When career dissatisfaction leads to employee job crafting

Growth Mindset and Job Crafting: A Trait Activation Perspective with Job Autonomy as Moderator

Job crafting benefits both employees and organizations by enhancing employees' health, well-being, and performance. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the individual factors that encourage job crafting and the conditions under which they operate. Based on Trait Activation Theory, this study examined the relationship between employees' growth mindset and job crafting, as well as the moderating effect of job autonomy on this relationship. In Study 1, we conducted a situational experiment with 180 participants, manipulating growth vs. fixed mindset and high vs. low job autonomy. In Study 2, we surveyed 236 participants over three waves, collecting demographic data and growth mindset at T1, job autonomy at T2 (one month later), and job crafting at T3 (two months later). Results from Study 1 indicated that growth mindset significantly impacted job crafting, moderated by job autonomy. Study 2 confirmed this positive effect of growth mindset on job crafting and revealed a significant positive interaction between growth mindset and job autonomy. These findings suggest that employees with a growth mindset engage more in job crafting, with this relationship strengthened under conditions of high job autonomy. This study highlights job autonomy as a situational cue that activates employees' growth mindset, enhancing proactive job crafting behaviors. This research advances the literature on positive work behaviors by establishing growth mindset as a direct antecedent and illustrating the moderating role of job autonomy, thereby enriching the understanding of conditions that foster a positive workplace environment.

The influence of daily life events on learning crafting and the intervening roles of academic emotions and regulatory focus in high school students

BACKGROUND

The adaptation of students to academic challenges in high school is crucial for academic performance. This study proposes the concept of "learning crafting," a previously under-researched area, and investigates its associated variables.

METHODS

Using a diary method, we studied 187 Chinese high school students (64% female; Mage  = 15.57) over a 9-day period. We examined the effect of daily life events on learning crafting, and considered academic emotions as mediators and regulatory focus as moderators.

RESULTS

Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that daily positive events were positively correlated with learning crafting at both within-person and between-person levels. Positive academic emotions served as mediators of this relationship. Furthermore, promotion focus had a positive moderating effect on the relationship between daily positive events and positive academic emotions. Conversely, daily negative events were only negatively correlated with learning crafting at the between-person level, and no additional significant relationships were identified.

CONCLUSION

This study elucidated the effect of daily life events on learning crafting, its mediating mechanisms, and conditional factors. These results not only contribute to crafting theory, but also provide theoretical underpinnings for future interventions targeting high school students' learning crafting.

The Silver Lining of Perceived Overqualification: Examining the Nexus Between Perceived Overqualification, Career Self-Efficacy and Career Commitment

Aim

This study aimed to investigate how perceived overqualification is linked to an individual's career commitment among service sector employees in China. Additionally, it sought to examine the mediating role of career self-efficacy and the moderating effect of social support.

Methods

This study collected data from 441 employees using a three-wave data collection design with a two-week gap between each round. Moreover, we employed partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data.

Results

The findings asserted that perceived overqualification was positively associated with employee career self-efficacy and commitment. Furthermore, career self-efficacy mediated the link between perceived overqualification and career commitment. The study also demonstrated that perceived overqualification and career self-efficacy were influenced by the level of social support received, with a stronger relationship observed when social support was high. These findings highlight the value of fostering social support and career self-efficacy among coworkers to increase overqualified employees' commitment to their careers and provide valuable insights for organizations seeking to manage their talent pool effectively.

Discussion

The study suggests that when employees perceive themselves as overqualified for their job, it can lead to a higher sense of career self-efficacy, which is the belief in one's ability to perform job tasks effectively. This increased self-efficacy, in turn, can lead to a greater commitment to their career. Furthermore, fostering social support and building career self-efficacy can help organizations manage their overqualified pool effectively and improve employee satisfaction and productivity.

