Job Crafting in the Context of Enterprise System Implementations

This paper examines employees’ job crafting in the context of enterprise system (ES) implementations. Job crafting refers to employees’ self-initiated changes aimed at improving their jobs. Drawing on self-construal and trait activation theories, we posit that personality traits associated with an independent self-construal (conscientiousness [CONSC] and openness [OPEN]) and an interdependent self-construal (agreeableness [AGREE] and extraversion [EXTRA]) promote and inhibit job crafting, respectively, with their effects moderated by ES-enabled opportunity (OPPT) and self-efficacy (SE). We further posit that job crafting increases job performance and job satisfaction. We tested our hypotheses with data from a public agency (n = 180) and a Fortune-1000 firm (n = 872). Results showed that personality traits, OPPT, and SE interacted to affect job crafting, which in turn increased job performance and job satisfaction. Our research underscores job crafting as a potent means for employees to effectively navigate ES implementations and sheds light on individual differences in job crafting motivation and behavior.