Promoting employee job crafting at work: the roles of motivation and team context

Despite receiving much attention in recent job design literature, job crafting research has neglected motivational and multilevel perspectives, limiting the understanding of how to foster employee job crafting. Drawing on job crafting and self-determination theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore individual- and team-level predictors and the mechanisms involved in employees’ job change behaviors. The authors propose that employees’ intrinsic motivation and two team-level properties – team knowledge sharing and trust – have important roles to play.

The multilevel data were collected from 311 employees from 62 work teams in Korean companies. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis was used. A supplementary data collected from 162 individuals working in the USA were used for analysis.

The results showed that intrinsic motivation and team knowledge sharing are positively related to job crafting. In addition, intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between team knowledge and individual job crafting. Finally, team trust was shown to play a cross-level moderating role, strengthening the positive relationship between employees’ intrinsic motivation and job crafting.

Applying motivational and multilevel perspectives, this paper uncovers the roles of individual motivation and team context in fostering employee job crafting. This study helps to extend the theoretical domains of job crafting and provides practical insights into how to promote employees’ job crafting.