Exploring the relationship between job crafting and work engagement from a cross-cultural perspective: Comparing Italy and The Netherlands

Employee job crafting receives a lot of interest in occupational health psychology. The aim of this paper is to examine job crafting from a cross-cultural perspective. Job crafting refers to the self-initiated changes that employees make in the boundaries of their tasks, relationships, and cognitions (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Recently, job crafting has been operationalized by four dimensions (Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012): increasing structural job resources (e.g., autonomy and variety), increasing social job resources (e.g., social support and feedback), increasing challenging job demands (e.g., new projects), and decreasing hindering job demands (e.g., reducing cognitive demands). Previous research suggests that (expansion-oriented) job crafting is positively related to work engagement, as proactively changing or optimizing one’s work environment is likely to increase levels of vigor, dedication, and absorption at work (Tims et al., 2012). Despite the recognized role of cultural values and norms in influencing behaviour, research examining the role of culture on job crafting outcomes is lacking. This study examines whether there are differences in the relationship between job crafting and work engagement in two European countries that are characterized by similar levels of individualism but by different levels of power distance and in-group collectivism, namely Italy and The Netherlands. Drawing on self-construal theory stating that people have certain ideas about their relationships to others (Singelis, 1994), we expect that the relationship between job crafting behaviours involving employees’ own initiative only (i.e., increasing structural resources, increasing challenging demands, and decreasing hindering demands) and work engagement is similar for people living in individualistic countries. However, to engage in job crafting by increasing social job resources one needs to consult colleagues or a supervisor. In countries characterized by high in-group collectivism and high power distance (e.g., Italy), proactively seeking support, coaching and feedback from colleagues is less likely to occur because people are unlikely to go to figures of authority and tend to interact only in-group compared to countries with low in-group collectivism and low power distance (e.g., the Netherlands). When employees in high in-group collectivism and power distance countries overcome these social barriers, we expect they may benefit more from these job social resources than employees who generally have more access to these resources (i.e., positive interaction effect of country). We first validated the job crafting scale in an Italian (N=439) and Dutch (N=331) sample and then tested whether country moderated the relationship between job crafting dimensions and work engagement. Confirmatory factor analyses in both samples supported the fit of the four-factor structure of the job crafting scale. Moderation results showed that the relationship between job crafting behaviours involving employee’s own initiative only and work engagement didn’t differ in both individualistic countries. However, the relationship between increasing social job resources and work engagement was indeed stronger when in-group collectivism and power distance were higher (i.e., Italy) compared to low in-group collectivism and power distance (i.e., The Netherlands). Possible explanations and implications are discussed.