Does job crafting assist dealing with organizational changes due to austerity measures? Two studies among Greek employees

Evaluation of two study demands-resources-based interventions: a randomized controlled trial

Introduction

Higher education students experience significant levels of exhaustion in their studies, yet there are limited evidence-based support programs available. Therefore, this study evaluated a novel intervention approach by testing the effectiveness of two online interventions based on the study demands-resources framework. These interventions aimed to balance demands and resources. Derived from the theoretical assumptions of the framework, we hypothesized that the interventions would increase study and personal resources, engagement, and study crafting, and decrease study demands, exhaustion, and self-undermining. Additionally, we hypothesized that demands and resources would mediate the effects of the intervention on engagement, exhaustion, study crafting, and self-undermining.

Methods

Conducted as a randomized controlled trial with a waitlist control group (n = 71), the study involved participants in two intervention groups who engaged with the interventions for 2 weeks. Intervention group 1 (n = 64) focused on adapting demands, while intervention group 2 (n = 70) focused on increasing resources. The design allowed for a comparison of the effectiveness of these different approaches. Participants completed questionnaires before and after the intervention, and at a 5-week follow-up.

Results

Results of the analyses of variance with repeated measures revealed that the interventions had significant positive effects on the personal resource mindfulness, two study crafting strategies, self-undermining, and exhaustion. Notably, intervention group 2 exhibited more positive outcomes. The hypothesized mediation effects through mindfulness were partially supported.

Discussion

The study demonstrates the considerable potential of interventions based on the study demands-resources framework for higher education institutions in supporting student well-being.

How job crafting is related to the individual readiness to organizational change

This article aims to examine the relationship between job crafting activities and employees' readiness to change. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were conducted on a representative sample of 500 employees. Sampling was carried out in a European country in a period strongly affected by COVID-19 to isolate the five dimensions of job crafting and their separate effects on employees' readiness to change. The findings show that the five dimensions of job crafting can be distinguished from each other and that they have differential effects on employees' readiness to change. Extending task crafting shows a positive relationship with employees' readiness to change while reducing task crafting showed no significant relationship. Surprisingly extending and reducing relationship crafting showed no significant relationship with readiness to change. Cognitive crafting was found to be significantly positively related to the dependent variable. This research contributes to the development of job crafting theory by providing empirical support that job crafting can be associated with readiness to change but that this relationship may vary across its dimensions. The results may also provide important conclusions for change leaders and HR professionals.

Linking job crafting, innovation performance, and career satisfaction: The mediating role of work engagement

BACKGROUND

The demand for innovation and satisfaction is increasing rapidly due to technological advancement and the fast-changing business environment.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this article is to investigate how job crafting augments work outputs (i.e., innovation performance and career satisfaction) through work engagement.

METHODS

Data were collected from 477 workers working in the Pakistan manufacturing sector. A structural equation modeling technique was used to investigate the mediation model.

RESULTS

Job crafting has a direct and indirect association with innovation performance and career satisfaction - via employees' work engagement. Additionally, the mediating impact was stronger for innovation performance than for career satisfaction. The findings advocate that managers should pay attention to employees' job crafting to improve employees' work engagement in manufacturing organizations. To improve employees' innovation performance and career satisfaction via work engagement, it is important to improve organization-wide job crafting in traditional manufacturing organizations. Strategic and managerial actions related to job crafting might boost employees' engagement in the organization that environments provide incessantly better outcomes.

CONCLUSION

By linking job crafting and work engagement to their attitude towards career satisfaction and innovation performance in Pakistani manufacturing firms, this study adds a new dimension to the study of Pakistani manufacturing employees and typically to the best practices in career debates. This knowledge is important and unique because it accentuates that in addition to work engagement, which focuses primarily on employee growth in the organization, job crafting should also be given equal importance to advance manufacturing employees' outcomes.

Daily Job Crafting and Adaptive Performance During Organizational Change: The Moderating Role of Managers’ Influence Tactics

Is job crafting relevant for adaptive performance in the absence of managers’ effective influence tactics and the presence of ineffective tactics? Based on job demands-resources and conservation of resources theories, we examined whether employee daily job crafting behaviors (i.e., resources seeking, challenges seeking, demands reducing) interact with overall managers’ influence tactics during times of organizational change in explaining change outcomes. Twenty-nine hotel employees completed a questionnaire to evaluate their managers’ influence tactics, and then a diary for five consecutive workdays to assess daily job crafting behaviors and daily adaptive performance during a large-scale change. Multilevel analyses revealed that daily seeking resources related positively to adaptive performance particularly when specific managers’ influence tactics were low. These findings imply that employees compensate for the absence of managers’ influence tactics by seeking resources in order to facilitate their own adaptation to organizational changes.

