An exploration of the component validity of job crafting

Abstract

Interest in job crafting as a means to create more work meaning has led to the development of multi-perspective conceptualizations of job crafting. Although useful comprehensive portraits of complex job crafting activities have emerged, these synthetic conceptualizations tend to overlap, and even inconsistent with each other. This study aimed to clarify these blurred conceptualizations by examining the component and incremental validity of five distinct job crafting measures and their theoretical propositions in predicting work engagement and innovation behaviour. A cross-sectional sample of 162 health professionals and a two-wave longitudinal sample of 130 R&D employees were used. Results revealed that approach crafting is mainly composed of approach-promoting behaviour and active coping behaviour. In predicting work engagement and innovation behaviour, active coping behaviour was distinguished from withdrawal behaviour; role identities crafting was less strongly associated with these outcomes than job characteristics; cognitive crafting accounted for small increments in the variance beyond behaviour crafting. Apparently, crafting essentially comprises behaviour with a positive attitude. Withdrawal behaviour should be removed from crafting concept because its maladaptive perspective is negative. Job crafting measures which promote situational characteristics with personal meaningfulness, as well as precise descriptions of behaviour crafting and cognitive crafting, are recommended.