crafting a job

8/2/2019 Crafting a Job

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C Academy of Management Pevrew

2001, Vol 26, No 2,179-201

CRAFT ING A JOB :

REV ISION ING EM PLOYEES AS ACTIVE

CRAFTERS OF THEIR W ORK

AMY WRZESN IEWSK INew York University

JA NE E. D UTTO NUniversity of Michigan

We propose that employees craft their jobs by changing cognitive. task. and/or rela-

tional boundaries to shape interactions and relationships with others at work. These

altered task and relational configurations change the design and social environment

of the job. which. in tum. alters work meanings and work identity. We offer a model of

job crafting that specifies (1) the individual motivations that spark this activity. (2) how

opportunities to job craft and how individual work orientations determine the forms

job crafting takes. and (3) its likely individual and organizational effects.

Organizational researchers care about whatwhat composes the experience of a job. Tradi-tionally. they hcve focused on either individualdeterminants (Dubin. 1956; Lodahl & Kejner.1965;Roberson. 1990).such as expectations orvalues. or external characteristics of the job it-self (Griffin. 1987;Hackman & Oldham. 1980).such as work tasks or social interaction at work.Both perspectives minimize the role that em-ployees play in actively shaping both the tasksand social relationships that compose a job.

Even in the most restricted and routine jobs.employees can exert some influence on what isthe essence of the work.

The core premise of this article is that thework tasks and interactions that compose thedays. the jobs. and. ultimately. the lives of em-ployees are the raw materials employees use toconstruct their jobs. In our perspective we drawon assumptions of social constructionism that"place particular stress on the individual's psy-chological construction of the experientialworld" (Gergen. 1994:67).The social context pro-vides employees with the materials they use to

We thank the WIlliam Russell Kelly Chcnr for its fmancial

support of this work. Blake Ashforth. Janice Beyer. Arthur

Brref, Wendy Guild. UUa Johansson. FIOna Lee. Elizabeth

Wolfe Morrison. Leslie Perlow. Anat Rafaeli. Lloyd Sand-

elands. and three anonymous revrewers provided helpful

comments on earher drafts. We also thank Gelaye Debebe

for her help in doing the research about hospital cleaners

that inspired this crticle.

build the experience of work (Salancik & Pfeffer.1978).Interactions with others help employeesdefine and bound tasks by shaping impressionsof what is and is not part of the job. However. jobboundaries, the meaning of work. and workidentities are not fully determined by formal jobrequirements. Individuals have latitude to de-fine and enact the job, acting as "job crofters."We define job crafting as the physical and cog-nitive changes individuals make in the task orrelational boundaries of their work. Thus. job

crafting is an action, and those who undertake itare job crafters. Our perspective illuminateshow, when, and why employees are likely tocraft their jobs. and how crafting revises bothemployees' work identities and work meanings.

An employee's job is made up of a "set of taskelements grouped together under one job titleand designed to be performed by a single indi-vidual" (lIgen & Hollenbeck, 1992: 173).Thus,tasks represent the most basic building blocksof the relationship between employees and theorganization (Griffin. 1987)and are composed of"the set of prescribed work activities a person

normally performs during a typical work period"(Griffin, 1987:94).Crafting a job involves shap-ing the task boundaries of the job (either physi-cally or coqnitively). the relational boundariesof the job, or both. Changing task boundariesmeans altering the form or number of activitiesone engages in while doing the job, whereaschanging cognitive task boundaries refers to al-tering how one sees the job (e.g., as a set of

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18 0 Academy of Management Review April

discrete parts or as an integrated whole), andchanging relational boundaries means exercis-ing discretion over with whom one interactswhile doing the job. By changing anyone ofthese elements, an individual alters the designof the job and the social environment in whichhe or she works.

We argue that such actions affect both themeaning of the work and one's work identity. By"meaning of the work" we mean individuals'understandings of the purpose of their work orwhat they believe is achieved in the work (Brief& Nord, 1990).The meaning of work is reflectedin the framing of the work more generally (e.g., aphysician may frame work as being about heal-ing people or about acting upon illness withtechnology, among other possibilities; Hughes,1971; Terkel, 1974).By "work identity" we mean

how individuals define themselves at work.Work identity is partly cognitive: it describes theattributes and the more holistic conception thatpeople have of themselves at work. At the sametime, individuals make claims about what workis and what it is not, making work identity a setof actions as well as a set of cognitions (Bartel &Dutton, in press; Creed & Scully, in press; Guild,1999; Van Maanen, 1998).While identity cannotbe changed at will, individuals make claimsabout who they are and why what they do mat-ters, and this is part of the social identity that iscreated at work (Ashforth & Mcel. 1989).Work

identification, like organizational identification,assumes correspondence between how individ-uals define themselves and how they definetheir work (Pratt, 1998).

What individuals do at work and who theyinteract with are two important means by whichemployees change their work identities. For ex-ample, when a hospital cleaner changes the jobby cutting tasks and avoiding interaction withothers, the meaning of the job and the identity ofthe employee change as well. Clearly, changingthe meaning of work informs and is informed byone's work identity, or by being the person who

accomplishes these purposes. The meaning ofwork and one's work identify are core ingredi-ents in the creation of a job over time. Changesin one's framing of the work's purpose by defi-nition changes the meaning of the work, which,in turn, alters how one defines oneself as a doerof the work. For example, when an internet ser-vice provider changes the framing of the workfrom being about making sales to being about

connecting those who would otherwise be leftbehind in the computing revolution, the mean-ing of the work changes, as does the employee'sidentity (deal maker versus champion of themasses).

In this article we construe employees as "jobcrcdters." and we use the term job crafting tocapture the actions employees take to shape,mold, and redefine their jobs. Job crafters areindividuals who actively compose both whattheir job is physically, by changing a job's taskboundaries, what their job is cognitively, bychanging the way they think about the relation-ships among job tasks, and what their job isrelationally, by changing the interactions andrelationships they have with others at work. Jobcrafting is a psychological, social, and physicalact, in which cues are read about physical

boundaries of the work and are interpreted bymotivated crafters. Job crafters act upon the taskand relational boundaries of the job, changingtheir identity and the meaning of the work in theprocess. In doing so, job crafters create differentjobs for themselves, within the context of de-fined jobs. Thus, job crafting is a creative andimprovised process that captures how individu-als locally adapt their jobs in ways that createand sustain a viable definition of the work theydo and who they are at work. Whether this craft-ing is "good" or "bad" for the organization is anissue that is situationally dependent.

We offer a model of job crafting that specifies(l) the individual motivations that spark thisactivity, (2) how opportunities to job craft andhow individual work orientations help to deter-mine the forms job crafting takes, and (3) itslikely individual and organizational effects. Jobcrafting is a situated activity, in the sense thatdifferent contexts enable or disable differentlevels and forms of crafting. Because job craft-ing is related to similar concepts in the organi-zational literature, we contrast job crafting andits contribution to these concepts. In addition,we provide several examples of job crafting,

which bring to life two aspects of job crafting:0) employees construct their work worlds byshaping the tasks that compose the job, and(2)employees form interactions and relationshipsthat compose the social environment at work.

Job crafters are all around us. Job alterationscan be incremental or radical-visible or invis-ible. For example, a computing support personwho helps employees with their web pages, in

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2001 Wrzesniewskl and Dutton 181

addition to regular job tasks, is changing the jobas well as his or her relationships with others.Similarly, when em overworked employee re-duces the scope and scale of work activities toprevent exhaustion, this is a form of job crafting.

Ilgen and Hollenbeck (1992)define such jobchanges as emergent task elements, but theyseparate this ideo from the job itself, insteadnaming these chnnges as port of the employee'snew role. Thus, in their view, jobs do not changecs a result of job crafting; we, however, contendthut the job (cmd its tasks), its menning, endemployee identity all chnnge when job craftingoccurs. Although a dominrmt focus in studies ofwork has been on understanding the connectionbetween employees' ratings of their jobs endobjective job properties, we argue for a perspec-tive thot acknowledges the everydny altering of

jobs thct individuo:ls do. Therefore, there is no"objective" job to which to compere employees'perceptions. Instecrd. the job is being re-createdor crafted all the time. Also, job crafting differsfrom job design (Huckmun & Oldham, 1980)inthct it addresses the processes by which em-ployees change elements of their jobs and rela-tionships with others to revise the meaning ofthe work end the social environment at work. Incontrast, the job design perspective focuses onemployees' experiences of jobs in which taskelements are more static.

