Abstract
Over the past two decades, there has been an upsurge in research on proactivity at work on concepts such as taking charge, voice behavior, and idiosyncratic deals, so the concept of job crafting has received heightened attention. This burgeoning body of research on JC has sought to identify and understand a variety of critical elements in the form of antecedents, outcomes, mechanisms, and boundary conditions related to JC and how it may consequently impact and enhance individual, team, and organizational efficiency.
Moreover, since research on JC captured scholarly focus, various literature reviews have surfaced, each addressing the task of assessing the JC literature from a different perspective. , though previous reviews tend to engage in the important narrative and meta-analytical reviews of a single relationship and systematic reviews, these approaches, however, may be limited in scope and may lack the necessary retrievable nature as well as the requisite breadth to truly comprehend the development of the JC construct and the evolution of the field as a whole. While these methods remain complementary to one another and offer unique advantages, the number of studies focusing solely on mapping the field is scant. Therefore, to address these possible shortcomings, our work provides a quantitative summarization of the present state of JC literature with appropriate interpretation and identifies key research areas through a bibliometric analysis. Moreover, recognizing the significance of a qualitative assessment, we also perform a content analysis to complement the quantitative approach.
This study, therefore, aims to provide a nuanced summary of the evolution and the current trends of the job crafting research literature. For this purpose, a portfolio of 1108 published records on job crafting extracted from the Scopus database was systematically analyzed using two different techniques: bibliometric analysis and content analysis techniques. Findings derived from bibliometric analysis techniques highlight the significance of a range of research constituents, such as influential authors and journals, and plan to illuminate meaningful interpretations about the structure of scientific linkages and the underlying knowledge structures of the JC research field in the final version of this work. Lastly, a content analysis of the records was carried out to categorize the evolutionary stages of the field and summarize salient features underlying each phase. The study further aims to provide a more holistic picture of the JC research field and accentuate a set of future research directions useful for furthering the field.