Toward A Broader Understanding of Job Crafting and Proactive Career Behaviors

Although most jobs and roles are created by organizations, employees can also self-initiate changes to their job characteristics based on their abilities and needs, a process referred to as job crafting. This bottom- up, employee-initiated job redesign has captured surging attention from both academics and practitioners in recent decades, as it offers great value in informing how individuals can more adaptively navigate today’s dynamic environment. Although existing research has greatly enhanced our knowledge on the antecedents and outcomes of employees’ job crafting, theories remain limited when it comes to explaining how contextual factors interact to affect job crafting, how job crafting is sustained over a long time, as well as how unique populations like leaders and agency temp workers and how a group of people collectively initiate changes agenticly in their jobs or career. The presentations and discussion in this proposed symposium seek to shed light upon these less charted territories. We include five studies examining different contexts and using different methodologies to extend our understanding of job crafting or, more generally, how individuals proactively exert changes in their jobs and career. Dynamic, Reciprocal Relationships Between Job Crafting, Self-concordant and Organizational Goals Presenter: Michael Clinton; King's College London Presenter: Uta K. Bindl; King's College London Presenter: Keely J. Frasca; Birkbeck, U. of London, and U. of East London Presenter: Elena Martinescu; Vrije U. Amsterdam Job Crafting and Passion for Work: A Mixed-Method Study of Senior Organizational Leaders Presenter: Gavin Slemp; U. of Melbourne Presenter: Austin Chia; U. of Melbourne Presenter: Robert J. Vallerand; - Intergroup Competition and Job Crafting: Moderating Role of Task- vs. Relation-oriented Leadership Presenter: Yanbo Song; INSEAD Presenter: Winnie Jiang; INSEAD Team Job Crafting and Employee Creativity Presenter: Xue Zheng; China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) Presenter: Tae-Yeol Kim; China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) Presenter: Yi Xiang; China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) Explorative Study on Agency Workers’ Career Self-Management Presenter: Jana Retkowsky; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Sanne Nijs; Human Resource Studies, Tilburg U. Presenter: Jos Akkermans; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Paul G W Jansen; Vrije U. Amsterdam