Benefiting the organization while helping yourself: a three-wave study of reciprocal effects between job crafting and innovative work behaviour

ABSTRACTMost employees proactively alter their jobs to improve their functioning at work. Such self-initiated behaviours, referred to as job crafting, are primarily intended to benefit the employees themselves. This study contrasts the self-serving nature of job crafting by hypothesizing its positive, reciprocal relationship with a form of work behaviour which primarily benefits organizations – innovative work behaviour (IWB). Drawing upon Conservation of Resources theory, we test a novel perspective suggesting that job crafting and IWB can perpetuate each other by forming gain cycles. Furthermore, we examine whether participative decision making (PDM) can instigate these gain cycles by enhancing subsequent job crafting and IWB. These research hypotheses were tested using three-wave survey data collected from employees (N = 404) within the Belgian higher education sector. The results demonstrate that not only does job crafting relate to subsequent increases in IWB, but also that IWB relates to subsequent increases in job crafting over three measurements occasions. In contrast, PDM did not predict subsequent changes in either form of work behaviour. We discuss these results in light of their contributions to advancing theoretical understanding of the job crafting-IWB relationship and practices intended to promote gain cycles beneficial to employees and employers alike.KEYWORDS: Job craftinginnovative work behaviourparticipative decision makinggain cycle Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementThe data needed to evaluate the conclusions in this paper can be provided by the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Notes1. While the job crafting literature grounded in COR theory suggests that employees can additionally change their jobs by withdrawing from negative and stressful aspects of one's job (i.e., hindering job demands) in order to conserve available resources (Harju et al., Citation2021), empirical findings show that the relationship between demands and IWB is either non-significant, or small and unclear (e.g., Dediu et al., Citation2018; Messmann et al., Citation2017). In contrast there are numerous studies conclusively pointing to the positive and prominent role of resources in promoting employee IWB. Therefore, in this paper we ground our conceptual analysis on this empirical foundation aligned with COR theory indicating that job crafting enables employees to accumulate various resources key to the enactment of IWB, and vice versa.2. Within JD-R theory (Bakker & Demerouti, Citation2017), job complexity represents a challenging job demand (i.e., an aspect of the job that requires effort and consumes energy resources, but at the same time also enable opportunities for learning, task achievement and personal growth). Because it has a value to promote valuable outcomes for employees, previous studies utilizing COR theory have framed it as a resource (Harju et al., Citation2016). For the sake of consistency with previous literature of terminology of COR theory, in this paper job complexity is also considered a resource.3. To avoid multicollinearity issues caused by the high correlation between predictor variables, organizational tenure (overlapping with age), education (overlapping with staff category) and type of contract (overlapping with staff category) were neither included in this, nor in any subsequent analysis.4. This model included a correlation between item residuals of two items measuring participative decision making ("Employees are allowed to make many of their own decisions about their work"and "Workers are given freedom to decide how to do their job.").5. Upon reviewer suggestion, we wish to acknowledge that it is also plausible to specify a moderating effect of PDM on the reciprocal effects between job crafting and IWB. In particular, PDM opportunities may strengthen the utility of job crafting in prompting IWB, and vice versa. We tested this proposition using the latent moderated structural equations (LMS) approach (Klein & Moosbrugger, Citation2000). However, we did not find empirical support for the moderating effect of PDM on the effect of job crafting on IWB (BT1→T2 = −0.003, p > .05 and BT2→T3 = 0.03, p > .05). With regards to the reversed effects, we found that PDM moderates only the effect of IWBT1 on job craftingT2 (B = 0.30, p < .05; B-1SD = 0.27, p > .05; B+1SD = 0.86, p < .001); it did not moderate the effect of IWBT2 on job craftingT3 (B = −0.06, p > .05). Accordingly, although limited, our results do hint at the usefulness of PDM in strengthening the utility of IWB in promoting employee job crafting – a result that might be attributable to the joint effects of resources accumulated through both (e.g., recognition from supervisors accompanied with perceived control). However, the predominantly non-significant obtained effects demonstrate limited moderating role of PDM in strengthening reciprocal relationships between job crafting and IWB. This may be due to insufficient time needed for such beneficial effects to unfold.