What a difference a workplace makes. A scientometric analysis on the relationship between job crafting and healthy organizations’ factors

Abstract

Introduction : The transformations that have affected the labour market in recent years have required companies to adapt to fast changes and to keep the pace of global competition. Consequently, workers have been confronted with multiple challenging demands: they have been required to develop flexibility in their jobs and to work faster and better, often with evident costs in terms of performance and their workplace well-being. Given these evidences, as also shown by some of the most recent developments in the field of Positive Work and Organizational Psychology, healthy organizations are those organizations that could resist to these challenges, because they engage in creating an environment that can promote employees’ health and safety, maximising performance. Yet, healthy organizations support positive organizational behaviors through a coherent culture, a positive climate, and good practices. Healthy organizations might also create the conditions to encourage workers to perform job crafting behaviors, meant as proactive individual behaviours aimed at modifying job demands in order to adjust them to personal needs, motivations and talents, thus maximising well-being and performance. Objective : The aim of the study was to overview the state of the art of the debate about the relationship between job crafting and healthy organizations’ factors by performing a scientometric analysis of job crafting. Therefore, the study was aimed to emphasize performances of countries, journals and authors, highlighting the dominant perspectives on the topic. Method : The starting point of the analysis was data recovery from the Scopus database using the term "job crafting" as search criterion within the title, abstract or keywords of the documents retrieved. The analysis was carried out with two softwares, R and VOSviewer, in order to investigate the growth of interest on the topic over the years, the scientific production of countries, journals and authors, the social structure of collaborative network, and the network of keywords. Results : 375 documents about job crafting were retrieved, showing a growing number of publications in recent years, with a preponderance of productions and citations in USA and Netherlands (where the construct was proposed and validated). Cluster analysis performed on the most frequently used keywords showed three main groups, each of them theoretical linked to workplace health: stimulus factors; Job Demands-Resources Model; health dimensions. Discussion : The present bibliometric analysis showed an increasing scientific interest toward job crafting and the importance of specific papers (that opened the two main perspective about it) for the whole research line. Through the cluster analysis of keywords network, it was underlined the relevance of constructs that promote healthy organizations in the scientific production on job crafting.