Employee’s Job Crafting: A New Perspective of Job Design

Job crafting is defined as a bottom-up way in which employees redesign their job. It complements classic top-down view of job design through emphasizing the proactive change behavior. Job crafting has been categorized to several forms, including task crafting, relational crafting and cognitive crafting, individual job crafting and collaborative job crafting. Job crafting is related to proactive personality, career orientation, autonomy and person-environment misfit. Job crafting could predict numerous positive outcomes, including job satisfaction, work meaning, work engagement, job performance and organizational commitment. However, job crafting is investigated mostly through qualitative research or research based on correlational design. Researches in the future are suggested to develop the longitudinal design to address the long term consequences of job crafting. Additionally, the influence mechanism and negative consequences of job crafting are also necessary to be further explored. Local researchers should consider the influences of Chinese traditional culture and collectivism culture on job crafting.