Crafting a job: creating optimal experiences at work Ko, Ia

For many decades, organizational scholars and practitioners have emphasized the importance of designing jobs to improve employee motivation, satisfaction, and performance. However, as the nature of work changes, employees are taking a more proactive role and altering their work experiences, job boundaries, the meaning of work, and work identities. This change process is referred to as job crafting and defined as “the physical and cognitive changes individuals make in the task or relational boundaries of their work” (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001, p.179). The current literature revealed job crafting could result in various positive organizational outcomes such as increased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and work engagement. However, relatively few researchers have devoted time to studying different forms, antecedents, and the underlying process of job crafting. Thus, the current study sought to uncover (a) different job crafting types, (b) the roles that person-environment fit and job resources play in job crafting, and (c) flow experiences during job crafting. A series of online surveys was administered to 258 engineers. Five types of job crafting were identified. Also, person-environment fit (i.e., person-organization fit and person-job fit), job resources (i.e., autonomy and social support), and work orientation emerged as potential antecedents of job crafting. Most participants reported experiencing flow during job crafting, and their positive emotion after job crafting depended on their flow experience during job crafting. Overall, the results of this research suggest the importance of fit and job resources in promoting job crafting as well as the possibility of creating flow and positive emotions through job crafting.

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