The Bottom-Up Impact of Proactive Personality on Employee Job Crafting: A Serial Mediation Model

Abstract

Explanatory mechanisms of the positive impact of proactive personality on relevant individual outcomes have been thoroughly discussed in the literature. That being said, few studies have investigated the supervisor’s leadership style as an explanatory mechanism through which the outcomes of proactive individuals are affected. Drawing insight from Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory and followership theory, this paper examines a serial mediation model in which the relationship between proactive personality and two types of job crafting (approach role and resource crafting) is mediated by empowering leadership and work engagement. More specifically, we argue for the capacity of proactive individuals to increase their work engagement by influencing their leaders to embrace an empowering leadership style. Furthermore, empowering leaders are argued to increase employee approach role and resource crafting through increasing employee work engagement. A sample of 298 full-time workers, mainly from Saudi Arabia, participated in the study. The hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM). The findings support the hypothesized relationships. A discussion of the findings, contributions, limitations, and future directions is provided.