on how they interpret the motivation for employees’ job crafting.…”

“…To start with, shifting to the manager’s perspective, we advance our understanding of the social consequences of individual job crafting. 56 Drawing on attribution theory, we offer a comprehensive view of supervisors’ reactions to employees’ job crafting. Second, by identifying supervisors’ differential attributions to approach and avoidance job crafting, we explain the mechanism of supervisors’ responses 13 and describe the potential risks and rewards of individual job crafting in the social context.…”

Promoting Flow at Work through Proactive Personality: A Sequential Mediation Model with Evidence from Italian Employees

“…In other words, proactive employees may be able to redesign their work, i.e., using job crafting, defined as modalities that can be changed while always remaining within the boundaries of specific job duties [29]. Job crafting is initiated by workers and constitutes a form of proactive behavior at work [30]. Job crafting refers to behaviors introduced autonomously by the worker and aimed at bringing about a change in the work environment, aligning one's work with one's preferences, motivations, and passions [31].…”