A meta-analysis on promotion- and prevention-focused job crafting

By Philipp Wolfgang Lichtenthaler, Andrea Fischbach. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 2018

321 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to present a meta-analytical summary of the job crafting literature. We integrate resource- and role-based job crafting conceptualizations in one job crafting model, which can theoretically account for beneficial and detrimental job crafting effects. Applying reasoning from regulatory focus theory we differentiated promotion-focused (increasing job resources and challenging job demands; expansion-oriented task, relational, and cognitive crafting) from prevention-focused (decreasing hindering job demands; contraction-oriented task and relational crafting) job crafting. We hypothesized that promotion-focused job crafting relates positively and prevention-focused job crafting relates negatively with employee health, motivation, and performance. Results of cross-sectional meta-analytical structural equation modelling showed that promotion-focused job crafting was positively related with work engagement and negatively related with burnout, while prevention-focused job crafting was negatively related with work engagement and positively related with burnout. Moreover, promotion-focused job crafting was positively and prevention-focused job crafting was negatively related with performance through work engagement and burnout. Results of longitudinal meta-analytical structural equation modelling showed that there were reciprocal, positive relationships between promotion-focused job crafting and work engagement, and between prevention-focused job crafting and burnout. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c82769b566bcb0c2919240ef2e30db2fd09dd8a6

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In General Health Professions

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

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Citations in the corpus

The drivers of work engagement: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal evidence (2020, background): “Lichtenthaler and Fischbach (2018) found that promotion-focused job crafting (e.g. increasing job resources) led to work engagement, whereas prevention-focused job crafting (e.g. decreasing hindering job demands) reduced work engagement over time.”
The process of reinventing a job: A meta–synthesis of qualitative job crafting research (2019, background): “Consistent with previous literature, our meta-synthesis confirms that avoidance crafting most likely results in negative consequences (Bruning & Campion, 2018; Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, 2018; Rudolph et al., 2017; Zhang & Parker, 2018), such as work intensification, health problems, and turnover.”
Does job crafting always lead to employee well-being and performance? Meta-analytical evidence on the moderating role of societal culture (2020, methodology): “Our results are in agreement with Rudolph et al. (2017) and Lichtenthaler and Fischbach (2019), as each promotion-oriented job crafting behavior is positively related to job satisfaction, work engagement, and the inspected performance measures, and negatively related to job strain.”
The power of empowering leadership: allowing and encouraging followers to take charge of their own jobs (2019, background): “Recent studies show evidence for several categories of job crafting [e.g., empirical article by Bruning and Campion (2018); meta-analysis by Lichtenthaler and Fischbach (2019); review by Zhang and Parker (2019)], but a commonality among them is an approach-avoidance dimension.”
Fostering task and adaptive performance through employee well-being: The role of servant leadership (2020, background): “This finding contrast prior research that has found work engagement to be more strongly associated with task performance (Hakanen & Koivumäki, 2014; Mastenbroek et al., 2014) and general performance (Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, 2019).”
How coworkers attribute, react to, and shape job crafting (2019, background): “…of leadership as an antecedent of job crafting, including servant leadership (Bavik et al., 2017; Harju et al., 2018), employee-oriented leadership (Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, 2018b), transformational leadership (Hetland et al., 2018), and the quality of the leader–member exchange relationship…”