Background
Job crafting is a proactive, informal, employee-led job redesign process. Literature on job crafting has grown exponentially, and such growth has been beneficial in increasing public exposure and interest in job crafting. However, it also has some disadvantages, including overlapping literature, and differing definitions of what constitutes job crafting behavior. This can pose problems for researchers and can also hinder the advancement of job crafting research.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to systematically review and descriptively analyze the current standing of job crafting literature in order to catalogue and organize the literature, and to understand the patterns, trends and gaps within it.
Research Questions
(a) What is the current state of the job crafting literature in terms the main antecedents, outcomes and correlates?
(b) Where are the gaps in the literature and how should we conduct future research in order to address these gaps?
Sample
All English-written, peer-reviewed, primary sources which directly measure job crafting. Computerized search returned 1692 sources potential sources which were cleaned and coded.
Design
Systematic Literature Review
Results
Findings showed that job crafting has many benefits for employee wellbeing across a range of cultural and occupational contexts. Despite this, there were some limitations in the literature including limited experimental research which allows causal inferences and overuse of self-report measures. For instance, there are only 2 randomized control trial but over 150 sources which were cross-sectional in nature.
Scientific Contribution
(a) This is the only large-scale, comprehensive review of job crafting to date.
(b) Highlights limitations in the job crafting literature and provides recommendations to overcome these limitations to move the literature forward. In doing this, researchers can continue to refine the job crafting process to make them more effective in improving employee wellbeing.