Job design perspectives me lmgely concerned

with determining how employees interpret ob-jective task chorrrcteristics and social informer-tion in the job setting to produce attitudinal andmotivational responses to the work (Griffin &McMnhan, 1994;lIgen & Hollenbeck. 1992).Jobcrafting complements theories of job design byessentially chnngmg the direction of this relet-tionship; insteod of the design of the job elicit-ing attitudes end motivation, the opportunityand motivation to craft elicit job crafting. Ratherthan assume thct employees who me satisfiedin their work will toke on more job tasks, asthose with the job design perspective do, we

assume that employees alter the task and rela-tional boundaries of their jobs to create workwith which they are more satisfied.

Our discussion of job crafting proceeds inthree steps. First, we present our model of jobcrafting, followed by an occount of how job craft-ing differs from related constructs and how itbuilds upon c subset of these to portray themotivations for and effects of crafting a job. Sec-

and, we offer six examples from organizationalresearch of job crafters in action to enliven ourmodel. Third, we discuss how our model contrib-utes to organizationnl research, offer pructiculimplications, and suggest meas for future re-search.

J OB CRAFT ING

In Figure 1we present our job crafting model-built on the premise that the motivation to jobcraft end the perceived opportunities presentwithin the orqcmizution to engage in crafting actin concert to affect the form and extent of jobcrafting. More formally, we argue thot the moti-vction to craft a job is moderated by theperceived opportunity to do so, as well as byindividuals' work end motivational orientations.

Thus, situctioncl and dispositional conditionsmoderate how motivction to craft crentes jobcrafting patterns. We outline the contours for ageneral framework of job crafting in Figure 1.

Motivation for Job Crafting

The motivation for job crafting Grises fromthree individual needs. First, employees engagein job crafting to assert some control over theirjobs in order to avoid alienation from the work(Braverman, 1974).Second, employees are moti-vated to create a positive self-image in their

work. Third, job crafting ollows employees tofulfill a basic human need for connection to oth-ers (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).We consider ecchmotivation below.

The need for personal control is cr basic hu-man drive. Humans respond well to hnving con-trol even over seemingly small matters, and con-trol in one's own environment has beendescribed as "an intrinsic necessity oflife itself"(Adler, 1930:398). Thus, one would expect thathnving or taking control over certcrin cspects ofthe work would be a basic human need. Theimplications of having little control over one's

work are even more profound; the hcrllmorks ofalienating work me having little or no controlover the tasks of. conditions for, or overall pur-pose of the work (Brrrvermun. 1974;Rogers, 1995).By taking control of or reframing some of thesefactors, even in smell wcrys, job crafters makethe job their own. Even in low-autonomy jobs,employees can create new domains for masteryand shape facets of job tasks to take control over

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18 2 Academy of Management Review

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2001 Wrzesniewskz and Dutton 18

some aspect of the work (Hamper, 1986; Roy,1959).

People also desire to create and sustain apositive sense of self in their own eyes (Steele,1988)and in the eyes of others (Baumeister, 1982;Erez & Earley, 1993). The drive for self-enhance-ment through construction of a positive self-image is a basic tenet of social identity theory(e.g., TajfeL 1981, 1982) and is reflected in thedrive to create positive images of self in work(Dutton, Dukerich, & Hcrqucril. 1994). When thejobs that people have make this positive con-struction of self difficult they (and people ingeneral) are motivated to remedy the situation.For example, Roger (1995)describes how tempo-rary workers change the pace of the work, aswell as their names, while working in temporaryjobs to separate negative impressions of temp

work from the positive image they have of them-selves as people. Goffman's (1956) focus on def-erence and demeanor illustrates the range ofactions people engage in to create a positiveimpression of themselves in the eyes of others.This pressure to create a positive image infil-trates many aspects of employees' work activi-ties. Accordingly, one important motive for jobcrafters is to change the tasks and relationshipsthat compose their jobs to enable a more posi-tive sense of self to be expressed and confirmedby others.

The third motivation for job crafting concerns

a need for human connection. Human beings aremotivated to forge connections with others as away to introduce meaning into their lives(Baumeister & Leary, 1995).Most theories of themeaning of work are individually based (Brief &Nord, 1990),but we extend this view by showingthat employees build relationships with othersat work to reframe the meaning of work andtheir work identities. For example, when hospi-tal cleaners integrate themselves into patientcare functions, they are able to see their work asbeing about healing people and to see them-selves as a key part of this process, thus enhanc-

ing work meaning and creating a more positivework identity (e.g., worker as healer instead ofcleaner). Through these kinds of changes, em-ployees narrate a different sense of who theyare at work (Gergen & Gergen, 1988)and why thework matters. By crlterinq their jobs, they fulfillprescribed work tasks but craft the job intosomething fundamentally different at the sametime.

The job crafting motivations we describe com-plement other perspectives on the role of needfulfillment in jobs. For example, employees withhigh growth-need strength (Hackman & Old-horn, 1980)are likely to respond well to changesthat expand their jobs. However, we suggestthnt those with high growth-need strength willcraft boundaries for themselves, rather than re-spond positively to task boundaries that are ex-panded for them, in order to respond to their ownmotivation and opportunity to craft in the job.Thus, job crafting addresses a set of practicesand dynamics quite different from theories ofjob design.

Not all employees are motivated to fulfillneeds for control, positive image, and connec-tion at work. Individuals who look to fulfill theseneeds at work likely will look for opportunities

to craft their jobs in ways that allow them tomeet their needs. Others may find that theseneeds are met elsewhere in their lives. Likewise,when employees work in jobs that fulfill theirneeds for control, positive image, and connec-tion, they may not be motivated to job craftsince their needs are met by their current worksituation (Caldwell & O'Reilly, 1990).Motivationto craft a job most often will result from situa-tions in which employees feel that their needsare not being met in their job as it is currentlydesigned.

Perceived Opportunities for Job Crafting

Motivation to craft a job is more likely to sparkjob crafting when employees perceive that op-portunities for job crafting exist. Perceived op-portunity to craft a job refers to the sense offreedom or discretion employees have in whatthey do in their job and how they do it. Like otheropportunity perceptions, opportunities to jobcraft are psychologically positive, since they im-ply autonomy to act (i.e.. a form of control), asense of possible gain, and some sense of abil-

ity or means to act (Jackson & Dutton, 1988;Laza-rus & Folkman, 1984). Thus, motivated employ-ees are likely to assess opportunities for jobcrafting at work before crafting their jobs. Fol-lowing this, perceived opportunity for job craft-ing moderates the relationship between motiva-tion to job craft and job crafting behaviors;perceived opportunities for job crafting can re-strict or open up possibilities for employees to



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see what paths are available in how they enacttheir jobs.

Our model sets forth two major contributors tothe perceived opportunity to craft a job, both ofwhich are tied to the actual design of work:(1) the level and form of task interdependenceand (2) the level of discretion or freedom to jobcraft implied by monitoring systems in the job.

In any organization, employee tasks are car-ried out with more or less task interdependencebuilt into the work. Task interdependence refersto "the extent to which the items or elementsupon which work is performed or the work pro-cesses themselves are interrelated so thatchanges in the state of one element affect thestate of the others" (Scott, 1987: 214). Employeesengaged in tasks with higher degrees of inter-dependence (e.g., approximating reciprocal as

opposed to pooled interdependence; Thompson,1967) are yoked more strongly to the timing andtasks of others, restricting the degree of possibletask alterations, how the employees performtasks, and with whom they interact along theway. Thus, those with more task interdepen-dence work under more constraints and haveless freedom to alter task and relational bound-aries as a result. In effect, the more task inter-dependence an employee has, the fewer de-grees of freedom he or she has to job craft. Incontrast, an employee with job tasks that re-quire little task interdependence with coworkers

(e.g., hairdresser, cleaning staff member) hasmore latitude to alter the task and relationalboundaries of the job. Thus, we expect that lessinterdependence with coworkers creates morefreedom for crafting, enhancing the perceivedopportunity to job craft.

