Different Effects of Job Crafting Towards Strengths and Job Crafting Towards Development

Abstract

Job crafting research has predominantly focused on the changes made by the crafter to the job but neglected personal motives and goals underlying the crafting. The motives and goals are important as job crafting that looks similar in terms of behavior could lead to different outcomes. The aim of this study is to investigate how job crafting towards strengths (JC-strengths) and job crafting towards development (JC-development) lead to distinct performance outcomes, and factors that affect the two job crafting strategies. Drawing on the exploitation and exploration theory, we expected a positive relationship of JC-strengths with task performance and JC-development with creative performance. We further proposed that job autonomy will be positively related to both JC-strengths and JC-development. Moreover, the relationship between job autonomy and JC-strengths will be strengthened by pay for performance, while the relationship between job autonomy and JC-development will be weakened by pay for performance. With the use of 10-day daily survey data from 115 employees, we found distinct effects of JC-strengths and JC-development on task performance and creative performance as expected. Job autonomy was positively related to JC-strengths and this relationship was strengthened by pay for performance. However, we did not find a significant role of job autonomy and pay for performance in influencing JC-development.