ایجاد فرصت های شغلی، مشارکت کاری و اختلال روانی در بین کارکنان ژاپن: یک مطالعه مقطعی Job crafting, work engagement, and psychological distress among Japanese employees: a cross-sectional study

Background In recent years, working conditions have been changing, particularly due to a global shift from a manufacturing economy to a service and knowledge economy with advanced information technology. With these changes, employees are more likely to feel pressure and stress at work [1]. In addition, a manager would no longer be able to design a job for employees considering their needs and skills [1]. Accordingly, an important role of employees is to design their own job or work environment [1–3]. Japanese companies have also adopted this new trend, as many companies in Japan expect their employees to have more responsibility and autonomy for improving their own employability [4, 5]. The field of occupational health has started to pay increased attention to the concept of job crafting, i.e., an idea of employee-initiated job design/redesign. Wrezesniewski and Dutton [6] have defined job crafting as “the physical and cognitive change individuals make in the task or relational boundaries of their work”, which involves changing work task, changing interpersonal relationship at work, and changing cognitions about work. By using job-crafting behaviors, employees design and improve their work and social environment in workplace by themselves [6, 7]. A further classification of job crafting has been made based on dimensions of work and work environment on which job crafting focuses, such as types of job demands and job resources based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model [7–9]. Job demands refer to physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical or psychological efforts and skills and are associated with certain physical or psychological costs [8]. Recently, Van den Broeck et al. [10] distinguished between challenging job demands and hindering job demands because they have different associations with outcomes (e.g., work engagement, burnout). Challenging job demands, such as time pressure and workload, stimulate employee motivation because employees feel satisfaction from accomplishing challenging tasks, while hindering job demands, such as resource inadequacy, role ambiguity, and interpersonal conflict, have a negative effect on the mental or physical health employees [10, 11]. Job resources are physical, social, or organizational aspects of the job that help individuals achieve their working goals, stimulate personal growth, learning, and development, or reduce job demands or associated physical or psychological costs [8]. Using this refined classification of job demands and resources at work, Tims et al. [7] empirically categorized job crafting into the following four factors: (1) increasing structural job resources (e.g., autonomy, variety, and opportunity for development), (2) increasing social job resources (e.g., social support, supervisory coaching and feedback), (3) increasing challenging job demands (e.g., new project, learning new things), and (4) decreasing hindering job demands (e.g., fewer cognitive demands or stressful relationships).