Also, closeness of monitoring or supervisionby management may affect whether employeesperceive opportunities to job craft. In jobs inwhich managers closely control employee tasksand time (e.g., customer service agent, telemar-keter). job crafting is likely to be both high invisibility and less welcomed. When employeeswork "out of the limelight" of management'sgaze, they may perceive more opportunities tobe creative in crafting their jobs (Amabile, Hill,Hennessey, & Tighe, 1994).We argue that whenemployees' jobs are explicitly defined and con-trolled, employees may see less opportunity forcrafting activities. This point offers a contrastwith a job design perspective, in which it isassumed that autonomy in the work leads to

enhanced meaning in the work and felt respon-sibility for the job. Instead, we assert that auton-omy in the job leads to perceived opportunitiesfor job crafting and encourages employees toalter the task and relational boundaries of theirjobs.

This argument suggests that there are contra-dictory forces at play in the modern workplacethat might affect crafting patterns. As technol-ogy enables organizations and supervision to bemore controlling (e.g., by monitoring computerwork. web usage, and e-mail traffic), theseforces are likely to dampen perceived opportu-nities for job crafting. At the same time, how-ever, organizations are embracing less limitingpractices, in which casual dress, flexible workhours, and flexible workplaces may accentuatepercei ved opportunities to job craft. These

boundary conditions are meant to be suggestiveabout conditions that might encourage moti-vated employees to job craft.

Work and Motivational Orientations andJob Crafting

Individuals' orientations toward their workare likely to affect the relationship between mo-tivation to craft and job crafting behaviors. Re-search shows that most people have one of threedistinct relations to their work, seeing it as a job,career, or calling (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan,

Swidler, & Tipton, 1985; Wrzesniewski, McCau-ley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1997). The distinctions,drawn starkly, are these: people with jobs focuson financial rewards for working, rather thanpleasure or fulfillment; those with careers focusprimarily on advancement; and those with call-ings focus on enjoyment of fulfilling, sociallyuseful work. Research indicates that employeesin a wide range of occupations-from clerical toprofessional-see their work primarily in one ofthese three ways and that jobs, careers, andcallings are each represented within occupa-tions as well (Wrzesniewski et aI., 1997).

Work orientations are likely to interact withmotivation to job craft in encouraging or dis-couraging job crafting. Work orientations allowpeople to see different kinds of possibilities forhow to change their tasks and relationships atwork. Employees are likely to revise their jobs inways that fit their work orientation, enacting thesame jobs very differently. For example, em-ployees with job orientations working in a hu-



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man services organization are likely to focus ontasks done for pay rather than on helping asmany people as possible. Likewise. employeeswith career orientntions are likely to craft theirjobs so that they mteract with and help thosewho are more powerful than them. and engagein high-visibility tasks that are good for the or-ganization.

Employees' genE!ral motivational orientationsmay also affect job crafting (Amabile et ctl.,1994).Specifically. those with intrinsic (e.g.. do-ing the work for its own sake) motivations forworking may engage in more expansive jobcrafting. which will allow for the expression ofself-determination (control) and competence intheir work. In contrast. extrinsic (e.g .. doing thework for a reason apart from the work itself)motivations for working may encourage job

crafting that limits the task and relationalboundaries of the job. since the work is done tomeet some external end. Indeed. extrinsic moti-vation has been shown to produce rigid behav-ior and less creativity in approaching tasks(Amabile et ul., 1994). While Amabile and col-leagues suggest that people may choose occu-pations based on their motivational orienta-tions. we suggest that. through job crafting.people will craft hom within their jobs to meettheir needs.

Thus. job and individual features both moder-ate the relationship between motivation to job

craft and job crafting behaviors. When job andindividual Iecrtures create conditions that arefavorable for job crafting. more job craftingshould result among employees who are moti-

vated to job craft. We argue that employees whoperceive limited opportunities to job craft or whoare not motivated to craft will engage in less jobcrafting than those who are motivated or seeopportunities. Job crafting is a way that individ-uals express and use often-hidden degrees offreedom in their job to customize it to fit theirown sense of what the job should be.

Forms of Job Crafting

In Table 1we present three forms of job craft-ing. The first form involves changing the job'stask boundaries. Employees achieve this bychanging the number. scope. or type of job tasksdone at work. By choosing to do fewer. more. ordifferent tasks than prescribed in the formal job.employees create a different job.

The second form of job crafting entails chang-ing the relational boundary of the job. This prac-tice involves changing either the quality oramount of interaction with others at work. orboth. Employees often can decide how fre-quently they wish to interact with others on thejob and can also help determine the quality ofthose interactions. The examples we offer laterin the article highlight cases in which employ-ees change their level of involvement with oth-ers at work and alter the nature of these rela-tionships in ways that change the job.

The third form of job crafting occurs when

employees change the cognitive task bound-aries of their jobs. Changing the cognitiveboundanes can take many forms. but one likelyinvolves employees' altering how they parse the

TABLE 1

Forms of Job Crafting

Form Example

Chcnqinq number, scope. and type

of Job tasks

Effect on Meaning of Work

Design engineers engaging in relational

tasks that move a project to

completion

Chcmqinq qualIty andlor amount ofinteraction WIth others

encountered in Job

Work IS completed in a more timely

fashion; engmeers change the

meanmg of then jobs to be

guardians or movers of projectsCleaners change the merm inq of

their Jobs to be helpers of the

SIck; see the work of the floorunit as an mtegrated whole of

which they are a vital part

Nurses change the way they see

the work to be more about

patient advocacy, as well as

highqua lity technical care

Hospital cleaners actively caring for

pa tients and fami lies, integrat ing

themselves into the workflow of their

floor uruts

Changing cognitive taskboundaries

Nurses taking responsibihty for allinformation and "msiqnrnccmt" tasks

that may help them to care more

appropriately for a patient



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job-viewing it either as a set of discrete worktasks or as an integrated whole. Changing theview of the job in this way fundamentallychanges how employees approach the job. Forexample, nurses who see their work as being

about advocacy and total patient care, ratherthan the delivery of high-quality technical care,change the way they view the job and, as aresult, engage in different job activities (Benner,Tanner, & Chesla, 1996). Johansson (1996) de-scribes a similar process, in which housing com-pany employees shifted the way they framed thework when the company delegated "total re-sponsibility" to its workers in caring for thebuilding areas to which they were assigned.

Effects of Job Crafting on the Job Crafter

The effects of job crafting are outlined in Fig-ure 1. Following directly from the conditions en-couraging job crafting and the ways employeescraft their jobs, the effects of job crafting areboth specific and general; job crafting createsalterations in the meaning of the work. as wellas revisions of work identity.

Job crafting changes the meaning of the workby changing job tasks or relationships in waysthat allow employees to reframe the purpose ofthe job and experience the work differently(Tausky, 1995).Psychological meaningfulness ofwork results when people feel worthwhile and

valuable at work (Hackman & Oldham, 1980).Thus, any actions that employees take to altertheir jobs in ways that increase feelings of pur-pose are likely change the meaning of the work.

Creating or adding meaning to the work byjob crafting is similar to the process Ashforthand Kreiner (1999)describe regarding how thosein stigmatized occupations (e.g., involving "dirtywork") transform the meaning of the work byreframing the job. For example, public defend-ers claim they are "protecting the constitutionalrights of all citizens to a fair trial" (1999: 421)-not helping criminals avoid condemnation. Sim-

ilarly, Goffman (1974)describes regrounding, inwhich individuals perform an activity for rea-sons or motives that differ from other people's.This regrounding process helps employees tocompose a different purpose for the work theyare doing. In both cases, individuals reconstructthe job in ways that differ from its original struc-ture, and they craft a different purpose for thework that is believable for self and others.

Job crafting also has the potential to shapeone's work identity. Again, the reasons for shap-ing a work identity are basic. People attempt tocreate social communities that support desir-able images of themselves (Schlenker, 1985).The

people with whom one interacts on and offthe job playa role in cocreating and sustainingthe claims one makes about one's work identity.In Sampson's terms, others "endow us withmeaning and clothe us with comprehensibility"(1993: 106). The basis of our argument is thatpeople have some freedom in creating sustain-able work identities by selectively influencingthe relational partners with whom they interact(Gergen, 1994;Schlenker, 1985).These relationalpartners, in turn, through talk and action, help tococreate employees' work identities by reflect-ing back. or not (Cooley, 1902;Mead, 1934),ele-

ments of this identity. Therefore, by shaping theform and amount of interaction with others atwork, employees participate in the creation oftheir work identity with others and enable thecreation of desirable identities that fulfill a needfor positive self-assessment.