Fostering study crafting to increase engagement and reduce exhaustion among higher education students: A randomized controlled trial of the STUDYCoach online intervention

The study demands-resources framework states that study demands increase exhaustion and study resources increase engagement. Study crafting describes a student's proactive adaption to demands and resources. To date, no intervention in the higher education context has aimed to foster study crafting. Accordingly, this study developed and evaluated the STUDYCoach online intervention, which aimed to increase engagement and reduce exhaustion by promoting study crafting. The study was a randomized controlled trial with a waiting-list control group. All participants (N = 209) completed a questionnaire before (T1) and after (T2) the intervention and at a 20-week follow-up (T3). Participants in the intervention group (n = 149) used the STUDYCoach over three consecutive weeks. Results showed that overall study crafting, decreasing hindering demands, and engagement significantly increased in the intervention group compared to the control group after the intervention. All effects remained stable at follow-up. Notably, exhaustion decreased significantly in the intervention group from T1 to T3 and T2 to T3. Study crafting mediated the intervention's effect on engagement and exhaustion. Our study extends the study demands-resources framework and the literature on job crafting by confirming that study crafting interventions can be effective in higher education.

Stimulating Employability and Job Crafting Behaviour of Physicians: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The demanding work context of physicians challenges their employability (i.e., their ability and willingness to continue to work). This requires them to proactively manage their working life and employability, for instance, through job crafting behaviour. This randomized controlled intervention study aimed to examine the effects of a personalized feedback report on physicians’ employability and job crafting behaviour. A total of 165 physicians from two hospitals in a large Dutch city were randomly assigned to a waitlist control or intervention group in May 2019. Physicians in the intervention group received access to a personalized feedback report with their employability scores, suggestions to improve these and to engage in job crafting. Participants completed a pre-test and eight weeks later a post-test. RM MANOVAs and RM ANOVAs showed that the intervention enhanced participants’ perceptions of their mental (F (1,130) = 4.57, p < 0.05) and physical (F (1,135) = 16.05, p < 0.001) ability to continue working. There was no effect on their willingness to continue to work. Furthermore, while job crafting behaviour significantly increased over time, the personalized feedback report did not account for this change. This low-investment intervention is relevant for organizations to stimulate employees’ proactivity and create positive perceptions of their ability to continue to work. Moreover, this study contributes to the literature by examining a novel approach of a job crafting intervention that does not require many resources to implement.

Be in Your Element: The Joint Effect of Human Resource Management Strength and Proactive Personality on Employee Creativity

Employee creativity is fast becoming a part and parcel in the wake of the increasing volatility of the employment market and the complexity of job demands. Drawing from the actor-context interactionist theoretical approach and career construction theory, this paper adds to current research by exploring the serial mediating effect of job crafting (JC) and career adaptability (CA) in the impact of human resource management strength (HRMS) on employee creativity. Furthermore, we suggest that proactive personality interacts with HRMS to jointly influence creativity. Survey data from samples of 297 (Study 1) and 390 (Study 2) employees largely confirm our model. Our findings show that HRMS positively impacts employee creativity via serial mediation of job crafting and career adaptability, and proactive personality negatively moderates the process. The paper confirms and expands the interactionist theoretical perspective of creativity, highlights the significance of integration of contextual factors, individual characteristics, and career construction, and makes certain practical sense.

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

OBJECTIVE

This study reports a randomized controlled trial of the effect of a job crafting intervention program on work performance and job crafting (as secondary outcomes) among Japanese employees.

METHODS

Participants who satisfied the inclusion criteria were randomly allocated to an intervention (n = 138) or a control group (n = 143). Outcomes were measured at baseline and at 3-month and 6-month follow-up in both groups.

RESULTS

For the whole sample, the job crafting intervention program showed a nonsignificant effect on work performance and job crafting. However, the program showed a significant effect on these outcomes among younger participants (under 36years old).

CONCLUSIONS

The job crafting intervention program may not be sufficiently effective to improve work performance and job crafting for the whole sample of participants. However, it may be efficacious for younger workers.

