Based on self-determination theory, this study sought to clarify the internal mechanism of the impact of proactive personality and career calling on job performance from both personality traits and intrinsic motivation perspectives, highlight the important role of job crafting as an individual’s proactive behaviour, and demonstrate the supporting role of organisational embeddedness as an external environmental factor.
Hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrap-based path analysis were used to test the above hypotheses on 292 employees in China.
The results show that proactive personality and career calling had significant positive effects on employees’ job performance, and job crafting was a full mediator in both paths, with significantly different mediation effects. Organisational embeddedness moderated this mediating effect.
This study provides references for employees and organisations to continuously improve their job performance. Organisations need to address job crafting behaviours and create related supporting atmospheres.
This study explored the mechanisms that affect career outcomes from both personality traits and intrinsic motivation aspects. The theoretical model verifies the value of individual intrinsic motivation and autonomous behaviour, and confirms the theory of self-determination. The study also extends the existing career theory by breaking through the one-sidedness of the previous theory that emphasises only the role of the organisation, but highlights the crucial importance of employees’ subjective initiatives.
Employee performance is closely related to an organisation’s overall performance, and is an important basis for enterprises to develop sustainable market competitiveness. Managers seeking to stimulate employees’ work potential have realised that improving employee performance not only depends on external incentives such as salary, benefits, and promotion opportunities, but also on employees’ personal traits and work motivation (Barrick, Stewart, & Piotrowski,
Job crafting emphasises the proactivity of employees in the organisation by actively seeking self-change perceptions, behaviours, and results (Wrzesniewski & Dutton,
Proactive personality emphasises stable personality characteristics and behaviour patterns that individuals use to break through the constraints and restrictions of any environment or situation. Proactive employees constantly seek new ways and methods to solve problems, and can actively manage and promote their own behavioural patterns (Bateman & Crant,
In addition to personality, motivation is another important factor that affects individual attitudes and behaviours. Improvement of job performance requires individuals to have strong intrinsic motivation for work, apart from proactive personality characteristics. Career calling is the embodiment of an individual’s strong recognition of professional value. Calling emphasises that work is an indispensable part of life, and using work to find meaning in life can be an intrinsic motivation to achieve career success (Duffy & Sedlacek,
The concept of job crafting comes from reflection on job design. According to Wrzesniewski and Dutton (
Previous studies, including a meta-analysis (Rudolph, Katz, Lavigne, & Zacher,
Career calling is a call from the vocation that individuals find in their heart, urging them to take active action and work more meaningfully. Duffy and Sedlacek (
Job crafting is an important method to improve job performance. Previous studies have shown that a prominent role of job crafting for employers is to improve organisational performance (Tims et al.,
As variables reflecting employees’ personality and motivation, proactive personality and career calling may have different influence patterns on employee behaviour. Proactive personality is defined as a stable personality trait towards proactive behaviour (Bateman & Crant,
Organisational embeddedness refers to the degree of fit and links between employees and their work content and organisational environment, as well as the sacrifice of their departure from the organisation (Ng & Feldman,
Based on the above discussion and hypotheses, we propose the research model illustrated in
Proposed research model.
The data were collected through a questionnaire survey, and samples were obtained from companies in mainland China. The respondents were full-time employees across enterprises, including state-owned, private, and foreign or joint ventures. They are distributed in various provinces or cities such as Jilin Province, Shandong Province, Xinjiang Province, Beijing City, and Chongqing City. The respondents were obtained from the personal relationships of the authors and the Master of Public Administration (MPA) training courses of one author. At the beginning of the survey questionnaire, it was clearly stated that the investigation was only used for academic research and the data were being obtained anonymously. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed, and 292 valid questionnaires were returned, with an effective response rate of 73%. The demographic characteristics of the sample are as follows: male: 38.7%, female: 60.6%, missing: 0.7%; unmarried: 48.3%, married: 51.7%; age 25 and below: 12.7%, age 26–35: 71.9%, age 36 and above: 15.4%; from state-owned enterprise: 36.0%, from private enterprises: 46.6%, from foreign companies or joint ventures: 17.5%; junior college degree and below: 12.7%, bachelor’s degree: 55.5%, master’s degree: 30.8%, doctoral degree and above: 0.7%, missing: 0.3%.
The measurement instruments are widely used in existing literature. Following the translation and back-translation process, the Chinese versions of the items were prepared, and a 5-point Likert scale was used for evaluation.
The study also included gender, marriage status, age, enterprise type, and education level as control variables. Previous studies have reported these demographic variables were significantly correlated with the outcome variable, job performance (Hsieh, Huang, & Su,
Ethical clearance for this study was obtained by the Institutional Review Board of the School of Government, BNU.
To test whether a common method bias existed in this study, Harman’s single-factor test was used. An exploratory factor analysis of five variables’ items conducted using SPSS18.0 software showed that a total of 17 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were obtained. The largest factor explained 19.67% of the variation, and all the factors explained 67.16%. No common factor explained most of the variation. Thus, a common method bias problem did not exist in this study. To test discriminant validity among variables, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted using Mplus7.4 statistical software to compare the fit indices of the five-factor model with other combined models (Anderson & Gerbing,
Means, standard deviations, average variance extracted, correlations, and Cronbach’s alpha.
