Do transformational leaders enhance their followers' daily work engagement?

This diary study investigated whether and howsupervisors' leadership style influences followers' daily work engagement. On the basis of leadership theories and the job demands–resources model, we predicted that a transformational leadership style enhances employees' work engagement through the mediation of self-efficacy and optimism, on a day-to-day basis. Fortytwo employees first filled in a general questionnaire, and then a diary survey over five consecutive workdays. The results of multilevel analyses offered partial support for our hypotheses. Daily transformational leadership related positively to employees' daily engagement, and day-levels of optimism fully mediated this relationship. However, daily self-efficacy did not act as a mediator. These findings expand theory and previous research by illuminating the role of transformational leaders in fostering employee work engagement

A contemporary view on job crafting

Job crafting involves employees making self-initiated changes to their job characteristics. This proactive behavior helps individuals adapt their job to personal and workplace changes, boosting motivation and well-being. This entry examines two main conceptual perspectives that form the basis of current job crafting research. It also explores how scholars have tried to merge these perspectives by differentiating between approach and avoidance crafting. Next, we present a brief overview of the antecedents and outcomes of job crafting. Finally, we discuss recent research introducing and examining an important social perspective on job crafting, given that job crafting likely has implications beyond the job crafter (e.g., for coworkers, team members, or supervisors).</p

How coworkers attribute, react to, and shape job crafting

Job crafting, or proactive changes that individuals make in their job design, can influence and be influenced by coworkers. Although considerable research has emerged on this topic, overall, the way job crafting is responded to by coworkers has received little theoretical attention. The goal of this article is to develop a model that allows for a better understanding of job crafting in interdependent contexts. Drawing on attribution and social information theories, we propose that when job crafting has a negative or positive impact on coworkers, coworkers will make an attribution about the crafter’s prosocial motive. This attribution in turn influences whether coworkers respond in an antagonistic or a supportive way toward job crafters. Ultimately, coworkers’ reactions shape the experienced affective work outcomes of job crafters. We also theorize the factors that moderate coworkers’ reactions to job crafting behaviors and the job crafter’s susceptibility to coworker influence

No person is an island: how employees attribute and react to coworkers' approach crafting

Purpose: Taking attribution theory as an overarching framework, the study aims to examine how employees attribute and respond to a colleague's approach crafting. Design/methodology/approach: Two complementary studies, including a scenario experiment (Study 1; N = 114) and an online survey (Study 2; N = 220), were conducted to test the hypothesized model. Findings: Study 1 found support for the attribution of a prosocial motive to approach crafting, which in turn led to more social support and less social undermining among observers. This mediation was stronger when the job crafter was perceived as less other-oriented. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and further showed that when observers attributed both high impression management and prosocial motives to approach crafting, the positive relationship between their prosocial motive attribution and social support for the job crafter got weakened, while the negative relationship between their prosocial motive attribution and social undermining of the job crafter was strengthened. Originality/value: The findings demonstrate that approach crafting gives rise to specific attributions and reactions toward the job crafter, which enrich the understanding of the social consequences of job crafting in the workplace.</p

A state-of-the-art overview of job-crafting research:Current trends and future research directions

Purpose: In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of Career Development International, a state-of-the-art overview of recent trends in job-crafting research was conducted. Since job crafting was introduced twenty years ago as a type of proactive work behavior that employees engage in to adjust their jobs to their needs, skills, and preferences, research has evolved tremendously. Design/methodology/approach: To take stock of recent developments and to unravel the latest trends in the field, this overview encompasses job-crafting research published in the years 2016–2021. The overview portrays that recent contributions have matured the theoretical and empirical advancement of job-crafting research from three perspectives (i.e. individual, team and social). Findings: When looking at the job-crafting literature through these three perspectives, a total of six trends were uncovered that show that job-crafting research has moved to a more in-depth theory-testing approach; broadened its scope; examined team-level job crafting and social relationships; and focused on the impact of job crafting on others in the work environment and their evaluations and reactions to it. Originality/value: The overview of recent trends within the job-crafting literature ends with a set of recommendations for how future research on job crafting could progress and create scientific impact for the coming years

The psychological experience of flexibility in the workplace: How psychological job control and boundary control profiles relate to the wellbeing of flexible workers

