Abstract
Proactive employee behaviours have become increasingly important for the survival, productivity and competitiveness of organisations. These behaviours are equally crucial for the positive experience of employees as they have a greater prospect of meeting the expanding needs of employees and enhancing the meaningfulness of their jobs. With the fourth industrial revolution upon us, the need for action-orientated, innovative and autonomous employees has become critical to promote desirable organisational and employee outcomes. Job crafting, a job redesign approach and a proactive type of employee behaviour, has been identified as an effective strategy that can be used by employees to fulfil the requirements of their jobs while concurrently meeting their work goals and personal needs. Job crafting is defined as the ongoing physical and mental changes employees make to the task, relational and cognitive boundaries of their jobs. The current study set out to investigate the indirect relationship between job crafting and job performance through the mediational process of flow. Relying on the quantitative research approach and the use of convenience and snowball sampling, a cross-sectional survey was administered to employed individuals working within South Africa (N = 256). Results from structural equation modelling indicated that there was indeed an indirect relationship between job crafting and job performance through flow. More specifically, the study found that flow fully mediated this relationship. This suggests that job crafting is an effective strategy for employees to increase flow and subsequent job performance. This study is one of the first to investigate the indirect relationship between job crafting and job performance through flow as a mediating variable. Practically, these findings encourage employees to engage in job crafting as it is likely to improve their experience of work and simultaneously enhance their job performance.
M.Com. (Industrial Psychology)