Cognitive job crafting: A possible response to increasing job insecurity and declining professional prestige

• Author: Domenico Salvatore,Davide Gennaro,Filomena Buonocore,Marcello Russo
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12270
• Date: 01 April 2020

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Cognitive job crafting: A possible response to

increasing job insecurity and declining

professional prestige

Filomena Buonocore

1

| Davide de Gennaro

2

| Marcello Russo

3

|

Domenico Salvatore

4

1

Department of Law, University "Parthenope"

of Naples, Naples, Italy

2

Department of Business Science-

Management & Innovation Systems,

University of Salerno, Fisciano, Italy

3

Department of Management, University of

Bologna, Italy, and Kedge Business School,

France

4

Department of Legal Sciences, Suor Orsola

Benincasa University of Naples, Naples, Italy

Correspondence

Davide de Gennaro,Department of Business

Science - Management & Innovation Systems,

University of Salerno, Italy, Via Giovanni

Paolo II 132, Fisciano (SA) 84084, Italy

Email: ddegennaro@unisa.it

Abstract

Recent research has shown that job crafting, which

describes individuals' attempts to craft a job to make it cor-

respond more to personal inclinations, skills, and abilities,

can generate significant work and nonwork benefits for

individuals. Using the theoretical lens of activation theory,

we examined whether professionals are prompted to cogni-

tively craft their jobs in response to the increasing percep-

tion of precarisation of their profession, measured in terms

of job insecurity and perceived external prestige. We

adopted a mixed methods approach among professional

accountants operating in Southern Italy and the results indi-

cated the presence of two curvilinear relationships. More

specifically, we found that accountants were more likely to

engage in cognitive crafting when experiencing moderate

levels of job insecurity (rather than high or low) and in the

presence of both low and high levels of perceived external

prestige (rather than a moderate level). Implications for the-

ory and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS

accountants, cognitive crafting, job crafting, job insecurity,

perceived external prestige, professionals

Authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally to the paper.

Received: 13 June 2018 Revised: 13 November 2019 Accepted: 14 November 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12270

Hum Resour Manag J. 2020;1–16. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1

244 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Hum Resour Manag J. 2020;30:244–259.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj

1|INTRODUCTION

The construct of “job crafting”was introduced in 2001 to illustrate a bottom-up approach in job design consisting of

employees (and not their managers) who proactively seek to customise and/or change some aspects of their job to

make it more corresponding to their personal skills, passions, and preferences (Berg, Wrzesniewski, & Dutton, 2010;

Tims, Derks, & Bakker, 2016; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). In their seminal contribution, Wrzesniewski and

Dutton (2001) argued that the job crafting process consists of three possible actions: (a) changing the boundaries of

the job to incorporate into the ordinary role one or more additional tasks that can match more personal preferences

and inclinations (i.e., task crafting), (b) enhancing the quality of social relationships with colleagues, supervisors,

and/or clients to experience meaningful connections at work (i.e., relational crafting), and (c) mentally reworking the

scope of one's profession to highlight its value and potential contribution to the self, the organisation, and the entire

community (i.e., cognitive crafting).

Although research on job crafting has grown exponentially in recent years (e.g., Demerouti & Peeters, 2018;

Lazazzara, Tims, & de Gennaro, 2019), the analysis of the antecedents of job crafting is still overlooked (Niessen,

Weseler, & Kostova, 2016). Most prior research suggests that individuals tend to engage in job crafting in response

to personal needs and motivations (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001); although these are fundamental drivers of

human agency (Russo, Ollier-Malaterre, & Morandin, 2019), it is clear that the context in which an individual is

embedded can significantly shape personal agency, as demonstrated in prior work–family research wherein scholars

have demonstrated that individuals' hopes and aspirations are significantly constrained by their environmentalcondi-

tions (Hobson, 2011), leading to significant crafting efforts (Sturges, 2012).

Another shortcoming of current research concerns the overemphasis on the task and relational dimensions of

job crafting and the little scholarly attention given to the cognitive dimension of job crafting (Rudolph, Katz, Lavigne,

& Zacher, 2017; Zhang & Parker, 2019), as testified by the fact that most of the scales used to measure job crafting

do not even include items to measure the cognitive dimension (Lazazzara, Tims, & de Gennaro, 2019; Weseler &

Niessen, 2016). This is paradoxical because the cognitive component of job crafting is the first and foremost moment

through which the entire job crafting process is developed (Niessen et al., 2016; Yin, Sun, & Chen, 2017), as all job

crafting initiatives begin with a cognitive perception of the characteristics and fit of one's job (Berg et al., 2010;

Sturges, 2012).

To fill these gaps, in this paper, we examine the relationship between the individuals' perceptions of the socio-

economic context, focusing on the job insecurity and perceived external prestige (PEP) of the accountant profession

and the tendency to engage in cognitive job crafting. More specifically, using a sample of professional accountants

operating in Southern Italy, we adopt a mixed methods approach, testing our relationships both with qualitative

interviews and a two-wave survey. In contrast to prior studies that have mostly considered a linear relationship

between contextual antecedents and job crafting (i.e., Lu, Wang, Lu, Du, & Bakker, 2014), and drawing on activation

theory theorising that moderate levels of a stressor are likely to stimulate a more appropriate coping response to

stress than are low or high levels of stressors (Gardner & Cummings, 1988), we believe that the relationship between

our predictors and cognitive job crafting can have an inverted U-shaped relation.

We believe that our study can contribute to the existing literature in two important ways. First, we advance

research on the antecedents of job crafting by shedding light on the role of context, even though it is measured in

the form of individual perceptions. This is an important theoretical development considering that the context in

which one is embedded can strongly shape the individual's capacity to develop a positive framing of his or her pro-

fession (e.g., Berg et al., 2010; Wrzesniewski, LoBuglio, Dutton, & Berg, 2013). Because PEP and job insecurityrepre-

sent perceptual variables activating individual cognitive processes that can affect how individuals feel at work and

the meaning assigned to their work (Roberson, 1990), it is likely that they can shape the cognitive job crafting capa-

bilities, also considering that job crafting requires an important mental effort and the capacity to frame one's job in

broader terms (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Moreover, the focus on this specific dimension of job crafting also

enables us to respond to recent calls that invite authors to provide a deeper examination of the single dimensions of

2BUONOCORE ET AL.

BUONOCORE ET AL.245