Who Seeks Job Resources, and Who Avoids Job Demands? The Link Between Dark Personality Traits and Job Crafting

ABSTRACT

Although job crafting has been linked repeatedly to positive employee and organizational outcomes, its detrimental side has not been well explored. To understand the way dark personality traits affect the type of crafting in which employees engage, this research focuses on two frameworks: the PEN (psychopathy, extraversion, and neuroticism) framework and the Dark Triad (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism). In Study 1, we collected data on the PEN traits and job crafting from 155 individuals in various occupations. We found that neuroticism was negatively related to seeking structural job resources, whereas psychoticism was negatively related to seeking social job resources. We also found that extraversion was positively related to seeking structural and social job resources and to seeking challenging job demands. In Study 2, we examined how the Dark Triad traits predicted job crafting among police officers (N = 135). The results showed that narcissism was positively related to seeking social job resources and challenges, whereas psychopathy was negatively related to seeking social resources. Age and narcissism were positive predictors of reducing job demands. We conclude that personality plays an important role when choosing how to craft one's job. We discuss the practical implications of these findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Dark personality
• job crafting
• dark triad
• PEN model
• proactivity

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the MA students who gathered data for study 1 (Marcin Cichomski, Andrzej Michalik, Brygida Miliszkiewicz, Katarzyna Rybus) and study 2 (Joanna Mizeraczyk, Aneta Nowak, Ewa Rozdębska, Aneta Stormowska, Justyna Taborek).

Funding

Marta Roczniewska obtained funding from the National Science Centre (Poland) on the basis of Decision No. DEC-2015/17/N/HS6/02897 of 2015-11-20.

Notes

¹ All population statistics are based on a report published yearly by the National Bureau of Statistics (Główny Urząd Statystyczny, GUS) in Poland, which can be found at http://stat.gov.pl/en/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marta Roczniewska

Marta Roczniewska is a PhD candidate at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. She is also Staff Associate at Columbia University, Psychology Department, USA. Her current research interests are Regulatory Focus Theory in the organizational context, job crafting, and work engagement.

Arnold B. Bakker

Arnold B. Bakker is Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is also distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Adjunct Professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His research interests are work engagement, JD-R theory, job crafting, strengths use, and job performance.