The roles of self-efficacy and leader–member exchange in the relationship between job crafting and work–self facilitation. A moderated mediation model

Pages1362-1384
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/PR-05-2017-0153
Date05 November 2018
Published date05 November 2018
AuthorDiellza Gashi Tresi,Katarina Katja Mihelič
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM
The roles of self-efficacy and
leader member exchange in the
relationship between job crafting
and work self facilitation
A moderated mediation model
Diellza Gashi Tresi
Kolegji Riinvest, Prishtina, Kosovo, and
Katarina Katja Mihelič
Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
Purpose Building on the work home resources model, the purpose of this paper is to test the mediating
role of employee self-efficacy in the relationship between job crafting and work self facilitation. The paper
further explores the moderating role of the quality of leader member exchange (LMX).
Design/methodology/approach A sample of 204 employees from a European country was used to test
the proposed moderated mediation model. The analysis was performed using HayesProcess Macro.
Findings The findings indicate that job crafting is positively associated with self-efficacy which, in turn, is
positively associated with work self facilitation. In other words, self-efficacy mediates the relationship
between job crafting and work self facilitation. Furthermore, LMX moderates the relationship between job
crafting and self-efficacy.
Practical implications The results of this study offer guidelines for human resource (HR) professionals
interested in grasping how organisations can assist employees in experiencing work self facilitation.
Originality/value This study advances the existing literature by investigating the antecedents of
work self facilitation, which is an understudied variable in the work family and HR literature, thereby
responding to calls to include aspects of self in the discussion on different life domains in order to obtain an
all-inclusive view of how employees function. Furthermore, it demonstrates how LMX and job crafting
promote the fulfilment of an employees own personal interests and hobbies. Such information is relevant to
HR practitioners as it might help them boost employeeswork performance.
Keywords Self-efficacy, Quantitative, Leader member exchange (LMX), Job crafting, Work self facilitation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Managing work and family responsibilities and the resulting work home processes is
becoming ever moredifficult for the majority of employeesacross Europe (Michel et al., 2014).
As a result, the need emerged for human resource (HR) practitioners to devise policies that
facilitate employeesrole outside workand, along with that, the pursuit of work life balance
(WLB) gained considerable interest in HR management (De Cieri et al., 2005). An employees
successful juggling of responsibilities in various life roles namely positively impacts their
performance at work (Carlson et al., 2011), increases job satisfaction (Daniel and Sonnentag,
2016), facilitates recoveryfrom work stress (de Bloom et al.,2018) and consequently helps with
employee retention (De Cieri et al., 2005; Beauregard and Henry, 2009). Initial studies in the
area of inter-role management demonstrated that the employees participation in one role
creates problems with successful engagement in another role, labelling it work family
conflict (Amstadet al., 2011; Carlson et al., 2000; Eby etal., 2005; Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985;
Mihelič, 2014). Later on, researchers focused on the positive side of participating in
different roleswith one role emerging as an allyto the other, which was termedwork family
enrichment (Greenhaus and Powell, 2006; Tadićet al., 2015; Wayne et al., 2007) and
Personnel Review
Vol. 47 No. 7, 2018
pp. 1362-1384
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-05-2017-0153
Received 17 May 2017
Revised 8 November 2017
22 January 2018
4 March 2018
Accepted 21 April 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
1362
PR
47,7
work familyfacilitation (Frone, 2003; Wayneet al., 2007) . The difference between e nrichment
and facilitation,as suggested by Russo and Buonocore (2012),is that enrichment refers to the
impact of involvement in one domain on the performance in another (Greenhaus and
Powell, 2006), while facilitation refers to developments in the life system that result from
resources that are obtained in a particular sphere of life (Grzywacz and Butler, 2008).
Yet, work and familyare not the only domains an employee devotes theirtime and energy to.
As recently emphasised, employees need to think of more than their work and families
(Demerouti et al., 2013). They need to think of their personal interests and hobbies, an area
captured in a different life domain, namely the self, referring to the distinctive attributes of
an individual that are different from other roles played such as at work or in the family
(Demerouti, 2012). As a concept, the selforiginated due to the need to describe the
individualityof the behaving organism(Viney,1969, p. 349). The selfdomainin this context
comprises the time spent on personal interests independent of the family domain or work
area(Demerouti, 2012, p. 185). Through the selfdomain, Demerouti (2012) and Demerouti
et al. (2013)introduced work self facilitation,which occurs when resourcesgenerated at work
positively influence time devoted to personal interests (Demerouti, 2012). This construct
therefore offers a more personal perspective regarding how employees manage work and
responsibilities outside of work.As such, it is a relevant addition toHR literature as it reveals
that employees who have enough time to devote to their personal interests and hobbies are
more creativeat work (Davis et al., 2014) and perform better(de Bloom et al., 2018), in this way
contributing to improved departmental performance.
The existing literature on antecedents and consequences, although sparse, shows that
supervisor support is positively related to work self facilitation (Demerouti et al., 2013) and
that work self facilitation mediates the relationship between job resources and an
employees energy (Demerouti, 2012). It has also been demonstrated that work self
facilitation indirectly influences exhaustion (Demerouti et al., 2016). The potential benefits
that work self facilitation may bring to employees are a higher level of energy and greater
time to invest in personal interest, better health (Van Steenbergen and Ellemers, 2009) and
potentially enhanced well-being over time (Demerouti, 2012; Demerouti et al., 2013).
For organisations and HR professionals, the potential benefits of work self facilitation are
motivated employees who will exhibit a better job performance as they are satisfied with
work facilitating their personal interests rather than interfering in their personal life
(Demerouti et al., 2013) and lower levels of absenteeism (Van Steenbergen and Ellemers,
2009). Therefore, information on work self facilitation is relevant to HR practitioners who
are concerned for employee well-being and their flourishing at work and beyond in order for
them to provide added value to the organisation.
Although the pursuit of personal interests and hobbies is an important domain for
employees, researchers have ignored how these domains and time for oneself affect and are
affected by their work (Demerouti et al., 2013). Work family literature and HR literature
have chiefly focused on measuring work and family or life as domains while neglecting to
consider personal interests (Demerouti et al., 2016). As a result, we know relatively little
about the role of personal resources in the selfdomain (Demerouti et al., 2013).
One potential resource is self-efficacy, defined as the confidence in ones ability to perform
certain actions and, as such, it is the most prevalent and central socio-cognitive mechanism
of personal agency (Bandura, 1986, 2012). It is beneficial to organisations because it affects
task performance (Locke et al., 1984), job performance (Stajkovic and Luthans, 1998) and
career decision making (Lent et al., 1994). Furthermore, employees with high self-efficacy are
more creative in devising strategies in times of high demands and are eager to undertake
new tasks at work (Bandura, 1997).
Drawing on the work home resources model (ten Brummelhuis and Bakker, 2012), the
objective of this paper is to explore the mediating role of self-efficacy in the link between job
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Roles of self-
efficacy and
LMX

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