Relational job crafting: Exploring the role of employee motives with a weekly diary study

Abstract

In this weekly diary study, we integrated research on job crafting to explore the associations between expansion and contraction oriented relational job crafting (RJC), work engagement and manager-rated employee behaviors (work performance and voice). Furthermore, we investigated cross level moderations of prosocial and impression management motives on our proposed associations. We tested our hypotheses with matched data collected over seven weeks in Istanbul, Turkey. The results from multilevel analyses revealed that a) expansion oriented RJC is positively related with work performance and voice via work engagement while b) contraction oriented RJC is negatively related with work performance and voice via work engagement, all measured at the week level. Furthermore, impression management motives of employees moderated the association between expansion oriented RJC and work engagement in that this positive association is stronger for employees low on impression management motives. Our results contribute to job crafting research in two ways. First, it focuses on RJC and discusses how and why the two opposite types of RJC (expansion versus contraction oriented) impact on work engagement and employees' key outcomes in the way they do. This addresses the question "is there a dark side to job crafting?" Second, it focuses on the importance of context and integrates two motives relevant to understand how RJC unfolds, thereby taking a step to address questions for whom (i.e., what kinds of employees), RJC is more effective and translates into enhanced (vs deteriorated) work outcomes. Moreover, our use of a weekly within-person design adds to a recently growing research stream emphasizing the dynamic nature of job crafting.

Reorienting job crafting research: A hierarchical structure of job crafting concepts and integrative review

“…Employees' motivation to craft their job also influence the effect of crafting. Rofcanin et al () indicated that the positive relationship of approach resources crafting (i.e., expansion‐oriented relational crafting) and work engagement was stronger for employees with lower impression management motives. In addition, research indicated that approach crafting might be more beneficial to employees who experience rough times, such that the positive relationship between approach crafting and work attachment was stronger for employees who were rated as poor performers or felt job insecurity (Wang, Demerouti, et al, ).…”

“…Although it is assumed that job crafting aims to benefit individuals themselves, approach crafting has also been found to benefit organizations because it is negatively related to turnover intentions (Esteves & Lopes, 2017b;Rudolph et al, 2017) and positively related to higher level of intention to stay (Rofcanin, Berber, Koch, & Sevinc, 2016), organizational commitment (Cheng et al, 2016;Rofcanin et al, 2016;Wang, Demerouti, Le Blanc, & Lu, 2018), and enhanced motivation to continue working beyond retirement age among older workers (Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, 2016b). With enhanced personjob fit and motivation as a result of approach crafting, it is not surprising that approach crafting is also associated with higher levels of task and contextual performance (Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, 2016a;Rofcanin, Bakker, Berber, Gölgeci, & Las Heras, 2018;Rudolph et al, 2017).…”

“…Employees' motivation to craft their job also influence the effect of crafting. Rofcanin et al (2018) indicated that the positive relationship of approach resources crafting (i.e., expansion-oriented relational crafting) and work engagement was stronger for employees with lower impression management motives.…”

An identity-based integrative needs model of crafting: Crafting within and across life domains.

“…On the other hand, job crafting research grounded in the job demands-resources (JD-R) model centers on employees' actual behaviors to either decrease job demands or increase job resources (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017;Nielsen & Abildgaard, 2012;Tims & Bakker, 2010;Zhang & Parker, 2018). Others have emphasized crafting behaviors in terms of approach or avoidance in resolving experienced discrepancy (Bruning & Campion, 2018;Mäkikangas, 2018;Rofcanin, Bakker, Berber, Gölgeci, & Las Heras, 2018). The organizing principle here distinguishes types of regulatory focus (i.e., approach/avoid; promote/prevent) that encompass the different domain-specific behaviors.…”

“…In our model, we integrate crafting efforts in line with regulatory focus (Elliot, 2006;Higgins, 1998) as it represents a broader level of organization (see also Bindl et al, 2018;Bruning & Campion, 2018;Rofcanin et al, 2018). We adopt the hierarchical structure of crafting proposed by Zhang and Parker (2018) and define approach-focused crafting as intended to add various aspects to work or non-work roles to satisfy psychological needs, whereas avoidance-focused crafting refers to diminishing undesirable aspects of a work or non-work role to satisfy psychological needs.…”