Think Before You Act or Act Before You Think? A Differentiation of Behavioral and Cognitive Job Crafting

The field of job crafting holds a startling deal of heterogeneity: Two theoretical perspectives proposing different subdimensions led to mixed findings concerning their outcomes and applicability in interventions. Recent integrative models suggest organizing the construct with superordinate factors, as behavioral and cognitive crafting. However, the relationship between behavioral and cognitive crafting or their comparability in impacting outcomes remains unclear. Additionally, existing studies mainly focus on one part of job crafting – behavioral forms. This study aims to address this imbalance and improve the differentiation between behavioral and cognitive job crafting. We compare them regarding their stability over time, their reciprocal influences, and comparability of their relationships to an antecedent (autonomy) and outcome (person-job fit). We apply a longitudinal survey design with three measurement points (targeted sample of 250 German-speaking employees) and Bayesian statistics for analysis, allowing us to draw causal inferences and quantify the strength of evidence for each hypothesis.