Implementing Job Crafting Behaviors: Exploring the Effects of a Job Crafting Intervention Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior

This article presents a combined motivational and volitional intervention based on the theory of planned behavior aimed at promoting expansion-oriented job crafting behaviors. Participants were employees working in different companies, assigned to either an intervention ( n = 53) or a control group ( n = 55). Results of a field study (including premeasure, postmeasure, and weekly diaries) indicated that the intervention enhanced participants’ perceptions of behavioral control referred to job crafting and awareness regarding others’ engagement in job crafting. Latent change growth modeling showed that participation in the intervention led to participants shaping their job crafting intentions during the weeks, which translated into more frequent job crafting behaviors at the end of the study period. Besides, the intervention served to trigger weekly work-related flow experiences in terms of high absorption while working. Findings suggest that job crafting interventions can benefit from the inclusion of self-regulatory strategies complementing goal setting.

Interactions of Approach and Avoidance Job Crafting and Work Engagement: A Comparison between Employees Affected and Not Affected by Organizational Changes

Job crafting describes proactive employee behaviors to improve the design of their work and working conditions, and to adapt their job to better suit their abilities and needs. During organizational changes, employees may use job crafting to adjust to the changes in their work and protect their well-being and motivation, i.e., work engagement. However, research shows that although the effects of job crafting strategies that expand the design of work (approach job crafting) have been positive on work engagement, the effects of job crafting strategies that diminish the scope of work (avoidance job crafting) have often been negative. This study investigated the effects of the interactions between different job crafting strategies on work engagement, an aspect that has not thus far been studied. Specifically, we hypothesized that avoidance job crafting is not harmful for work engagement when it is conducted in combination with approach job crafting, particularly during times of organizational change. A two-wave, 18-month follow-up study was conducted among public sector workers who either experienced (n = 479) or did not experience (n = 412) changes in their work. Latent moderated structural equation modeling revealed that avoidance job crafting did not reduce work engagement when combined with approach job crafting behaviors. Moreover, job crafting best benefited work engagement when it was combined with these opposing strategies. However, job crafting was beneficial for work engagement only among employees who were affected by organizational changes, that is, among employees whose job design had changed. Practically, organizations implementing changes could encourage proactive job redesign approaches among their employees—particularly both approach and avoidance types of job crafting strategies.

Career Crafting Training Intervention for Physicians: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND

Physicians work in a highly demanding work setting where ongoing changes affect their work and challenge their employability (ie, their ability and willingness to continue working). In this high-pressure environment, physicians could benefit from proactively managing or crafting their careers; however, they tend not to show this behavior. The new concept of career crafting concerns proactively making choices and adapting behavior regarding both short-term job design (ie, job crafting) as well as longer-term career development (ie, career self-management). However, so far, no intervention studies have aimed at enhancing career crafting behavior among physicians. Given that proactive work and career behavior have been shown to be related to favorable outcomes, we designed an intervention to support career crafting behavior and employability of physicians.

OBJECTIVE

The objectives of this study were to describe (1) the development and (2) the design of the evaluation of a randomized controlled career crafting intervention to increase job crafting, career self-management, and employability.

METHODS

A randomized controlled intervention study was designed for 141 physicians in two Dutch hospitals. The study was designed and will be evaluated based on parts of the intervention mapping protocol. First, needs of physicians were assessed through 40 interviews held with physicians and managers. This pointed to a need to support physicians in becoming more proactive regarding their careers as well as in building awareness of proactive behaviors in order to craft their current work situation. Based on this, a training program was developed in line with their needs. A number of theoretical methods and practical applications were selected as the building blocks of the training. Next, participants were randomly assigned to either the waitlist-control group (ie, received no training) or the intervention group. The intervention group participated in a 4-hour training session and worked on four self-set goals. Then, a coaching conversation took place over the phone. Digital questionnaires distributed before and 8 weeks after the intervention assessed changes in job crafting, career self-management, employability, and changes in the following additional variables: job satisfaction, career satisfaction, work-home interference, work ability, and performance. In addition, a process evaluation was conducted to examine factors that may have promoted or hindered the effectiveness of the intervention.

RESULTS

Data collection was completed in March 2020. Evaluation of outcomes and the research process started in April 2020. Study results were submitted for publication in September 2020.

