Followers’ job crafting: relationships with full-range leadership model

This study investigated the link between three leadership styles (transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire) and followers’ job crafting, representing the set of changes regarding job demands and job resources that employees proactively make. Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory, we expected that leaders who create both personal and job resources for their subordinates will motivate them to invest these existing resources in order to gain new ones, leading to increases in followers’ job crafting behaviours. A quantitative analysis was conducted among a sample of 479 subordinates. Participants reported the way they perceive their leaders’ behaviours and rated their own job autonomy, self-efficacy, work engagement, and job crafting. Both transformational and transactional leadership were positively associated with followers’ increasing resources and demands. Contrary to our expectations, followers’ work engagement was a suppressor variable in the positive relations between both transformational and transactional leadership and decreasing hindering demands. Laissez-faire leadership was negatively associated with increasing resources and positively with decreasing hindering demands. Job autonomy, self-efficacy, and work engagement have mediated most of the studied relationships. Another unexpected finding was that all three mediators were suppressing the positive relation between laissez-faire leadership and increasing challenging job demands. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.