Coworker responses to job crafting: Implications for willingness to cooperate and conflict

In the current paper, we focus on job crafting seen from the perspective of colleagues. Guided by Social Information Processing theory, we examine how observing a colleague's job crafting may trigger an observer's reactions, and how these reactions relate to the work enjoyment of the job crafter and the colleague as an indicator of the effectiveness of job crafting. In Study 1, using a vignette experiment with an employee sample (N = 97), we found that those observing a fictitious colleague engaging in avoidance crafting reported a decrease in their willingness to cooperate with the job crafter and an increase in expected relationship conflict, while the opposite was found when they observed approach crafting. In Study 2, using a dyadic field study consisting of 136 employee dyads, we replicated the findings of Study 1 and extended the model by showing that the willingness to cooperate and experienced relationship conflict with the job crafter, in turn, related to the work enjoyment of both the colleague and the job crafter. Together, these studies show the importance of colleague reactions to job crafting behaviors observed among each other.