Job crafters seek out relationships with otherson the job who serve as audiences for whichthey can sustain desirable identities. The cre-ation of work identity is an active process, inwhich "people strive to create environments, inboth their own minds and the real world, thatsupport, validate and elicit desirable identityimages. They thus selectively encounter, per-ceive and influence the situations and audi-ences with which they deal" (Schlenker, 1985:89). As McCall and Simmons describe it, peoplecreate a self-confirming opportunity structureand then develop social environments that nur-ture their self-views (1966: 105).

The work meanings and identities employeesforge by job crafting are not static. Employeesare likely to use these meanings and identitiesas feedback about their crafting activities, andthey may be motivated to engage in additional

job crafting to further shape the work meaningand work identity. For example, an employeewho alters the task boundary of the job to en-hance control over the work might find that thispractice changes the purpose of the work in un-expected ways, thus motivating the employee tocraft the job in other ways. Thus, this employeemay use the changed purpose of the work asfeedback to guide more job crafting.



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Job crafting is primarily an individual-levelactivity, in which the employee decides how andwhen to shape job tasks and interactions. Weargue that this activity serves the employee, butit is not inherently good or bad for organizations;employees may change the job in ways thatbenefit or hurt the organization while benefitingthemselves. For example, car assembly line em-ployees who decide to make changes to theirtasks might cause major problems in the flowand quality of work or, alternatively, mightboost productivity and quality.

Our framework implies that all employees arepotential job crafters. We realize this argumentmight mislead people into thinking that employ-ees who are caught in jobs in which they findlittle meaning can choose to change their fate ifthey wish. We do not assume that all employees

can and should engage in job crafting and,therefore, are to blame if their jobs are notmeaningful. Rather, we choose to focus on thefreedom employees have and the creativity theyexhibit in crafting jobs to be different from theirformally specified ingredients.

In addition, we do not address the point thatjob crafting may create more work for the em-ployee, even though this work is voluntary. Jobcrafters are not necessarily recognized or re-warded for the effort they make to create moremeaningful jobs; much of what they do may beinvisible to managers, supervisors, and cowork-

ers (Fletcher, 1998; Star & Strauss, 1999). Jobcrafters may engage in practices that benefit theorganization, introducing innovation into tasksand the relationships that compose work. Yet. atthe same time, by changing their jobs, job craft-ers' actions may put the organization at risk forlegal or regulatory problems, or they may jeop-ardize the employees' capacities to perform thejob well. However, CIS we argue, the rewards thatemployees can reap from job crafting are realand consequential.

Linking Job Crafting to Related Constructs

The idea that individuals can craft new jobswithin the constraints of prescribed jobs is notentirely new. Building on Katz and Kahn's (1966)ideas of role innovation, Staw and colleaguesargue that individuals engage in task revision(Staw & Boettger, 1990) and sculpting activities(Bell & Staw, 1989) that make a difference for theorganization and the individual doing the job.

For example, Rafaeli (1989) found that cashierschange features of their job by defining theirlevel and type of customer service and controlover customer interactions. The cashiers in herstudy engaged in different practices to maintaincontrol over service interactions with customers,such as ignoring, rejecting, reacting to, or en-gaging the customers in the transaction. Ilgenand Hollenbeck (1992)note that job holders cre-ate emergent task elements in their roles in or-ganizations and are most able to do this whenthe job has few formal requirements and allowsemployees to choose the work tasks to be under-taken.

Despite these useful developments, the ideathat employees actively design their jobs hasnot been studied in proportion to its importanceto organizational studies. In some perspectives

researchers do address similar phenomena tojob crafting, but they often implicitly or explic-itly (e.g., Ilgen & Hollenbeck. 1992) assume thatonly those employees with a great deal of jobautonomy or complexity can engage in such be-haviors. Other perspectives on work share somefeatures with job crafting but differ in their fun-damental focus. In particular, job design (Hack-man & Oldham, 1980) and social informationprocessing (Salancik & Pfeffer. 1978) perspec-tives on work stand in contrast to job craftingbut offer foundations on which crafting can beoffered as a useful complement.

The job design literature has historically beena central frame for understanding how individ-uals experience their jobs. Hackman and Old-ham (1976, 1980) and, earlier, Hackman andLawler (1971) outlined a theoretical frameworkregarding how individuals judge their jobs to bemotivating and satisfying by focusing on objec-tive task characteristics. According to this the-ory, job motivation is tied to objective features ofthe job, mcluding skill variety, task identity andsignificance, autonomy, and feedback. Althoughsupport of the job characteristics model hasbeen mixed (Glick, Jenkins, & Gupta, 1986;Hogan & Mortell. 1987), it remains a dominantframe for understanding how employees expe-rience their jobs.

The job design perspective puts managers inthe role of job crafters: the managers designtasks and act as job crofters. altering the moti-vation and satisfaction of employees by chang-ing task features. In recent research scholarshave strengthened theory on job design by inte-



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grating it with insights from the social informa-tion processing perspective (Salancik & Pfeffer,1978) to acknowledge that tasks are not purelyobjective but are socially constructed by the em-ployee doing the work. In this integrated model,features of the objective and subjective workenvironments affect job attitudes (Griffin, 1987,1991; Griffin, Bateman, Wayne, & Head, 1987).Individuals playa role in filtering and reactingto job information, but in this literature re-searchers tend to portray them as passive par-ticipants in the process: "lumps of clay, ready tobe shaped by all those around them" (Bell &Staw, 1989: 232).

The job design perspective decouples inter-pretation of the job from the objective character-istics of the job itself, but there is still an as-sumption that the interpretation is based on the

job as it was designed-not as the employeecrafted it. Job crafting casts the employee in amore active light; those in the work environment(e.q.. clients, coworkers) can help forge newwork relationships that alter the boundaries ofthe job. More basically, job design assumes thatemployee responses derive from the motivatingpotential of the job; job crafting assumes thatemployees create this motivating potential byshaping elements that traditionally composethe design of the job (e.g., skill. significance,feedback).

Our theory of job crafting builds on this social

information processing perspective (Salancik &Pfeffer, 1978)by identifying different predictorsof how people enact their jobs. According to thesocial information processing model, social in-formation and cues from others act as inputs tothe meaning of the work. However, this modeldoes not account for the features in the contextof the job (e.g., individuaL task, and organiza-tional features) that shape how the work getsdone. Our job crafting perspective builds onSalancik and Pfeffer's (1978)perspective in twoways. First, it complements the social informa-tion processing model by indicating that ratherthan simply interpreting and acting from thecues offered by the job and by others, individu-als are instead interpreting and using as feed-back the crafting actions they have taken intheir own jobs. Second, our model explicitly ad-dresses the identity changes that accompanyjob crafting and the meaning that employeesderive from the work by doing their work differ-ently. This is consistent with Salancik and Pfef-

fer's statement that "the critical variable in pos-itive job attitudes is the construction of theenvironment and the appropriate attitudinal re-sponses" (1978:249).Advocates of other perspec-tives on how individuals change job tasks orother job elements offer additional contrasts tojob crafting. In particular, they predict how andwhen individuals are likely to alter their jobs.

Below, we describe five different conceptuallenses on how jobs change, and we discuss howjob crafting differs from each.

Role and Individual Innovation

Schein used role innovation to describe be-havior that represented a "basic rejection of thenorms which govern the practice of the profes-sion combined with a concern for the role of the

professional in society" (Schein, 1971: 522).Schein described role innovation behaviors thatredefined who the professional's clients were,who initiated contact, what settings were appro-priate for contact with clients, and what the ap-propriate boundaries were of the professional'sexpertise. Later, Van Maanen and Schein de-fined role innovation as "behaviors done to re-define the major premises concerning missionsfollowed by the majority of the role occupants"(1979: 229). Nicholson (1984), following Schein(1971), defined role innovation as the initiatingof "changes in task objectives, methods, materi-

als, scheduling and in the interpersonal rela-tionships integral to task performance." (1984:175). These changes are intended to match therole requirements to the needs, abilities, andidentity of the employee.

Job crafting theory resembles role innovationtheory in that there is an assumption that em-ployees can act upon the job to create a betterfit. However, as a lens on employee behavior,role innovation theory restricts individuals' ac-tions on the job to reactive, problem-solving be-haviors and fails to develop the individual focuswe describe here. Rather than an emphasis onproblem solving, in job crafting theory there isan emphasis on the proactive changes employ-ees make in the boundaries of their work to altertheir identity or the meaning of the work.

