Linking job crafting, innovation performance, and career satisfaction: The mediating role of work engagement

BACKGROUND: The demand for innovation and satisfaction is increasing rapidly due to technological advancement and the fast-changing business environment.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to investigate how job crafting augments work outputs (i.e., innovation performance and career satisfaction) through work engagement.

METHODS: Data were collected from 477 workers working in the Pakistan manufacturing sector. A structural equation modeling technique was used to investigate the mediation model.

RESULTS: Job crafting has a direct and indirect association with innovation performance and career satisfaction - via employees' work engagement. Additionally, the mediating impact was stronger for innovation performance than for career satisfaction. The findings advocate that managers should pay attention to employees' job crafting to improve employees' work engagement in manufacturing organizations. To improve employees' innovation performance and career satisfaction via work engagement, it is important to improve organization-wide job crafting in traditional manufacturing organizations. Strategic and managerial actions related to job crafting might boost employees' engagement in the organization that environments provide incessantly better outcomes.

CONCLUSION: By linking job crafting and work engagement to their attitude towards career satisfaction and innovation performance in Pakistani manufacturing firms, this study adds a new dimension to the study of Pakistani manufacturing employees and typically to the best practices in career debates. This knowledge is important and unique because it accentuates that in addition to work engagement, which focuses primarily on employee growth in the organization, job crafting should also be given equal importance to advance manufacturing employees' outcomes.