Supervisor Reactions to Avoidance Job Crafting: The Role of Political Skill and Approach Job Crafting

Christine Yin Man Fong,Svetlana N Khapova,Maria Tims,Susanne Beijer

doi:10.1111/apps.12273

Abstract

Avoidance job crafting refers to employees proactively changing work boundaries by reducing tasks and/or interactions with others. Although avoidance job crafting may help employees to address work demands, if noticed by others, specifically supervisors, it may trigger negative reactions from them. While previous research posits that job crafting is largely unnoticed by supervisors, using a dyadic supervisor‐employee study (N = 141 dyads), we found that supervisors were in fact aware of their employees’ avoidance job crafting, which related to a reduction in supervisor support. This relationship was moderated by employee political skill (but not approach job crafting), such that high avoidance job crafting in combination with high political skill resulted in fewer negative outcomes, presumably because supervisors were less likely to notice their employees’ avoidance job crafting. In a second, vignette study (N = 92 supervisors), we experimentally replicated the relation between observed avoidance job crafting and negative supervisor reactions, and found that this relation can be explained by supervisors perceiving avoidance job crafting as destructive work behavior. Our findings introduce the supervisor perspective to the job crafting literature and highlight the importance of engaging in avoidance job crafting in a skillful way that aligns with the external context.

Highlights

Job crafting is defined as a job design strategy that involves optimizing job demands and job resources with the aim to increase one’s well-being and performance (Bruning & Campion, 2018; Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012). Zhang and Parker (2019) have recently reviewed the job crafting literature and suggested that all forms of job crafting can be classified as two types: approach and avoidance job crafting
The results of Study 1 provide general support for our proposed model in that we found a positive association between employee- and supervisor-rated avoidance job crafting, indicating that supervisors witness some of the employee’s avoidance crafting behaviors
We found that employees who are sensitive to their social environment may find ways to prevent supervisors from observing their avoidance job crafting, which in turn resulted in less negative outcomes

Summary

Introduction

Job crafting is defined as a job design strategy that involves optimizing job demands and job resources with the aim to increase one’s well-being and performance (Bruning & Campion, 2018; Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012). Zhang and Parker (2019) have recently reviewed the job crafting literature and suggested that all forms of job crafting can be classified as two types: approach and avoidance job crafting. Avoidance job crafting, defined as crafting activities to move away from negative end states (Zhang & Parker, 2019), has been found to have mainly negative and sometimes non-significant relationships with employee or organizational outcomes (see literature reviews of Lazazzara, Tims, & De Gennaro, 2020 and Zhang & Parker, 2019 and meta-analyses of Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, 2019 and Rudolph, Katz, Lavigne, & Zacher, 2017) These findings are in sharp contrast with theoretical expectations because avoidance job crafting has been theorized to help individuals dealing with demanding work situations (Zhang & Parker, 2019).

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