Abstract
Transformational leaders are expected to challenge their followers to take greater ownership of their work, allowing the leader to align followers with tasks that enhance their performance. In the present study, we hypothesize that transformational leadership is positively related to followers' job-crafting behaviour – proactive behaviour aimed at optimizing job demands and job resources. Moreover, we argue that followers' promotion focus (i.e. being driven by growth and development needs) positively moderates this relationship. Data were collected from 107 employees from Norwegian knowledge-based organizations (response = 93.2%). Participants responded to a general questionnaire and five daily diary questionnaires (total N = 535 occasions). The results of multilevel analyses revealed partial support for our hypotheses. Followers' day-level perception of their leader's transformational behaviour was positively related to followers' day-level job crafting in the form of increasing structural and social resources. Moreover, daily transformational leadership was particularly beneficial for job crafting when followers scored high (vs. low) on the trait promotion focus. We conclude that transformational leaders can encourage their followers' use of job crafting, and that employees' promotion focus facilitates this effect.
Highlights
The renewed interest in the phenomenon of job crafting offers a promising direction for research in organizational psychology
Person-level promotion focus moderates the positive relationship between daily transformational leadership and daily job crafting in the form of (a) increasing structural resources, (b) increasing social resources, and (c) increasing challenge demands, so that the effect is stronger for those who score high on promotion focus
Hypothesis 1 stated that daily transformational leadership would be positively related to increasing structural job resources, while Hypothesis 4a stated that trait-like promotion focus would moderate this relationship so that the relationship between transformational leadership and increasing structural resources would be stronger for those with a high promotion focus
Summary
The renewed interest in the phenomenon of job crafting offers a promising direction for research in organizational psychology. Recent studies have shown that job crafting can result in increased work engagement, creativity and job performance (Bakker, Tims, & Derks, 2012; Demerouti, Bakker, & Gevers, 2015; Gordon et al, 2018; Petrou, Demerouti, Peeters, Schaufeli, & Hetland, 2012; Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012). This is consistent with the idea that job crafting increases the fit between person and organization, as well as the meaningfulness of work. Several beneficial outcomes of job crafting have been demonstrated using within-person designs that capture the day-to-day dynamics of job crafting and illuminate its positive short-time outcomes for individual employees (e.g. Petrou et al, 2012; Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2014)
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