The job crafting model is also less formal thanthe model of role making proposed by Graenand Scandura (1987). In their model there is aproposed sequence of activities, from first shar-ing standard job elements and then adding



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task-emergent elements to the job and to theemployee's role until. finally, some emergenttask elements become part of the formal roledescription. Our model of job crafting is morefluid than the role-making model, and we seethe process as having a more improvisationalthan planful quality.A related research area involves individual

innovation and creativity in organizations. His-torically. in such research scholars have focusedon individual problem solving in organizations(Kanter, 1983;West & Farr, 1990).Much of thewriting is intended for managers. with prescrip-tions for how to develop and select for innova-tion among employees. West and Farr offer adefinition of innovation as "the intentional in-troduction and application within a role. group,or organization of ideas. processes. products. or

procedures. new to the relevant unit ofadoption.designed to significantly benefit the individucl.the group. organization or wider society" (1990:9).Although this definition is broad, the authorsuse it in a different way from that ofjob crafting.In Table 2 we describe the differences betweenjob crafting and the perspectives on job changeoffered here.

Personal Initiative

Personal initiative also resembles job crafting(Frese. Kring. Soose, & Zempel. 1996;Frese. Fay.Hillburger. Leng, & Tag, 1997).Frese and col-leagues (1996)define personal initiative as a

behavioral syndrome in which individuals takeself-starting approaches to work and go beyondformal job requirements. Individuals taking per-sonal initiative engage in behaviors that (l) areconsistent with the organization's mission.(2)have a long-term focus. (3)are goal directedand action oriented, (4)are persistent in the faceof barriers. and (5)are self-starting and proac-tive. These researchers (Frese et cl., 1996,1997)have developed this concept through a com-parison of East and West Germans' personalinitiative.

Like job crafters. those with personal initiativeredefine jobs to include extrarole work goals (d.Staw & Boettger. 1990).However, Frese and col-leagues emphasize problem-solving dimen-sions of personal initiative. Similarly. Morrisonand Phelps (1999)describe "taking charge" be-haviors, which also improve how work is exe-cuted in the organization. Although such an ori-

TABLE 2

Comparison of Job Crafting with Similar Organizational Perspectives on Work

Social Nature of Favorable Conditions

Perspective Locus of Activity Purpose of Activity Activity lor Activity

Role/individual Employee. with Addressing or Inherently social Support of others.

innovation (Schein. management improvmq upon a crctivity feedback.1971; Van Maanen intervention faulty task or role autonomy. complex

& Schem. 1979) work

Role making (Graen Employee. with Task accomplishment Inherently SOCIal High-qualIty dyadic

& Scandura. 1987) others in the activity structures in the

organization organization

Personal initiative Employee. with Solving problems or Individuo l Autonomy. complex

(Frese. et cl.. 1996. management overcoming work

1997) intervention barriers

OCB (Organ. 1988. Employee Discranoncrry Can involve others or Job sctisfcction. organ-1997) behaviors to help be pursued by izctioncrl

others or others commitment

organizationTask revision (Staw & Employee. with Correcting problems Individual Authority. task

Boettger. 1990) management in roles or alternatives are

intervention procedures salient

Job crafters Employee Increasing meaning Can involve others or Can occur in any

m the work. be pursued by type of job

changing Identity individual

and role in

orqcmizctron

Copyright 2001 All RightsReserved


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entation is useful in increasing organizationaleffectiveness (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993; Katz,1964; Motowidlo & Van Scotter, 1994; Organ,1988), the focus on problem solving differenti-ates the personal initiative perspective fromthat of job crafting.

Organizational Citizenship

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)provides yet a different lens for understandingemployees' behaviors. Organ (1988)first definedOCB as individual discretionary behavior thatis not explicitly recognized by the organization-al reward system but. in the aggregate, in-creases the effectiveness of the organization(Organ, 1988: 4). Later, Organ (1997) redefinedOCB along the lines of a similar construct,

called "contextual performance" (Borman &Motowidlo, 1993), which consists of behaviorsthat support the broader organizationaL socicl,and psychological environment of the organiza-tion. OCB includes generating new ideas fordoing work, helping others with their work be-ing cheerful and neat accepting orders withoutresentment, cooperating with others at workand doing high-quality work (Bateman & Organ,1983).

OCB is mostly targeted at helping others inthe organization or the organization itself,whereas job crafting is focused on changing the

task and relational landscape to alter workmeaning and identity. While some crafting be-haviors might be described as OCB (e.g., doingextra work to move projects along, forming rela-tionships with clients), the intent behind suchbehavior is not fully to promote the good of oth-ers and the organization. Rather, job craftingcan be motivated by a desire to create moremeaningful work for the job holder, independentof effects on others. As such, it is not simplyabout doing more or doing better, which is thefocus of OCB.

Task Revision

Task revision is the practice of employees'taking action to correct a faulty procedure, inac-curate job description, or dysfunctional role ex-pectation (Staw & Boettger, 1990:537). Staw andBoettger (1990)have shown that people engagein more task revision when they are in charge ofand accountable for the function they perform

and when alternatives for doing the task aresalient. Again, the focus in task revision is onproblem solving or correction of work proce-dures. These researchers argue that when organ-izational roles are misspecified (from the em-ployee's perspective), then task revision can bea valuable outcome. We contend that makingchanges in work tasks is beneficial not onlywhen problems exist but also when task func-tions are entirely appropriate and functioned,since they can enhance the meaning of the work.Staw and Boettger also argue that task revisionshould have a low base rate in organizations,since it "involves resistance to social norms andexpectations" (1990:538). We expect job craftingto appear often, in many different kinds of work.The organizational studies literature revealsseveral examples of job crafting that illustrate

and animate the model of job crafting we havedescribed.In the next section we describe six examples

of job crafting in action. The examples comefrom narrative or qualitative descriptions ofwork. We have culled from these sources evi-dence that job crafting is a part of the workbeing studied by organizational scholars, andwe illustrate the antecedents and consequencesof this important individual activity.

EXAMPLES OF JOB CRAFTERS

The examples of job crafting we offer rangefrom the subtle to the more obvious actions ofemployees. We start with a study of hospitalcleaners who craft the work very differently. Ourother examples come from published researchin organizational studies.

Hospital Cleaners Integrating Themselves intoCare Delivery System

One study of a hospital cleaning staff showsthat cleaners experienced and constructed themeaning of their work very differently (Dutton,

Debebe, & Wrzesniewski. 2000). It became evi-dent, through a series of personal interviewswith twenty-eight members of a hospital clean-ing staff about the nature of their work thatwhile the cleaners had the same prescribed jobat the same hospito l. they crafted it differently.The contrasts among the cleaners were striking,ranging from how they described the skill levelof the work to the kinds of tasks they would do.



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The data separated the cleaners into twogroups. One group created a task and relationalboundary in the job that included only a mini-mum of necessary tasks and interaction with asfew others as possible. Members of this groupdisliked cleaning in generaL judged the skilllevel of the work to be low, and were less willingto step outside formal job boundaries to engagewith others and alter job tasks. In contrast, thesecond group of cleaners altered the task andrelational boundaries of the job to include addi-tional work tasks, as well as frequent interac-tions with patients, visitors, and others in theirunit. Members of this group liked the job, en-joyed cleaning, felt the work was highly skilled,and engaged in many tasks that helped patientsand visitors and made others' jobs in the unit(e.g., nurses, clerks) go more smoothly.

Table 1describes the three dominant forms ofjob crafting that emerged from our examples.The cleaners engaged in the first form of jobcrafting by doing (or not) tasks that were outsidethe formal job. For example, cleaners in the pro-active group added tasks or timed their work tobe maximally efficient with regard to the work-flow on their unit. By changing their work tasks,or by timing their regular tasks with care, clean-ers altered the meaning of their work. Cleanersin the more proactive group saw the work andthemselves as critical in healing patients, alter-ing the meaning of the work and their own workidentity. In contrast. cleaners in the less activegroup restricted the meaning of the work to be-ing simply about cleaning and did not see them-selves as anything other than room cleaners.Such differences in how employees define theirjobs echo Morrison's (1994)account that employ-ees vary in what activities they consider part ofthe job.