Encouraging job crafting in the workplace for newcomers: A two-year multi-wave study

It is important to identify the antecedents of newcomers' job crafting as it assists with their adjustment in the workplace. This study made use of transformational leadership and newcomers' calling as organizational and personal resources that predict job crafting. We hypothesized that transformational leadership would have an indirect relationship with newcomers' job crafting after 2 years through their occupational self-efficacy and that their calling would moderate this mediational path. A multi-wave approach was employed wherein data from 280 new employees were collected three times during the first 2 years of their careers. The survey was completed by 150 participants. The results illustrated that transformational leadership was positively related to newcomers' job crafting after 2 years of entry through their occupational self-efficacy. Additionally, newcomers' calling moderated the mediating effect of occupational self-efficacy between transformational leadership and job crafting. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

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.

Leader secure-base support and organizational learning culture: synergetic effects on employee state promotion focus and approach job crafting

Purpose

Leader secure-base support, consisting of leader availability, noninterference and encouragement of growth, has important implications for stimulating employee proactivity. This study is aimed at examining whether, why and when leader secure-base support may motivate employees to engage in approach job crafting behavior. Drawing upon regulatory focus theory, we propose leader secure-base support is positively associated with employee approach job crafting via employee state promotion focus. Based on cue consistency theory, we further examine the moderating role of organizational learning culture in the associations of leader secure-base support with employee state promotion focus and subsequent approach job crafting.

Design/methodology/approach

Two-wave data were collected from 281 Chinese workers. Path analyses with Mplus 7 were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings

As predicted, we found that leader secure-base support was positively related to employee state promotion focus and, in turn, facilitated employee approach job crafting. Moreover, organizational learning culture accentuated the impact of leader secure-base support on employee job crafting process.

Originality/value

This study is the first to examine the influence of leader secure-base support on employee job crafting. It also identifies a boundary condition for such an influence.

HRD interventions, learning agility and organizational innovation: a PLS-SEM modelling approach

Purpose

This study aims to focus on assessing the influence of human resource development (HRD) interventions and learning agility (LA) on organizational innovation (OI).

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the social exchange theory, the theoretical research model was developed in this study. This study used cross-sectional data to test the research hypotheses. In addition, partial least square structured equation modelling was used to analyse 413 sample responses from Indian managerial professionals.

Findings

The findings suggest that HRD interventions and LA have an effect on OI. Additionally, age as a control factor also influences OI.

Practical implications

The study’s findings show that an organization must use HRD interventions effectively to improve innovation. Additionally, learning agile employees also helps in bringing innovation to an organization.

Originality/value

This study is one of its kind in exploring LA for OI by using the existing LA scale. Further, this study is a significant contribution to the existing literature by using HRD interventions, LA and OI in an extensive research model.

Publishing quantitative careers research: challenges and recommendations

Purpose

This article aims to provide prospective authors guidelines that will hopefully enable them to submit more competitive manuscripts to journals publishing careers research.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on their experience as an author, reviewer and editorial team member, the authors identify the main criteria that a quantitative study must meet to be considered for publication in international peer-reviewed journals covering career-related topics. They emphasize the importance of contributing to the careers literature and of designing the study in accordance with the research question.

Findings

Manuscripts are rejected because they are insufficiently innovative, and/or because sample, instruments and design are not appropriate to answer the research question at hand. Cross-sectional designs cannot be used to answer questions of mediation but should not be discarded automatically since they can be used to address other types of questions, including questions about nesting, clustering of individuals into subgroups, and to some extent, even causality.

Originality/value

The manuscript provides an insight into the decision-making process of reviewers and editorial board members and includes recommendations on the use of cross-sectional data.

Daily Empowering Leadership and Job Crafting: Examining Moderators

In this study, we built and tested a contingency model linking leader daily empowering behaviors with employee daily job crafting. Drawing on the contingency leadership literature and the model of proactive motivation, we theorized employee daily work meaning and vigor as moderators of the above relationships. Daily data were collected from 103 Chinese employees for five consecutive days. Our findings suggest that leader day_T (a certain day) empowering behaviors are more strongly related to employee day_T+1 (next day after the certain day) job crafting when employee day_T work meaning is low and employee day_T+1 vigor is high. Our findings suggest that only under certain conditions can empowering leadership promote employee job crafting on a daily basis.