CONCLUSIONS

This study protocol gives insight into the systematic development and design of a career crafting training intervention that is aimed to enhance job crafting, career self-management, and employability. This study will provide valuable information to physicians, managers, policy makers, and other researchers that aim to enhance career crafting.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

RR1-10.2196/18432.

The impact of leadership on firm financial performance: the mediating role of employees' readiness to change

Purpose

The aim of the research is to investigate the influence of leadership on firm financial performance and to explore the mediating role of employees' readiness to change.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper hypothesizes that employees' readiness to change mediates the relationship between leadership and firm financial performance. A total of 213 employees of Greek shipping firms completed questionnaires examining their firms' leadership style and concurrently, their supervisors appraised their readiness to change. The research model was tested with the use of Structural Equation Modelling.

Findings

The research findings note the importance of leadership in fostering firm financial performance; they describe how each leadership style influences employees' readiness to change; as well as, they confirm that employee readiness mediates the relationship between leadership and firm financial performance. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are analysed.

Research limitations/implications

Given that the research was conducted during the severe Greek economic crisis, a time when employees' behaviour is highly influenced by distinctive and complex internal and external relationships, there is scope for further work to verify that the relationships identified in this study remain valid during periods when market conditions are more favourable.

Practical implications

The findings provide further support on the significance of employees' readiness to change and the paper suggests policies for its development.

Originality/value

The originality of this study lies in the finding that employees' readiness to change mediates the relationship between leadership and firm financial performance. Further, the study was carried out in Greek shipping industry that plays a vital role in the international shipping industry which is responsible for the carriage of around 90% of world trade.

Effects of a Job Crafting Intervention Program on Work Engagement Among Japanese Employees: A Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVE

The current randomized controlled trial investigated the effectiveness of a job crafting intervention program on work engagement as the primary outcome and job crafting as the secondary outcome among Japanese employees.

METHODS

Participants who met the inclusion criteria were randomly assigned to an intervention group (n = 138) or a control group (n = 143). The job crafting intervention program provided only to the intervention group consisted of two 120-minute group sessions with e-mail or letter follow-up. Outcomes were assessed at baseline and at 3-month and 6-month follow-up in both groups.

RESULTS

In the total sample, the job crafting intervention program showed a non-significant effect on work engagement at both 3-month and 6-month follow-up. Also, job crafting did not improve significantly. However, the program showed a significant intervention effect on work engagement (p = 0.04) with small effect size (Cohen's d = 0.33 at 3-month follow-up) of workers in a lower job crafting subgroup.

CONCLUSION

The job crafting intervention program may not be sufficiently effective to improve work engagement and job crafting for the entire sample of participants. However, it may be effective for workers in lower job crafting subcategories.

CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION

UMIN Clinical Trials Registry (www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/), identifier UMIN000026668.

Providing Services During Times of Change: Can Employees Maintain Their Levels of Empowerment, Work Engagement and Service Quality Through a Job Crafting Intervention?

By means of a quasi-experimental study, the effects of a tailor-made job crafting intervention for employees of a Dutch unemployment agency were evaluated. The intervention was designed to prevent a decrease in employee empowerment, work engagement and employee performance (i.e., the provision of services) due to organizational changes. Seventy-four employees received a 1-day training in which they set four job crafting goals for the subsequent weeks. After 6 weeks a reflection session was organized. Repeated measures ANOVA's showed that the intervention prevented a decrease in employees' feelings of empowerment. Furthermore, pre-post comparison tests showed that the control group (N = 89) experienced a significant decrease in work engagement, whereas the intervention group did not. Results showed no effect on customer-rated employee service quality. However, 1 year after the intervention, customer ratings of employee service quality were significantly higher for the intervention group compared to the control group. Although further research is needed, our results demonstrate that a job crafting intervention may be a promising tool to combat a decline in employee empowerment and work engagement during times of organizational change.

Job Crafting and Performance: Literature Review and Implications for Human Resource Development

Although work design is a significant theoretical foundation of human resource development (HRD), it has garnered little attention from researchers in the HRD field. To help remedy this oversight, we review job crafting, which is one of the most recent and significant work design theories. After reviewing 28 empirical studies examining the relationship between job crafting and performance, we discuss future research possibilities and implications for HRD theory and practice. As job crafting has been shown to have a positive relationship with performance, we encourage HRD researchers and practitioners to extend their understanding and application of job crafting.