Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction, Job Crafting, and Meaningful Work: Network Analysis

Abstract

To satisfy the psychological needs at work, employees engage in job crafting, which allows them to modify their jobs in meaningful ways. This study extends the research by examining the relationships between variables of job crafting model (i.e., basic psychological need for autonomy, competence and relatedness, perceived opportunities to craft, job crafting, and meaningful work) in a single system network. Participants were 340 Brazilian professionals (mean age 46 years, 61% female). We used network analysis (e.g., partial correlations, shortest paths, centrality measures). The results indicated that psychological needs influenced behavioral crafting and that cognitive crafting served as a mediator of these strategies to meaningful work. Autonomy and perceived opportunities to craft were the shortest paths to meaningful work. Cognitive crafting exerted the strongest influence on meaningful work. The findings suggest that meaningful work is developed through a proactive bottom-up process.