Discerning Work as a Calling: The Role of Job Crafting

The Role of Personal and Contextual Resources on the Relationship Between Soul at Work and Discerning Millennial Employees

In this study, the influence of soul at work on discerning millennial employees was analysed, keeping in mind the newer workforce and less paid attention to the nurturance of their soul and discernment. This article also studies and investigates the mediating and moderating roles of personal and contextual resources. 624 respondents (367 office and 257 online) were interviewed working as executives in manufacturing and service industries (public and private) from eastern and northern India. Data was gathered using a cross-sectional study, and structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed to study the hypothesis. The findings indicated a relationship between soul at work and discerning millennial employees. The impact of meditation and moderation was also found in this relationship. The study adds to the literature on the soul at work by combining it with discerning millennial employees, demonstrating its uniqueness and importance for the desired outcome. This research explains unique results with meaningful discussion and practical suggestions derived from the data.

Crafting Work Happiness: Balancing Client Agency & Empowerment With Critical Social Awareness

Job crafting is a method taught by career developers and coaches to workers to help them achieve greater happiness in their jobs. Given its agentic, bottom-up approach, job crafting has become closely aligned with positive psychology. While offering empowerment benefits, job crafting has limitations. Given its almost exclusive focus on individual freedom and control, there is little attention paid to the social context, including structural operations of power within an advanced capitalist economy. Three social science critiques of positive psychology and job crafting are examined, with reference to contemporary career development theory. Practical suggestions are made for how career developers might address these social science critiques to best meet diverse client needs. This involves upholding a commitment to client agency and empowerment, whilst developing and maintaining a critical social awareness. Implications for research on job crafting are also discussed.

“No Pain No Gain”: Presenteeism Evaluation Through Calling with Job Crafting as a Sensemaking Strategy

Purpose

Researchers have a wide-ranging consensus on the negative side of presenteeism that leads to productivity loss; however, little is known about its flipside that has undertaken motivational factors as potential antecedents. This implicit gap is addressed by exploring a new perspective of presenteeism and proposing employees’ calling as its precursor with the help of self-determination theory (SDT). The mediating mechanism is explicated with job crafting by considering it a sensemaking strategy that offers a plausible explanation of the positive association between an employee’s calling and presenteeism. This research is an attempt to explore the positive side of presenteeism and generalize the presenteeism findings in another sector apart from the medical field, as this phenomenon is gaining widespread acceptance in HR literature.

Methods

The data were collected from 274 employees from the textile sector, and the hypotheses were tested using SmartPLS software. We collected time-lagged data from the textile sector employees of Pakistan. The individual-level data have been collected to test the relationship between calling, job crafting, and presenteeism.

Results

The results indicate the positive association between calling and presenteeism through direct and indirect paths. However, the mediating mechanism through two dimensions of job crafting, crafting challenging job demands and crafting social job resources, was not supported.

Conclusion

Drawing on SDT, we contribute to the literature by identifying calling as an antecedent of presenteeism. We propose and test the direct and indirect relationships between calling, job crafting, and presenteeism. Future researchers might attempt to test this model in different sectors like multinational companies, educational institutions, healthcare, retail, etc. The proposed relationships also lend themselves to be explicated with other mediators.

The Mediating Effect of Self-Regulation on the Association Between Growth Mindset About Work and Living a Calling Among Primary and Secondary School Teachers

Purpose

Given that extensive studies have documented the wide-ranging benefits of living a calling, determining whether and how living a calling can be improved is of great importance. Although recent research implies that a growth mindset about work may link to self-regulatory processes and living a calling, little research to date has directly examined the relationships between these variables. Building on Burnette’s SOMA model, this study was designed to examine the premise that a growth mindset about work was a predictor of living a calling and to explore the mediating role of self-regulation in the growth mindset about work—living a calling link.

Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted among educational professionals in China. Data were collected from 608 primary and secondary school teachers on growth mindsets about work, self-regulation and living a calling. A structural equation model was used to test the hypothesis that self-regulation would mediate the relationship between a growth mindset about work and living a calling.

Results

Consistent with our premise, a growth mindset about work was positively associated with living a calling. Also, a growth mindset about work was significantly associated with self-regulation strategies in terms of goal setting, perseverance, decision making, and learning from mistakes. As hypothesized, a growth mindset about work was related to higher levels of living a calling via goal setting, perseverance, and learning from mistakes.

Conclusion

The findings contribute to the increasing breadth of the growth mindset literature across various contexts and its consequences for one’s living a calling, which expand the nomological web of correlates of growth mindset about work. Furthermore, these findings suggest that fostering a growth mindset about work may facilitate adaptive behaviors and, thereby, serve as a calling intervention.