Journal of Business and Psychology - Call for Papers: Job Crafting and Other Proactive Approaches of Job Design

Special Issue Guest Editors

Arnold B. Bakker, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Gavin R. Slemp, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Job crafting refers to the proactive behaviors through which employees actively shape their jobs. Employees can make changes in the form, scope, or number of tasks, or make adjustments in the relational boundaries of work (e.g., spend more time with customers, collaborate intensively with inspirational colleagues). Employees can also craft their jobs towards their interests by actively seeking job resources, such as social support, feedback, and opportunities for development. More recently, research has revealed new proactive approaches to job design, including playful work design – a proactive cognitive-behavioral approach to work through which employees make their work activities more fun and more competitive. Job crafting and playful work design have been shown to have favorable effects on task performance, creativity, and organizational citizenship. Research has also demonstrated strong effects of these proactive work behaviors on experienced meaningfulness of work, work engagement, and flourishing. Fewer studies have focused on the antecedents of job crafting and playful work design.

It is important to increase our understanding of how, why, when, and for whom proactive approaches of job design are effective, and to build stronger theories of bottom-up job redesign. Accordingly, the underlying mechanisms and processes that are involved in job crafting, playful work design, and other possible proactive job design approaches need to be studied using relevant theories and new paradigms.

Our special issue seeks to address the following questions and challenges:

• How, why, when, and for whom does job crafting work? How can we enhance our understanding of contextual factors, the psychological mechanisms involved, as well as a wider range of outcomes?
• How can psychological theories and concepts, including interdisciplinary approaches, be used to further job crafting and playful work design research?
• What novel insights, paradigms and methodological approaches could inform advancement of this field?
• Is job crafting at the team level fundamentally different from job crafting at the individual level? Which group-level processes determine effective team-level job crafting?
• Are online training interventions as effective as face-to-face interventions in encouraging job crafting?
• How do we overcome the limitations of commonly used methods of job crafting and playful work design research?
• What is the role of Human Resources Management in employee proactive behaviors?
• How can leaders stimulate job crafting and playful work design, and what are the possible challenges of such leadership?
• What is the possible dark side of job crafting and playful work design? Are such proactive behaviors effortful and can they undermine teamwork or other desired outcomes?
• Can individuals who are at risk for burnout use job crafting to improve their well-being?

Further Information
The guest editors will manage a two-step review and screening process. First, authors are kindly requested to submit a short proposal (up to 800 words, excluding references). We are primarily looking for new empirical research, but will also consider theoretical papers. The proposal should include a theoretical background/rationale, hypotheses, method, key findings and contributions to research and practice. The deadline for proposals is 31 December 2023.

Please submit your proposal for this special issue by email to the editors of this special (Arnold Bakker & Gavin Slemp, see below) and mention the special issue “Job crafting and other proactive approaches of job design” in the subject line of the email. In the body of the email, please include names and institutional affiliations of all authors, and indicate the corresponding author. Proposals will be selected based on the quality of submissions and authors will be informed of the preliminary editorial decision. Full submissions will be invited based on the quality of the proposals, and need to be submitted through the portal of the Journal of Business and Psychology by July 15, 2024. All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed, as usual.

For enquiries related to this special issue, please contact one of the guest editors: Arnold Bakker (bakker@essb.eur.nl) or Gavin Slemp (gavin.slemp@unimelb.ebu.au) and copy the other editor into your communication for transparency.