How and When Job Crafting Relates to Employee Creativity: The Important Roles of Work Engagement and Perceived Work Group Status Diversity

Abstract

Creative employees are treasured assets for organizations. However, relatively little is known about what specific actions employees can take to manage their own creative process. Taking a motivational perspective, this study examined how job crafting behaviors positively link to employee creative performance through work engagement, and whether perceived work group status diversity moderates this relationship. We conducted a weekly diary study in which 55 employees from a Chinese energy company were asked to fill in diaries over four consecutive weeks (176 observations in total). Results of the multilevel analyses showed that weekly job crafting behaviors were positively related to weekly creative performance through increasing weekly work engagement. In contrast to our expectation, we found that weekly job crafting behaviors were more positively related to weekly creative performance when perceived work group status diversity was high. In summary, our study suggests that job crafting behaviors are effective actions employees can take to manage their creative processes through increasing work engagement. In addition, we stress that status diversity in existing work environments is an important contextual factor that shapes the job crafting process.

A state-of-the-art overview of job-crafting research: current trends and future research directions

“…Thus, rather than avoiding or withdrawing from hindering job demands, it focuses on actively addressing these demands by improving the work conditions or tasks. In contrast to decreasing hindering job demands, optimizing job demands related positively to work engagement (Constantini et al, 2021;Demerouti and Peeters, 2018;Tian et al, 2021).…”

Job Insecurity and Employees’ Taking Charge Behaviors: Testing a Moderated Mediation Model

“…For example, Liu et al (2021) demonstrated that employees’ perception of meaningful work could moderate the negative effect of perceived COVID-19 crisis strength on taking charge [ 52 ]. Tian et al (2021) found that work group status diversity could moderate the relationship between job crafting and employee creativity [ 54 ].…”

Effects of a Job Crafting Intervention Program on Work Performance Among Japanese Employees: An Analysis of Secondary Outcomes of a Randomized Controlled Trial

“…Gel-denhuys et al 20 reported subscales of job crafting (eg, task, relational, and cognitive crafting) were related positively to work performance in a cross-sectional study. In addition, other longitudinal studies also have confirmed the positive association of job crafting with work performance 19,21–23 . Therefore, job crafting may be an influential intervention to increase work performance.…”