The facilitating effect of occupational change on job crafting and innovation performance

Background Although occupational change is becoming commonplace for contemporary employees, it remains understudied from the theoretical perspective. With employees bringing along previous job experiences into their new roles, occupational changes potentially create favorable conditions for employees’ job crafting and innovation performance. Objective Based on Career Construction Theory, this study aims to gain a better understanding of the increasingly prevalent phenomenon of occupational change. Specifically, this study explores the potential facilitating effect of occupational change on job crafting and subsequently on employee innovation performance. Method A questionnaire survey administered to 413 employees was conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and a mediation analysis using bootstrapped sampling were employed in the data analyses. Results The results confirmed the hypothesis that occupational change experience is positively associated with employee job crafting. Moreover, job crafting was found to play a full mediating role in the relationship between occupational change experience and employee innovation performance. Conclusion This study serves as an exploratory attempt to better understand the new and under-researched topic of occupational change. By focusing on the new experience and capabilities that occupational changers can bring to their new jobs, this study proposes that occupational changes could potentially facilitate job crafting which further enhances innovation performance. In this vein, this study provides new theoretical insights and meaningful managerial suggestions on the topic of occupational change.