The cleaners also changed the relationalboundary of the job by altering their interactionswith others at work. While the passive cleanersdid not seek additLonal interaction, the proac-

tive group enquqod patients and visitors inways that fundamentally altered the job. Manyof the relational interactions that cleaners en-gaged in were intended to brighten somoone'sday (e.g., talking to patients, showing visitorsaround). The proactive group of cleaners alsointeracted more often with the nurses on theirunits, resulting in a work unit that functionedmore smoothly.

Cleaners manifested a third form of job craft-ing by changing the cognitive task boundary ofthe job so that they saw their job as an inte-grated whole, rather than as a set of discretetasks (e.g., cleaning rooms). For example, proac-tive cleaners reported an increased number andcomplexity of interactions with others at work.They saw the larger picture of the unit workflowand adjusted their timing and tasks in responseto this more interdependent view. These clean-ers' own work descriptions revealed an aware-ness of the broader unit context in which theyworked, which was reflected in their relation-ships with others and in the kinds of tasks theychose to do.

Hairdressers Cutting Hair and Crafting a MoreEnjoyable Job

Cohen and Sutton's (1998)ethnographic studyof hairdressers also brings to life the promi-nence and pattern of job crafting. Their findingsreveal hairdressers as able job crafters whochange both the task and relational boundariesof the job by making personal disclosures aboutthemselves, asking clients personal questions,punishing clients who refuse to disclose, andsometimes "firing" clients to create more desir-able and affectively pleasant interactions. Hair-dressers in this study changed the job tasks toinclude not only physically cutting hair but also

getting to know clients-a practice that changedthe relational boundary of the job by bringinghairdresser and client closer together.

Just as a subset of cleaners altered the phys-ical and relational boundaries of their job, hair-dressers created new jobs for themselves withinthe context of their prescribed role as hairdress-ers, in which norms against personal disclosureare sometimes enforced by management (Cohen& Sutton, 1998).Again, job features may haveencouraged job crafting: hairdressers' tasks arelow in interdependence, and there are very lowlevels of employee behavior monitoring. Accord-

ing to our model. these should have promotedjob crafting as well.

Engineers Creating Jobs to Enable the Successof Projects and Others

Fletcher's (1998) research on the work of fe-male design engineers provides another com-pelling example. Fletcher describes four differ-



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ent kinds of engineering work (what she calls"relational practices") that changed the way en-gineers saw their work and their work identity.The first kind of work was preserving, whichincluded taking on extra work in order to get atask done, connecting people on the project tothe people and resources needed to do theirwork. and rescuing the project by calling atten-tion to problems that needed to be addressed.Mutual empowering entailed behaviors that en-abled others' achievements and contributions tothe project (Fletcher, 1998: 170).These behaviorsoften involved teaching others a new skill in anempathetic manner or connecting others on theproject to protect them from their own lack ofrelational skill. The third form of relational prac-tice, achieving, involved reconnecting cowork-ers to avoid breaks in relationships, reflecting

on the emotional nature of work situations andcalibrating responses appropriately, and rela-tional asking (i.e.. asking for help in ways re-spectful of others and their tasks). Finally, theengineers engaged in creating team, or provid-ing the conditions that allowed a team to do itswork. They enabled collaboration by smoothingrelationships and including everyone in theteam effort.

Fletcher's taxonomy of relational practices il-lustrates how design engineers altered the taskand relational boundaries of their jobs. Bychanging job tasks and how they were executed,

engineers created new task boundaries to moveprojects toward completion. In addition, theychanged relational boundaries by working to-ward a positive atmosphere for teamwork andby connecting people on the project to get workdone, both of which involved changing the qual-ity and amount of interaction with others. Fi-nally, the engineers engaged in the third form ofjob crafting by shifting their focus from discreteproject tasks to the whole project.

By constructing themselves as preservers, em-powerment givers, achievers, and team creators,engineers changed the meaning of the job, fromengineering to enabling an organization's workto go more smoothly. Creating such work condi-tions allowed the engineers to exert control andbuild relationships with others. At the sametime, they altered their work identities to in-clude expanded roles. This construction of thework and its Significance to the organizationenhanced its meaning to the self, creating dif-ferent identities.

Nurses Creating a Pocket of CareAround Patients

A fourth example of job crafting in the work-place comes from two complementary studies ofthe nursing profession (Benner et o l., 1996;

Jacques, 1993).Benner and her colleagues inter-viewed and observed nurses from a variety ofunits, whereas Jacques observed nurses from asingle unit to quantify acts of caring in theirwork. Both studies convey the skilled caringwork that occurs in the practice of nursing andthe role of this work in the organization's mis-sion. The nurses acted as job crafters by activelymanaging the task boundary of the job to deliverthe best possible patient care. By paying atten-tion to the patient's world and conveying seem-ingly unimportant information to others on thecare team, nurses re-created their job to be

about patient advocacy, rather than the sale de-livery of high-quality technical care.

Nurses changed the relational boundary ofthe job by expanding their relationship set toinclude patients' family members, on whom thenurses relied for information and input. Bennerand her colleagues (1996;see also Jacques, 1993)describe examples of nurses engaging patients'families and involving them in the illness pro-cess to achieve the best patient outcome. Skillednurses recognized that nonquantifiable andnonmedical observations were critical inputs intreating patients (Benner et ul., 1996).Learningto seek out. notice, and convey this informationto other care providers represented job craftingthat helped the patients and the organization.

Information Technicians Supporting theComputer Workplace

Star and Strauss (1999)provide a fifth exampleof job crafting in their analysis of technicians'work in computer-supported cooperative workenvironments. They document the often unrec-ognized work of technicians, including articula-tion work, in which employees work to "getthings back 'on track' in the face of the unex-pected, and modify action to accommodate un-anticipated contingencies" (Star & Strauss, 1999:3). Articulation work allows for smooth work-place operation, but it is rarely acknowledged.Much like the relational work of Fletcher's engi-neers (1998),articulation work enables others toget their work done.



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However, accordmg to Star and Strauss (1999).what is considered "real work" depends on thedefinition of the situation and who is permittedto define it. Often, practices that appear as "non-work" serve the organization in important ways.Those in information technology work craft theirjobs by altering the task and relational bound-aries of the work to achieve the organization'smission. For example, what might seem likechatting between organization members may be"work" to smooth communication between man-agers of different work units.

Restaurant Kitchen EmployeesCreating Cuisine

The final example of job crafting comes fromFine's ethnographic study of work in restaurant

kitchens (1996a,b). Fine describes how profes-sional cooks engaged in structuring multipletasks under time pressure in ways that reflectedjob crafting. By taking shortcuts and using tricksof the trade to compose a meaL professionalcooks and kitchen staff altered the task bound-ary of their jobs by changing (l) the number oftasks and (2) t he WClY they saw their tasks. frombeing a set of discrete food preparation steps toan integrated whole of dish creation that re-flected the artistic character of their work. Fineuses the term aesthetics to describe activity inwhich the "sensory component of production

... captures the coqnitive and affective compo-nents of aesthetic judgments and ... the inten-tional quality of human action" (1996b: 178).Likethe other job crafters we have described, thecooks changed thei.r identity through their exe-cution of the work--in this case, from food pre-parers to culinary crrtists.

In creating dishes. cooks used their creativeimpulses to craft meals in ways that connectedthem to the work. Rather than simply preparefood that served customers' needs. the cookstried to make the food as "nice" as possible, thuschanging the task boundary of the work. Insteadof thinking about the preparation of meal ele-ments as separate tasks, the cooks enrraged inthe third form of job crafting by seeing theirwork as being about the gestalt of the entiremeal. The cooks used their own artistic stan-dards in trying to create a product worthy ofpride. As such, the cooks Fine studied experi-enced "flow" as they executed their work tasks(Csikszentmihalyi. 1975). paying attention to

their own artistic vision rather than manage-ment policy regarding cooking. In fact. the cooksworked as creatively as possible within strictmanagerial cost constraints. Cooks often triednew food combinations, creating novel dishes inorder to meet job demands (i.s.. preparing cus-tomers' meals) in ways that allowed them toexperience the work as meaningful and cre-ative, rather than scripted and uninspired.

In all of the examples. employees activelycrafted the job, sometimes against manage-ment's wishes. Rather than have managers in-tervene to enable or encourage these employeesto act as job crafters. the employees took initia-tive on their own. Each example suggests thatemployees actively shape both the design andthe social environment of their jobs by changingjob tasks and job-related interactions and rela-

tionships.

