Job Crafting and Employee Innovation: The Role of Work Engagement

Abstract

Job crafting – a self-initiated strategy employees utilize to revise and make their jobs more meaningful is associated with beneficial outcomes. However, an important individual outcome variable, which has the potential to sustain the competitive advantage of organizations, employee innovation has received less attention in the job crafting literature. The present study examined a cross-lagged model, examining the extent to which facets of work engagement moderate job crafting-employee innovation relationship overtime. Our study involved employees working in banking organisations in Ghana. Our path analytic model indicates that innovative employees were more likely to craft their jobs, but the converse was not true; and innovation was associated with more job crafting for highly absorbed employees. We have presented the theoretical and practical implications of the study.