Getting crafty when you're bored: The interaction between personality and boredom

Abstract

Job crafting has been proposed as a solution to alleviate boredom despite inconsistent empirical findings suggesting that interventions may require more nuance to account for boredom as a subjective experience that depends on the individual. Building on job demands-resources theory, we shed light on relationships between workplace boredom and job crafting depending on three personality traits: proactive personality, assertiveness, and promotion focus. A cross-sectional study measuring employee perceptions of boredom showed that the relationship between boredom and job crafting depended on proactive personality, but the nature of this effect was contrary to predictions. An experiment showed that likelihood to job craft when bored depended on assertiveness. Across both studies, personality factors were consistently strong predictors of job crafting, regardless of how boredom was operationalized (i.e., self-rated or experimentally manipulated). These findings have implications for organizations wishing to select individuals more or less inclined to job craft, and less disposed toward feeling bored. One caveat is individuals high in proactive personality or assertiveness might be more negatively impacted by experiencing boredom at work, resulting in less energy to job craft. This work highlights the value of using multiple methods to measure boredom, along with considering specific dimensions of job crafting.