How and when are job crafters engaged at work?

Abstract

The importance of work engagement and the lack of engaged employees have led researchers to focus on how to enhance employees’ levels of engagement in the workplace. Although job crafting as a principal driver of work engagement has recently received much attention from academics, little is known about the processes and conditions in which employees who craft their tasks become engaged. In order to address these research gaps, we hypothesize that psychological capital (PsyCap) is likely to mediate the association between job crafting and work engagement, and that coworker support, rather than supervisor support, is likely to moderate the relationship between job crafting and PsyCap. Further, we integrated these hypotheses and tested the moderated mediation effect. Using survey data from 175 flight attendants in South Korea, we found the results to be in line with our expectations. The findings of this empirical research contribute to the understanding of how and when job crafters become engaged at work.