Regulatory-focused job crafting, person-job fit and internal employability–examining interrelationship and underlying mechanism
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-08-2021-0163 |
| Published date | 11 July 2022 |
| Date | 11 July 2022 |
| Pages | 125-142 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
| Author | Sanjeet Kumar Sameer,Pushpendra Priyadarshi |
Regulatory-focused job crafting,
person-job fit and internal
employability–examining
interrelationship and
underlying mechanism
Sanjeet Kumar Sameer
School of Agribusiness and Rural Management,
Dr Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Samastipur, India, and
Pushpendra Priyadarshi
Department of Human Resource Management,
Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, Lucknow, India
Abstract
Purpose –This paper examines the relationships between regulatory-focused job crafting, i.e. promotion- and
prevention-focused job crafting, person-job fit and internal employability and explores the direct and
underlying mediation process using conservation of resources and job demands-resources theories.
Design/methodology/approach –Survey data collected from 425 executives of India based public sector
enterprises were used to test hypotheses.
Findings –Promotion- and prevention-focused job crafting respectively had a contrasting relationship with
needs-supplies fit. The relationship with demands-abilities fit was statistically significant only in the case of
prevention-focused job crafting. These two job crafting forms respectively had a positive and a negative effect
on internal employability, both directly as well as indirectly through person-job fit.
Practical implications –Employees can pursue promotion-focused job crafting and avoid prevention-
focused job crafting to improve their person-job fit as well as internal employability which subsequently may
have multiple favourable outcomes at an organizational and individual level.
Originality/value –The study, for the first time, empirically investigates the differential role of individuals’
efforts in the form of promotion- and prevention-focused job crafting, in influencing internal employability and
explains its underlying mechanism through person-job fit. These interrelationships may have important
implications for employees’job demand management process and job choices.
Keywords Job crafting, Regulatory focus, Employability, Job insecurity, Public sector, Energy, Proactivity,
Quantitative, Job stability
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Employees like to pursue jobs that provide them opportunities to utilize their abilities and
fulfil their needs (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). However, obtaining or retaining such jobs may
not always be easy, more so in a highly complex and dynamic business environment (Petrou
et al., 2015). This may become even more difficult if job allocation to employees is done in an
unstructured manner (Ballesteros-P
erez et al., 2012). Overall, such conditions may affect their
job security perception and result in job stress (B€
ockerman et al., 2020;Shoss, 2017). Even
under such conditions, some employees may still have better chances of retaining or
continuing in their desired jobs than others (Rothwell and Arnold, 2007). This capability of
Regulatory-
focused job
crafting and
employability
125
The authors are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions.
Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research or publication of this article.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2049-3983.htm
Received 9 August 2021
Revised 26 March 2022
25 May 2022
Accepted 24 June 2022
Evidence-based HRM: a Global
Forum for Empirical Scholarship
Vol. 11 No. 2, 2023
pp. 125-142
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2049-3983
DOI10.1108/EBHRM-08-2021-0163
retaining the job one has in hand or getting the job one desires within the present organization
is known as internal employability (Rothwell and Arnold, 2007). Internal employability
expands employees’job-related choices within their current organization and may help in
managing the job stress caused due to problematic job design (B€
ockerman et al., 2020;Shoss,
2017) and encourage them to perform better (De Cuyper et al., 2014).
In the current volatile and uncertain business environment (Bennett and Lemoine, 2014),
employees are expected to effectively manage their new and evolving job demands (Bakker
and Demerouti, 2007,2014). Some of these demands could be motivating in nature such as
challenging job demands, while others may hinder their performance (Tims and Bakker,
2010). One of such job demand management behaviours could be in the form of regulatory-
focused job crafting that may help employees to fulfil these emerging job requirements by
triggering a set of goal-directed actions (Lichtenthaler and Fischbach, 2016a). These actions
could either be aimed to maximize “gains”(through promotion-focused job crafting) or
minimize “losses”(through prevention-focused job crafting) associated with their preferred
goals (or resources) (Higgins, 1997;Lichtenthaler and Fischbach, 2016a).
In a complex work environment as highlighted earlier, employees may experience dual
pressure of managing job requirements as well as retaining their preferred job. We state that,
in such situations, internal employability may act as a critical personal-cum-job resource per
the conservation of resources (CoR) theory (Hobfoll and Freedy, 2017). CoR theory
emphasizes that individuals make efforts to either enhance or conserve their useful resources
so that they can even utilize those resources during difficult times like job stress. In the
context of job choices, we may argue that internal employability could be one of such
preferred resources that individuals may like to either augment or do the needful to minimize
its depletion. However, due to the paucity of studies on job crafting and internal employability
(e.g. Akkermans and Tims, 2017), it is still not understood whether all forms of job crafting,
including regulatory-focused job crafting, improves internal employability or not and what is
the underlying mechanism in their relationships. One of the central goals of the current study
is to examine this research gap and provide empirical evidence on their possible relationships.
Job crafting could be undertaken in different ways for achieving multiple goals (Luu, 2020;
Matsuo, 2019;Oubibi et al., 2022;Rudolph et al., 2017;Tims and Bakker, 2010;van Wingerden
et al., 2017;Wang and Chen, 2022;Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001). One of these work goals is
to achieve a higher person-job fit (e.g. Berg et al., 2013;Guo and Hou, 2022;Kooij et al., 2017;
Tims et al., 2016) i.e. to undertake jobs that are in sync with their abilities and needs (Cable and
DeRue, 2002;Edwards, 1991). This may be even more useful in the case of a changing
operating environment (Petrou et al., 2015). Although regulatory-focused job crafting may
help in managing job demands, still it is not known whether this will have a similar effect on
person-job fit as reported in the previous studies (e.g. Berg et al., 2013;Kooij et al., 2017;Tims
et al., 2016) conducted on the traditional forms of job crafting (e.g. Tims and Bakker, 2010;
Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001). Therefore, the present study tries to explore this untested
linkage and investigate the effect of promotion- and prevention-focused job crafting on
person-job fit.
Public sector enterprises in India, particularly those operating in the energy sector, are
going through a large-scale transformation. Multiple organizational changes in the form of
mergers, acquisitions, business consolidations, privatisation and disinvestment are already
being witnessed. Job crafting is relevant in such conditions as a useful coping tool for
employees (e.g. Petrou et al., 2015). However, not enough understanding is available about its
underlying mechanism in the context of job demand management. Based on prior studies on
job crafting (e.g. Akkermans and Tims, 2017;Berg et al., 2013;Kooij et al., 2017;Tims et al.,
2016), we see a potential role of person-job fit and internal employability in this process.
Accordingly, using job demand-resources (JD-R) (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007,2014) and CoR
theories, this study aims to examine the inter-relationship between the two forms of
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