Stability, Reciprocity, and Antecedent-Outcome Relations of Different Job Crafting Forms

Job crafting involves employees proactively changing their jobs to better suit their preferences. Recent integrative frameworks organize the multifaceted construct with superordinate factors, emphasizing the distinction between behavioral (actions to change job characteristics) and cognitive crafting (reframing one’s view on the job). However, most existing job crafting literature focuses on behavioral crafting, leaving the dynamics between behavioral and cognitive crafting and their comparability regarding antecedents and outcomes unclear. This study provides a systematic juxtaposition of behavioral and cognitive crafting forms over time, examining their stability, reciprocal influences, and their unique relations with decision-making autonomy as an antecedent and person-job fit as an outcome. It also distinguishes between approach (enlarging one’s roles) and avoidance (reducing one’s roles) strategies within each form. Using structural equation modeling within a longitudinal design across three measurement points (N = 284 German employees, time lag of four weeks each), our study revealed remarkably high levels of stability in all job crafting forms. Unexpectedly, we found no support for reciprocal relationships between the crafting forms over time nor longitudinal relations with decision-making autonomy and person-job fit. In an additional latent profile analysis, we identified four distinct job crafting profiles with significant variations in used job crafting forms and their associations with person-job fit, providing further insights into the construct's interplay. Our findings seem to question the generalizability of common theoretical assumptions in the field and emphasize the importance of investigating more differentiated mechanisms of individual job crafting forms in the future.