Rather than studying workplace flexibility as the availability or usage of flexible work practices, in this study, we theorize workplace flexibility as a subjective psychological experience influenced by employees' perceptions of control over where and when they work (psychological job control) and control over their social boundaries (boundary control). Based on boundary and border theory, using a two-wave study conducted at an Italian bank (N = 1423) and adopting a person-centered approach through latent transition analysis (LTA), we identified four flexibility profiles characterized by different levels of psychological job control and boundary control, with the same structure, dispersion, and sizes over time. The four profiles were: (1) flexible non-dividers (3.46 %), marked by high psychological job control and low boundary control; (2) flexible dividers (34.83 %), characterized by high levels of both psychological job control and boundary control; (3) non-flexible dividers (50.74 %), featuring low psychological job control but high boundary control; and (4) non-flexible non-dividers (10.97 %), with low levels of both types of control. Three of these profiles exhibited high within-person stability across time, while the flexible non-dividers profile was highly unstable, with many members transitioning to profiles with higher boundary control at Time 2. Organizational investments in training and communication programs may have contributed to these transitions from low to high boundary control profiles. Gender and age emerged as significant predictors of profile membership, with gender effects shifting over time: at Time 1, men were more likely to be in non-flexible dividers profile, while at Time 2, they were more likely to be in the flexible non-dividers profile. Age effects also changed: older workers were more likely to be in the flexible non-dividers profile at Time 1 but shifted toward the flexible dividers profile by Time 2. Parental status was not significant, whereas carer status was significant only at Time 1, where being a carer increased the likelihood of employees belonging to the flexible dividers profile compared to the non-flexible dividers. Our findings further revealed that the psychological experience of work flexibility positively impacts wellbeing when employees experience control over both work and social boundaries. Flexible dividers consistently exhibited the highest levels of work engagement, job satisfaction, and work-life balance across both Time 1 and Time 2. In contrast, flexible non-dividers showed a significant decline in these outcomes over time. Profiles with low boundary control, especially flexible non-dividers and non-flexible non-dividers, reported the lowest levels of wellbeing. Despite some improvements in non-flexible non-dividers profile from Time 1 to Time 2, it remained to have the lowest scores on all outcomes, emphasizing the critical role of boundary control in maintaining employee wellbeing over time. These findings provide a possible explanation regarding the “autonomy-control paradox,” where flexibility in work location and timing may reduce autonomy unless social boundaries are effectively managed. Having control over one's social domains allows for the benefits of workplace flexibility and reduces the risk that flexibility in where and when to work undermines the autonomy it is meant to provide.</p

Beyond Bullying, Aggression, Discrimination, and Social Safety: Development of an Integrated Negative Work Behavior Questionnaire (INWBQ)

Negative work behavior (NWB) threatens employee well-being. There are numerous constructs that reflect NWBs, such as bullying, aggression, and discrimination, and they are often examined in isolation from each other, limiting scientific integration of these studies. We aim to contribute to this research field by developing a diagnostic tool with content validity on the full spectrum of NWBs. First, we provide a full description of how we tapped and organized content from 44 existing NWB measurement instruments and 48 studies. Second, we discussed our results with three experts in this research field to check for missing studies and to discuss our integration results. This two-stage process yielded a questionnaire measuring physical, material, psychological, sociocultural, and digital NWB. Furthermore, the questions include a range of potential actors of NWB, namely, internal (employees, managers) and external actors (clients, customers, public, and family members) at work and their roles (i.e., target, perpetrator, perpetrator’s assistant, target’s defender, outsider, and witness of NWBs). Finally, the questionnaire measures what type of harm is experienced (i.e., bodily, material, mental, and social harm).publishedVersio

It's About Time! Understanding the Dynamic Team Process-Performance Relationship Using Micro- and Macroscale Time Lenses

Although team processes are conceptualized as temporal phenomena, our theoretical understanding of their unfolding over time is underdeveloped, particularly when "zooming in and out" into their dynamics using different temporal lenses. Team processes might unfold differently over extended project cycles (i.e., macroscale time lens) versus over brief events (microscale time lens). Our goal was to better understand temporal changes of three critical higher-order team processes (i.e., transition, action, and interpersonal processes) over both extended periods (i.e., longer project cycles) and brief time spans (i.e., recurring stand-up meetings). Focusing on two agile software teams, we indexed team processes across these two time spans using computer-aided text analysis (CATA) of meeting transcripts. Macroscale time span processes were captured across 10 sprints (30-week project cycle). Microscale time spans were captured with data from brief stand-up meetings (i.e., using 10 equidistant time intervals from 40 meetings). From a macroscale time lens (i.e., project cycle), an increase in action processes in the early project phase was associated with increases in performance. From a microscale time lens, changes in transition and interpersonal processes around mid-meeting phases were associated with differences in performance. Qualitative analyses of meeting midpoints revealed key differences in proactive planning and interpersonal processes. We discuss how our results provide novel insights for team process dynamics in relation to micro- and macroscale time spans

Supervisor reactions to avoidance job crafting:The role of political skill and approach job crafting

Avoidance job crafting refers to employees proactively changing work boundaries by reducing tasks and/or interactions with others. Although avoidance job crafting may help employees to address work demands, if noticed by others, specifically supervisors, it may trigger negative reactions from them. While previous research posits that job crafting is largely unnoticed by supervisors, using a dyadic supervisor-employee study (N = 141 dyads), we found that supervisors were in fact aware of their employees’ avoidance job crafting, which related to a reduction in supervisor support. This relationship was moderated by employee political skill (but not approach job crafting), such that high avoidance job crafting in combination with high political skill resulted in fewer negative outcomes, presumably because supervisors were less likely to notice their employees’ avoidance job crafting. In a second, vignette study (N = 92 supervisors), we experimentally replicated the relation between observed avoidance job crafting and negative supervisor reactions, and found that this relation can be explained by supervisors perceiving avoidance job crafting as destructive work behavior. Our findings introduce the supervisor perspective to the job crafting literature and highlight the importance of engaging in avoidance job crafting in a skillful way that aligns with the external context