DISCUSSION

Our model and examples of job crafting offerthree contributions to how organizational schol-ars think about and study job design, workmeanings. and work identity. These contribu-tions address how individuals, jobs, and indi-viduals-in-jobs are conceptualized and studied.More generally, job crafting offers an alternativelens for understanding basic dynamics of workin organizations such that organizational ele-

ments that once seemed fixed (i.e.. jobs) aremade more complicated and dynamic.

Job Design

With our model of job crafting, we contributeto theories of job design by offering a new per-spective on how jobs are constituted. We havespecified the motivations, job, and individualfeatures that create situations making job craft-ing possible. The process we propose opens updifferent pathways for understanding how peo-ple chcmqe their jobs and effectively shows thatemployees can be competent designers of theirwork. This suggests that employees are moreagentic than typically depicted in theories of jobdesign. Rather than paint employees as passiverecipients of job tasks or of social informationabout job tasks. our job crafting model indicatesthat employees alter their jobs and use the feed-back from these alterations to further motivatejob crafting.



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The job crafting perspective complements thejob design (Hackman & Oldham. 1980)and socialinformation processing perspectives (Salancik &Pfeffer. 1978)by offering an alternative view onthe direction of the relationship among work.motivation. and meaning. In effect. advocates ofjob design perspectives treat attitudinal andmotivational responses as reactions to a job.The job crafting perspective flips this relation-ship around with the assertion that responses toa job actually begin the dynamic process inwhich employees alter task and relationalboundaries in ways that change work meaningand identity. Thus. job crafting offers an alter-native to job design perspectives. in which theemployee is effectively placed in the positiontraditionally held by managers and is viewed asa competent and active architect of the job. Also.

job crafting offers an alternative to the otherperspectives reviewed here on how jobs change.In these perspectives managers are called uponto design more complex work. to permit greaterautonomy. and to give feedback about thechanges that employees make to their jobs. Incontrast to such managerial-focused views ofwork. we argue that employees take on the roleof job crafters even in work that might be con-sidered low in autonomy (cleaning). authority(nursing). or complexity (cutting hair).

Meaning of Work

Our job crafting model contributes to the liter-ature on the meaning of work by indicating howemployees shape work meanings. Work mean-ings shape work motivation and performance(Roberson. 1990:107)on the job; thus. a model ofthe processes by which employees imbue theirwork with meaning contributes to what we knowabout the meaning of work. Historically. themeaning of work has been argued to be theproduct of one of three forces. First. the workenvironment (design of job and reward struc-ture) is thought to affect how individuals derivemeaning from the work. A second influence isthe individual; the psychological attributes andcharacteristics of the individual employee arethought to affect the kinds of meanings as-signed to the work (Roberson. 1990). Indeed. de-bates have arisen over the relative strength ofthese two determinants of work meaning. Third.advocates of the social information processingperspecti ve (Salancik & Pfeffer. 1978) have

argued that the social environment (e.g .. man-agers. coworkers) at work helps employees in-terpret which job and work setting attributes aremost important. All three perspectives are help-ful for understanding the sources of work mean-ing. but they do not address the dynamic inter-play between employee and job that we presenthere.

The evolving relationship between the em-ployee and the job captured in the job craftingmodel suggests a dynamic view of individuals-in-jobs and of work meanings more generally.We have argued that individuals play an activerole in creating the meaning of their work.through the small changes they make in task.relational. and cognitive boundaries of thework. and we have shown the different contextsthat enable or disable these kinds of job impro-

visations.More broadly. however. we hope to suggest a

more holistic view of how individuals composetheir lives and the meaning of their lives bychanging their jobs and themselves withinthem. Through proactively crafting their jobs.people may create different trajectories throughan organization and enact their work lives dif-ferently over time. Although job crafting behav-iors are locally situated at any given point intime. they are connected to employees' enduringneeds at work and their more general framing ofthe domain of work.

Individuals and Work Identity

As agentic architects of their own jobs. jobcrafters enable transformations of work identity.Although some elements of job crafting mightseem like extrarole behaviors. they are rootedmuch more deeply in identity-altering processesthat redefine both the employee and the job. Amodel of job crafting helps identity theorists tountangle the process through which identity-based motivations (i.e .. desire for a positive im-age) change how people enact and craft theirjobs. Thus. the shaping of a work identitythrough job crafting becomes an employee's be-havioral accomplishment. undertaken over timewith others encountered on the job.

Our model of job crafting paints employees asproactive and creative identity builders whotake opportunities they see in their work settingto engage others in ways that change work iden-tity and work meaning. This process unfolds



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over time and likely is engaged in iteratively, asmotivation and opportunity to job craft shift. Wehave named some of the ways that job craftersuse their job tasks and relationships to changeidentity and meaning in the work; there arelikely many more. Job crafters also may altertheir work identities by altering how they usethe physical space at work. the temporal dimen-sions of their work. and many other features ofwork.

Finally, in our model of job crafting, we assertthat part of the identity-shaping process at workis relational. By changing with whom they re-late, job crafters highlight the relational natureof work in organizations. This point reminds us,as organizational scholars, that work is morethan job content and tasks; it also concerns re-lationships with other people (Baron & Pfeffer,

1994; Gersick. Bartunek. & Dutton, 2000). Theserelationships and the interactions composingthem help to create and sustain not only differ-ent notions of what the work is but also who theperson is who is doing the work.

Practical Implications of Job Crafting

Job crafting is neither inherently good nor badfor organizations. The degree to which job craft-ing behaviors contribute to organizational per-formance depends on the kinds of changes em-ployees make and on job crafting's proximal

effects on employee motivation and perfor-mance. We have suggested that job crafting isone route by which individuals alter the mean-ing of work and forge new identities. If thesemeanings and identity constructions motivatedbehaviors that aligned individual work patternswith organizational objectives, then job craftingcould be a net positive for the organization.However, if job crafting altered connections toothers or task boundaries in ways that were atodds with organizational objectives, job craftingcould harm rather than enhance organizationaleffectiveness. Crafting's effects on organiza-

tions are also dependent on the systems inwhich individuals work; what others do to crafttheir own job interacts with anyone individual'scrafting behaviors to influence organizationaloutcomes.

There are important managerial implicationsof job crafting. These implications are both em-powering and dis empowering for managerswishing to affect job crafting. Job crafting is a

process that can be affected only indirectly bymanagerial action. If we think about managersas architects of the contexts in which individualaction is enabled, or not (Ghoshal & Bartlett,1994),managers can affect the context in whichindividuals do job crafting, although they maynot be able to affect when and to what extent jobcrafting occurs. Managers have direct controlover the incentives and material rewards thatare associated with job outcomes. These re-

wards and incentives may encourage or dis-courage individuals to alter the relational andtask boundaries of the job. At the same time,managers may affect how work is organized inways that enhance or undermine employees' de-sire and capacity for job crafting. Thus, manag-ers may affect the odds that job crafting willtake place through both reward systems and the

organization of work.Managers also affect job crafting by indirect

means. For example, organizations can includeor exclude people from strategic conversationsabout what they are trying to accomplish andwhy (Westley, 1990)."The development and cas-

cading of a strategy are critical managementtasks" (Mohrman, 1993: 135), and they shape theextent and type of job crafting likely to takeplace. When employees know and buy into thestrategic goals of an organization, they can usethis knowledge to motivate and legitimate theirown job crafting behaviors. We saw this kind ofeffect for hospital cleaners, who used the stra-tegic goals of the hospital to motivate the fram-ing of cleaning as care for customers. This typeof work framing helped to legitimate a differentform of relating to patients and visitors and en-couraged the addition of caring tasks to thework.

Beyond thinking about how to affect patternsof job crafting, the crafting perspective opens upnew ways of thinking about the competence in-volved in how employees conduct their work.Crafting takes effort. It often involves a series of

creative acts in which employees push, shrink.or transform task and relational boundaries. So-cialization programs and employee trainingwould benefit from a recognition that this kindof activity occurs. In organizations in whichcrafting behavior is a means for" growing a job"or developing an employee, active acknowledg-ment and encouragement of job crafting arelikely to yield tangible and intangible benefits.