Variables | M | SD | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Gender | 1.61 | 0.49 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
2. Marriage | 1.52 | 0.51 | 0.01 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
3. Age | 2.03 | 0.53 | −0.04 | 0.41 |
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
4. Enterprise type | 1.82 | 0.71 | 0.06 | 0.06 | 0.07 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
5. Education level | 2.20 | 0.65 | −0.06 | 0.12 | 0.03 | −0.05 | - | - | - | - | - | - |
6. Proactive personality | 3.76 | 0.50 | −0.13 |
0.02 | 0.01 | −0.00 | 0.11 | - | - | - | - | |
7. Career calling | 3.47 | 0.69 | −0.08 | 0.09 | 0.19 |
0.15 |
−0.04 | 0.35 |
- | - | - | |
8. Job crafting | 3.86 | 0.40 | −0.11 | 0.10 | 0.09 | −0.02 | 0.14 |
0.62 |
0.48 |
- | - | |
9. Organisational embeddedness | 3.50 | 0.54 | 0.03 | 0.23 |
0.23 |
0.12 |
0.05 | 0.34 |
0.50 |
0.40 |
- | |
10. Job performance | 3.74 | 0.66 | −0.06 | 0.17 |
0.22 |
0.06 | 0.18 |
0.25 |
0.22 |
0.31 |
0.30 |
SD, standard deviation.
,
,
,
Note: Cronbach’s alpha index is in diagonal brackets. Gender: 1 = male, 2 = female; Marriage: 1 = unmarried, 2 = married; Age: 1 = 25 years old and below, 2 = 26–35 years old, 3 = 36 years old and above; Enterprise type: 1 = state-owned, 2 = private, 3 = foreign or joint; Education level: 1 = junior college and below, 2 = bachelor’s degree, 3 = master’s degree,4 = doctoral degree and above.
Hierarchical regression was used to test the direct effects of the variables and the mediating effects of job crafting. The results are presented in
Results of the hierarchical regression analysis.
Variables | Job performance |
Job crafting |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
M1 | M2 | M3 | M4 | M5 | M6 | M7 | |
Gender | −0.050 | −0.020 | −0.030 | −0.010 | −0.020 | −0.100 | −0.060 |
Marriage | 0.090 | 0.090 | 0.080 | 0.080 | 0.070 | 0.060 | 0.070 |
Age | 0.170 |
0.180 |
0.150 |
0.160 |
0.150 |
0.080 | −0.010 |
Enterprise type | 0.050 | 0.050 | 0.030 | 0.050 | 0.050 | −0.020 | −0.070 |
Education level | 0.150 |
0.130 |
0.160 |
0.120 |
0.120 |
0.070 | 0.150 |
Proactive personality | - | 0.240 |
- | 0.120 | - | 0.620 |
- |
Career calling | - | - | 0.180 |
- | 0.060 | - | 0.490 |
Job crafting | - | - | - | 0.190 |
0.240 |
- | - |
0.084 | 0.140 | 0.112 | 0.162 | 0.153 | 0.411 | 0.270 | |
∆ |
0.084 |
0.056 |
0.029 |
0.022 |
0.042 |
0.370 |
0.226 |
Next, we examined the mediating role of job crafting. The results are as follows: (1) Proactive personality had a significantly positive impact on job crafting (M6: β = 0.62,
Furthermore, in order to test whether a significant difference existed between the two mediating paths, Mplus 7.4 software was used for path analysis. A comprehensive model, with both proactive personality and career calling as independent variables, job crafting as mediator, and job performance as dependent variable was constructed. The five demographic variables were controlled. After 1000 repeated samplings with returns (bootstrapping method), the bias-corrected confidence intervals (CIs) of each coefficient were estimated, and the results are shown in
Comprehensive model of mediating effects.
In order to explore the moderating effect of organisational embeddedness, this study adopted steps based on the bootstrapping method proposed by Edwards and Lambert (
Coefficient estimates.
Independent variables | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
a05 | aX5 | aZ5 | aXZ5 | R2 | b04 | bX4 | bM4 | R2 | |
Proactive personality | −0.01 | 0.42 |
0.14 |
0.19 |
0.44 |
−0.00 | 0.14 | 0.41 |
0.10 |
Career calling | −0.03 | 0.23 |
0.13 |
0.19 |
0.31 |
−0.00 | 0.07 | 0.46 |
0.10 |
,
Note:
Next, the constrained nonlinear regression procedure was adopted to estimate the coefficients of 1000 bootstrap samples. After importing the results into the Excel template provided by Edwards and Lambert (
Moderating effect of organisational embeddedness in (a) the first stage of proactive personality path; (b) the first stage of career calling path.
Results of the moderated mediation model.
