How and when job crafting relates to employee creativity: The important roles of work engagement and perceived work group status diversity

Creative employees are treasured assets for organizations. However, relatively little is known about what specific actions employees can take to manage their own creative process. Taking a motivational perspective, this study examined how job crafting behaviors positively link to employee creative performance through work engagement, and whether perceived work group status diversity moderates this relationship. We conducted a weekly diary study in which 55 employees from a Chinese energy company were asked to fill in diaries over four consecutive weeks (176 observations in total). Results of the multilevel analyses showed that weekly job crafting behaviors were positively related to weekly creative performance through increasing weekly work engagement. In contrast to our expectation, we found that weekly job crafting behaviors were more positively related to weekly creative performance when perceived work group status diversity was high. In summary, our study suggests that job crafting behaviors are effective actions employees can take to manage their creative processes through increasing work engagement. In addition, we stress that status diversity in existing work environments is an important contextual factor that shapes the job crafting process.