Job crafting and extra-role behavior: The role of work engagement and flourishing

Highlights

• Work engagement shows stronger associations with supervisor-rated extra-role behavior than flourishing.

• Job crafting both favorably and unfavorably affects work engagement and flourishing.

• Seeking resources favorably affects contextual performance and creativity through work engagement.

• Reducing demands unfavorably affects contextual performance and creativity through work engagement.

Abstract

This study investigates whether crafting of job demands and resources relates positively to extra-role behavior (i.e. contextual performance and creativity) through work engagement and flourishing. We collected data from 294 employees and their supervisors regarding employees' contextual performance and creativity. Results show that seeking resources had a positive indirect relationship with contextual performance through work engagement, and with creativity through work engagement and flourishing. Reducing demands had negative indirect relationships with both contextual performance and creativity through work engagement. We conclude that particularly seeking resources has important implications for extra-role behavior and discuss the practical implications of these findings.

Introduction

In the present knowledge economy, the external environment is rapidly evolving and work roles are less clearly defined than in the past. Therefore, organizations increasingly rely on their employees to fill the gap between explicit job requirements and the emergent behaviors necessary for organizations to remain competitive. Extra-role behaviors such as employee creativity (i.e. novelty of ideas and solutions) and contextual performance (i.e. individual behaviors that support the social environment in which task behaviors are performed) may enhance an organization's responsiveness and adaptability (Amabile, 1996, Oldham and Cummings, 1996, LePine et al., 2001). Such behaviors are suggested to be an outcome of job design interventions (Farr, 1990). However, top-down job design interventions are generally found to be less effective than researchers and practitioners hope (Kompier et al., 2000, Nielsen et al., 2010), perhaps because they follow the philosophy of ‘one size fits all’ rather than the philosophy of ‘which size fits you?’

In the present paper, we argue that facilitating bottom-up job redesign in the form of employee job crafting may create conditions that stimulate employees to voluntarily ‘do more than is required’. The reason for this is that proactive behavior enhances confidence to behave in novel ways (Hornung & Rousseau, 2007). Moreover, when employees craft their job and work environment, this may result in an increased person-environment fit (Tims & Bakker, 2010). Proactive employees mobilize the resources they need to feel well, be motivated, and excel in their jobs (cf. Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012).

Specifically, we propose that employees' efforts to maximize resources by crafting their work characteristics (Demerouti, 2014) will indirectly contribute to extra-role behavior. Using conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2002), we argue that employees who create abundant resources will be engaged in their work and flourish in their life. Work engagement represents a positive fulfilling state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Flourishing represents a more general conceptualization of psychological well-being, characterized by individuals who perceive that their life is going well if they feel good and function effectively (Diener, Helliwell, Lucas, & Schimmack, 2009). By including both work engagement and flourishing as predictors of extra-role behaviors, we will be able to uncover whether individuals show such extra-role behaviors because they are highly motivated or because they feel good.

We focus on extra-role behavior in the form of creativity and contextual performance because both behaviors (1) are not included in formal job requirements, (2) are suggested to be outcomes of abundant resources (triggered by crafting), and (3) can be observed by supervisors and thus be measured without impression management concerns. In this way, the present study contributes to the literature by examining: (a) whether resources generated by individuals' proactive, job crafting behaviors are related to observable positive behaviors that are not explicitly required by their jobs; or (b) whether individuals do more than expected because they are highly motivated (i.e. engaged in their work) or because they feel good (i.e. flourishing). Whereas the relationship between job crafting and work engagement (e.g. Petrou, Demerouti, Peeters, Schaufeli, & Hetland, 2012) as well as between work engagement and extra-role behavior (e.g. Bakker & Xanthopoulou, 2013) has been shown in previous studies, the indirect relationship of job crafting with supervisor-rated extra-role behavior via work engagement has yet not been established. Regarding flourishing, we still lack knowledge on its relationship with proactive and supervisor-rated extra-role behavior. Uncovering such beneficial effects of job crafting can explain why employee-initiated adjustments of work may be beneficial for employees and organizations, which has both theoretical and practical implications.