How organizations and leaders can nurture employee job crafting: Modeling the antecedents of job crafting

Abstract Organizations must constantly reinvent and improve their competitiveness to remain viable in ever‐changing environments. In the domain of human resources development, this can be achieved through employee job crafting. Drawing on the self‐determination theory, we propose a novel framework for self‐determination processes by showing that high‐performance work systems (HPWSs), transformational leadership (TFL), and a proactive work climate can strengthen employees' sense of personal competence, autonomy, and relatedness, which, in turn, can promote employee job crafting. Specifically, we tested a moderated‐mediation model in which HPWSs function as organizational antecedents that drive employee job crafting through TFL in a proactive work climate. Using a sample of 45 supervisors and 240 employees from several industries in Taiwan, we found that HPWSs (the distal organizational predictor) and TFL (the proximal social predictor) drive employees to engage in job crafting behaviors. We also found that a proactive work climate not only served as a boundary condition shaping the nurturing effect of TFL on employee job crafting, but also enhanced the indirect effect of HPWSs on employee job crafting via TFL.