Coping with interest incongruence: the joint roles of proactive personality and job crafting

Purpose Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we propose a mediated moderation showing how proactive personality (PP) and job crafting toward interests (JC-interests) influence the relationship between interest incongruence and cyberloafing. Design/methodology/approach We used a three-wave survey and collected data from 429 full-time employees working in different industries in China. Findings We found that interest incongruence was positively related to cyberloafing. Furthermore, this positive relationship was more significant when employees were low in PP or engaged in low levels of JC-interests. In addition, the moderating effect of PP was mediated by JC-interests. Practical implications These findings are helpful for organizations in figuring out how to mitigate the detrimental effects of interest incongruence by providing more support to proactive employees and implementing various JC interventions. Originality/value This study suggests that PP and JC-interests (resource gain strategy) could mitigate the positive effect of interest incongruence on employees’ cyberloafing.