How Can Job Crafting Be Reproduced? Examining the Trickle-Down Effect of Job Crafting from Leaders to Employees.

Xun Xin,Sabrine El Baroudi,Svetlana N Khapova,Wenjing Cai,Wenxia Zhou

doi:10.3390/ijerph17030894

Abstract

This study seeks to examine how and when job crafting trickles down from leaders to followers in a team context. Drawing on social learning theory, we hypothesize that team leaders’ job resources mediate the relationship between team leaders’ job crafting and team members’ job crafting. Empowering leadership is proposed to strengthen the mediation effect, such that under a stronger (higher) empowering leadership style the relationship between team leaders’ job resources and team members’ job crafting is further strengthened, thereby positively influencing the overall mediated relationship. We tested our multilevel moderated mediation model with leader-subordinate paired data from 64 work teams in seven Chinese enterprises over two time periods. The results support our hypothesized mediated relationship; however, contrary to our prediction, we find that empowering leadership negatively moderates the relationship between team leaders’ job resources and team members’ job crafting, and weakens the mediation effect of team leaders’ job resources. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Highlights

Job crafting has garnered considerable research attention over the past decade [1,2,3] and has been found to have a significant impact on several employee outcomes, as well as on team and organizational outcomes [4,5]
In line with prior job crafting behavior will be most likely transmitted from team leaders to team members, because work examining the trickle-down effect in teams [12], we suggest that job crafting behavior will be most team leaders are closer to members and team members can more imitate their likely transmitted from team leaders to team members, because team leaders are closer to members behavior
We propose that empowering leadership will moderate the relationship between team leaders’ job resources and team members’ job crafting, especially because team leaders may more adopt an empowering leadership style when they have accumulated structural and social job resources

Summary

Introduction

Job crafting has garnered considerable research attention over the past decade [1,2,3] and has been found to have a significant impact on several employee outcomes, as well as on team and organizational outcomes [4,5]. A plethora of empirical evidence suggests that job crafting is positively related to employee performance and wellbeing [8,9], team performance [9], and organizational change [10]. Wang, Demerouti, and Le Blanc [11] demonstrated that transformational leadership stimulates employee job crafting by increasing employee adaptability. Servant leadership was found to encourage employee job crafting, which in turn increased employee engagement [7]. Public Health 2020, 17, 894; doi:10.3390/ijerph17030894 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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