When does job crafting work? A person-job fit approach to effective job crafting

Abstract

Job crafting (i.e. employees proactively altering their own work design) has garnered scholarly attention as job design researchers have shown benefits to performance, job attitudes, and well-being from bottom-up work redesign. Interestingly, research has neglected to differentiate between engagement in job crafting and effectiveness in job crafting, and therefore few studies examine the outcomes of crafting efforts that lead to real changes in work experience relative to those that do not. Resultant from this gap is a paucity of study on outcomes of failed job crafting efforts, theoretical confusion as to why job crafting has certain effects, and little guidance for practitioners on how to craft jobs effectively or manage subordinate job crafting. To address this issue, we introduce a construct, job crafting effectiveness, defined as the extent to which crafting improves person-job fit, and propose relationships between effective and ineffective crafting, individual work outcomes (performance, job attitudes, well-being) and others’ work outcomes. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, including potential for the development of interventions that train workers on how to be effective and ethical job crafters, and a research agenda to inform these interventions.