Supervisor–subordinate fit need for autonomy and subordinate job crafting: a moderated mediation model

ABSTRACT

Employees often change various aspects of their jobs to their liking (i.e., job crafting), yet little is known about how different aspects of supervisor–subordinate fit influence this behavior. This paper investigates the extent to which supervisor adaptive personality predicts subordinate job crafting and the complex processes that affect this relationship. We found (1) there is a positive relationship between supervisor adaptive personality and subordinate job crafting, (2) subordinate need for autonomy fulfillment mediates this relationship, and (3) the indirect effect of supervisor adaptive personality on subordinate job crafting (via subordinate need for autonomy fulfillment) is stronger when there is high supervisor–subordinate value-congruence. We conclude that organizations can develop selection tools that can assess supervisors’ adaptivity, making them enablers of employee-oriented changes that create more opportunities for workplace challenges, growth, and engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptive personality
• job crafting
• need for autonomy
• social determination theory
• value-congruence

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for all the valuable comments and suggestions, which has helped us improve the quality of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data availability statement

The data and survey instruments described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/WGQBN

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2023.2201668

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Koushikee Dutta

Koushikee Dutta is an Assistant Professor at Towson University. Her research interests are adaptivity, prosocial ventures, venture finance, and IPOs.

Bryan Fuller

Bryan Fuller is the Humana Foundation/McCallister Endowed Professor of Management in the College of Business at Louisiana Tech University. His research interest includes individual motivation, motivational psychology, organizational psychology, and organizational behavior. Dr. Fuller has published in several respected journals including Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management, Journal of Managerial Issues.

Saleh Bajaba

Saleh Bajaba is an Assistant Professor of Management at Florida Gulf Coast University. His research work has appeared in many refereed journals and has been presented at international conferences. He is an Associate Editor, Editorial Board Member, and ad hoc reviewer for several international journals in the fields of organizational behaviors and human resources. His research interests are proactivity, adaptivity, resilience, and leadership.