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Empowering leadership and job crafting: The role of employee optimism

Abstract

The objective of this study was to test the relationship between empowering leadership and job crafting and to examine the moderating role of optimism as a personal resource. We hypothesized that the association between empowering leadership and job crafting would be stronger for employees with high (vs. low) levels of optimism. A total of 331 Norwegian workers from a variety of occupations participated in our study. Results of structural equation modelling analysis generally supported our hypotheses. Empowering leadership was positively related to 3 of the 4 job crafting strategies investigated (increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands; but not reducing hindrance job demands). Moreover, as hypothesized, optimism strengthened the empowering leadership–job crafting relationship for increasing structural resources and increasing challenging demands. The results suggest that empowering leadership is an important antecedent of job crafting strategies, except for reducing hindrance demands. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

  • Sylvi Thun
  • Arnold B. Bakker

Affiliation

  • St. Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital
  • SINTEF Digital / Technology Management
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • University of Johannesburg

Date

08.06.2018

Year

2018

Published in

Stress and Health

ISSN

1532-3005

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Volume

34

Issue

4

Page(s)

573 - 581

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