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Future Research Directions

The job crafting perspective affords many newresearch opportunities. First. it provides a rangeof individual. task. and organizational featuresthat are likely to affect job crafting. In future

research. how these variables directly and indi-rectly encourage or discourage important jobmodifications could be addressed. Similarly. theeffects of job crafting on individual- and organ-izational-level outcomes could be addressed.We have suggested that job crafting is not fullypositive or negative. An important future re-search agenda includes empirically testing un-der what conditions job crafting produces posi-tive results or destructive outcomes. Candidatesfor situational and individual moderators havebeen hinted at throughout the paper. includingelements of the job and work and motivationalorientations.

A closer look at the lives of individual employ-ees might also help explain job crafting. In ourmodel we primarily consider the work context asshaping job crafting. Such a view violates amore holistic account of human behavior. inwhich individuals in their work and nonworkcontexts would be considered. In future researchscholars could consider the ways that motiva-tions at work are related to demands and oppor-tunities in employees' nonwork lives and howthe meaning of work created through job craft-

ing is related (or not) to the meanings and mo-tivations that employees take from their non-work activities.

The antecedents to job crafting motivationshould be further delineated in future research.Features of individuals. jobs. and organization-al contexts create motivation for crafting behav-iors. Broadly speaking. any factor in individuals'personal or organizational lives that makes jobcrafting a vessel for need fulfillment is a poten-tial antecedent for the motivation to job craft.We offer a few. realizing that the full set is muchricher. First. individuals whose lives outside the

job are not well positioned to fulfill needs forcontrol. connection with others. or positive iden-tity might be more motivated to meet theseneeds in the domain of work. Second. features ofthe job or occupation are likely to affect themotivation for job crafting. For individuals whowork in stigmatized occupations. the pressuresto assert a positive identity are greater (Ashforth& Kreiner. 1999). Thus. job crafting that is in-

tended to restore or create positive identity inone's work is more likely among those in stig-matized or "dirty work" jobs. and it could be aneffective local solution to an occupational prob-lem. Third. those who work at levels of the or-ganization in which freedom and creativity tocraft are constrained might find that they aremore motivated to work against these con-straints by using job crafting as a vehicle forcontrol and self-expression.

In future research scholars should expandupon the set of individual factors affecting jobcrafting. For example. employees who viewwork as simply the source of a paycheck mightreduce the amount and complexity of the tasksto be performed in the job (Henson. 1996).whereas those who view work as an enjoyableend in itself might see the job as an integrated

whole. shaping work tasks and relationships ac-cordingly. Individual economic needs also mayshape crafting to signal ability and effort onbehalf of the organization that are likely to berewarded (Brief & Aldag. 1989;Brief. Konovsky.Goodwin. & Link. 1995).Finally. those who viewwork as a calling are more engaged with theirwork. spend more time working. and view thejob as more central to their lives (Wrzesniewskiet ul., 1997).As a result. these employees mayactively craft their jobs because of a higher in-vestment in the work itself.

In future research scholars could also focus on

the process of job crafting and how it unfoldsover time. Our model of job crafting providessnapshots of features that are conducive to theoccurrence of this behavior. However. we ignorehow the process unfolds over time. Future re-search would benefit from a more nuanced andprocessual account of how job crafting is initi-ated; how it is sustained and transformed in thework process; and how it resembles (or not)learning. improvising. and creative processesover time.

Job crafting is indeed dynamic. This raisesmethodological challenges for how to best study

the practices. forms. and outcomes of job craft-ing in organizations. We believe it is no coinci-dence that the examples of crafting we discov-ered in the organizational literature arose fromdetailed qualitative studies of work. It is possi-ble that studying narratives of work may be abetter way to study job crafting. for craftingtakes many forms and directions. involving howpeople see their work and themselves in their



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work. Such matters are not often easily reducedto simple survey items. Thus, methodologicalcare ought to be taken when one attempts todiscover the nuture of job crafting in employees'work lives.

Finally, we have construed job crafting as anindividual-level activity. Valuable future re-search could be focused on exploring collectiveand negotiated forms of job crafting that areteam based rather than individually based.Where task boundories are drawn around teamsor collections of individuals, there may be moreopportunities to revise, alter, and craft rela-tional and task boundaries as part of collectiveimprovisation on how work gets done. In futureresearch scholars could address the joint collab-orative "working out" of job boundaries that isdone in the context of work organized around

groups rather than individuals.

CONCLUSIONS

Work in the twenty-first century increasinglywill be changed by the necessity for more em-ployees to actively craft their own work lives, asopposed to having them created by others(Bridges, 1994). Thus, we have much to learnfrom those who craft their own jobs. We believethat those who have worked in occupations of-fering little autonomy, complexity, and authorityhave always had to "take it or make it" in terms

of the jobs they create for themselves (Iurnvich.1985).We can glean important lessons from theexamples offered here about how job craftersdraw and redraw the task and relational bound-aries of a job to make ita more posi ti ve andmeaningful experience.

At the same time, we realize the limits of thisagentic view of job crafting. Structural con-straints do constrain job crafting possibilities.Economic constraints give individuals differen-tial resources to derive job meaning (Brief &Nord, 1990). Differential occupational status,prestige, standards, and requirements bestow or

deny individuals with varying resources the op-portunity to evcrlucrte, interpret. and act withinjob categories (Pavalko, 1988).Finally, organiza-tional values, beliefs, and norms, as well asresearch on the division of labor within the or-ganization, can affect employees' ability to con-struct a job differently. However, despite theseconstraints, we believe individuals do make useof limited job resources in creative and master-

ful ways. We have much to learn from themabout how to create a meaningful job from ma-terials that. many would argue, are limited inboth value and amount.

In addition to revising passive perspectives ofemployees, the job crafting perspective followsthe common call to "write the worker back in" asan active participant in shaping both the joband its meaning. By stressing the prominence ofcrafting practices and their effects for workmeaning and identity, our perspective is consis-tent with theories of work meanings that arebased on the individual (Alderfer, 1972; Staw,Ball, & Clausen, 1986;Wrzesniewski et ul., 1997).However, we add an important element by high-lighting how the relationship among the em-ployee, others, and the job itself ultimatelyshapes the meaning of the work by detailing the

process by which an employee alters tasks andrelationships to change the meaning of thework.

Our perspective reframes the debate over dis-positional versus situational influences on workmeaning. Instead of asking what determines jobattitudes and work meaning, we are trying tochange the question to ask how individualsshape their own work meanings through jobcrafting. Our view offers a reason for Spectorand [ax's (1991) failure to find a strong link be-tween job incumbents' descriptions of their jobcharacteristics and those offered by the U.S. Dic-

tionary of Occupational Titles. If employeescrafted their jobs by changing task characteris-tics, we would expect weak relationships be-tween the prescribed job and the job the em-ployee created.

Why is it necessary to call attention to jobcrafting? Certainly, our perspective may be in-terpreted as little more than a timely correctionto more passive models of how employees be-have at work. However, we feel that in the cur-rent work environment. the nature of work ischanging along with contemporary organiza-tions (Rousseau, 1997). Employees are increas-

ingly being treated as "free agents" (Bridges,1994), left to shape their own work experiencesand career trajectories. Thus, in addition to itscontribution to our understanding of commonnotions of work, the job crafting perspectiveshould play a critical role in understandingchanges in the nature of work. As Rousseau(1997)points out. a shift has occurred in organi-zations such that the process of organizing is the

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198 Academy of Management Review April

new focus to which we should direct our re-search efforts. This new model of organizationsleaves open opportunities for improvisation andcontrol over work by the individual employee.As organizations change their forms and func-tions more quickly, employees need to funda-mentally realign how they understand the firm(Lau & Woodman, 1995).Thus, employees' abilityto craft their own jobs (and, thus, their under-standing of their role in the organization) maybe a strategic advantage in larger-scale organ-izational change.

Also, we are entering an age of renewed en-trepreneuralism, in which millions of employeeshave left their organization to go it alone. Insuch an environment, understanding job craft-ing is even more important. By uncovering hid-den crafting skills that employees have and of-

ten use, we can explore the possibilities thatemerge when we understand employees as ableto change the form of their jobs to create workmeaning and viable work identities. In addition,employees may be leaving organizations toform their own entrepreneurial ventures out ofgrowing dissatisfaction with the opportunitiesthey detect for crafting their own jobs within theorganization. It is possible that employees havebeen frustrated in their attempts to make theirjobs their own. By frustrating the job craftingefforts of employees, organizations may carrysome of the responsibility for recent increases in

entrepreneuralism in the United States.

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