Independent variables | Moderator variable | Stage |
Effect |
|||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
First | Second | Direct | Indirect | Total | ||
Proactive personality | Low | 0.318 |
0.407 |
0.135 |
0.129 |
0.264 |
High | 0.520 |
0.407 |
0.135 |
0.212 |
0.347 |
|
Difference | 0.202 |
0.000 | 0.000 | 0.082 |
0.082 |
|
Career calling | Low | 0.126 |
0.460 |
0.071 | 0.058 |
0.129 |
High | 0.330 |
0.460 |
0.071 | 0.152 |
0.223 |
|
Difference | 0.204 |
0.000 | 0.000 | 0.094 |
0.094 |
,
Note: Difference = coefficient of high moderator group – coefficient of low moderator group. The moderator was organisational embeddedness, and high- and low-threshold value = mean ± deviation; since all variables were centralised in advance, mean = 0, so a high-level moderator threshold value = 0.54, while a low-threshold value = −0.54. The differences test for the indirect and total effects was based on bias-corrected confidence intervals derived from bootstrap estimates.
We begin with the main results of this study. Firstly, from the perspective of direct effects, proactive personality and career calling have a positive impact on job performance. Employees with a positive personality are more likely to overcome the obstacles in work situations and environment. They can discover and seize favourable opportunities, and obtain good performance. The results confirm that proactive personality is a stable personal characteristic that affects performance, consistent with the findings of previous studies (Crant,
Secondly, from the perspective of mediating effect, job crafting completely mediates the relationship between proactive personality, career calling, and job performance. Moreover, the mediating effects of the two paths were significantly different. Employees can craft their jobs by dynamically balancing work resources and demands. In this process, employees with proactive personality and strong intrinsic work motivation are more inclined to take a positive approach to mobilise work resources and demands around them to craft their work, and to improve their job performance. The results are consistent with previous findings on the influence of proactive personality and career calling on job crafting (Chang et al.,
Thirdly, from the perspective of the moderating effect, organisational embeddedness has a significant moderating effect on the mediating path, reflected in the first stage. This confirms the idea of an organisation’s important role in influencing job crafting (Park et al.,
The study has three significant theoretical contributions. Firstly, it explores the mechanism that affects employees’ work outcomes from the perspectives of both individual personality and motivation, thereby supporting the important role of individual autonomous behaviour, verifying the value of individual intrinsic motivation, and confirming SDT propositions. Self-determination theory’s sub-theories, cognitive evaluation theory and organismic integration theory, state that intrinsic motivation usually brings positive results, including excellent performance (Deci & Ryan,
The practical implications are reflected in two ways. Firstly, it provides a reference for employees to continuously improve their performance by actively interacting with the organisation and crafting their jobs with organisational support to improve job performance. Secondly, this research also informs organisations on how they can improve overall performance and simultaneously help employees develop their careers. Organisations should discard the old routine of conducting top-down job design in work practice. They should create an open organisational culture and working atmosphere, so more job crafting behaviours are about to happen. By providing sufficient information and support for employee development, employees’ organisational embeddedness will increase. By giving employees a certain degree of work autonomy, employer can stimulate employees to craft their work, to improve their performance from the bottom up, and to promote the positive career development of employees.
This study has several limitations that can provide avenues for future research. Firstly, the impact mechanism of job performance is a complex system involving many influencing factors. This study selected variables related to personality and intrinsic motivation for the analysis with only one boundary condition. Further research could select other independent, mediating, and moderating variables based on the SDT perspective. Secondly, this study mainly discussed the role of overall job crafting as employee proactive behaviour in influencing job performance. Future research can compare the roles of different dimensions of job crafting. Thirdly, this is a cross-sectional study; in future, adopting a longitudinal method and conducting comparative experiments and intervention studies would help to explore more complete paths affecting employees’ job performance.
Drawing on the framework of SDT, this research clarifies the influence of proactive personality and career calling on job performance from the two aspects of personality traits and intrinsic motivation. It highlights the importance of job crafting as an individual’s autonomous behaviour and demonstrates the supporting role of organisational embeddedness as a contextual factor. The results indicate that, firstly, proactive personality and career calling have significant positive impacts on job performance. Secondly, regarding the influence of proactive personality and career calling on job performance, employees’ job crafting plays a full mediating role, and the effects of the two paths are significantly different. Finally, organisational embeddedness has a significant moderating effect on the mediating path, which is mainly reflected in the first stage, or the path of the two independent variables’ influence on job crafting. To summarise, job crafting is a full mediator for proactive personality and career calling promoting employee performance; thus, employers should create an autonomous atmosphere to stimulate employees to craft their jobs, to help develop the latter’s careers as well as improve organisational performance.
The authors would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and suggestions.
The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.
All five authors contributed to conceptualisation, investigation and original draft preparation. C.Y., Z.D. and Y.H. analysed the data. H.Y., C.Y., Z.D., and X.G. made contributions regarding the review and editing. H.Y. and X.G. were responsible for funding acquisition, and H.Y. was responsible for supervision.
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71871025), the Youth Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71802023).
The data that support the findings of the study are available from the corresponding author, C.Y., upon reasonable request.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors.