- Email: [email protected]
Proactive personality and job crafting in the tourism industry: Does job resourcefulness matter?
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhtm
Proactive personality and job crafting in the tourism industry: Does job resourcefulness matter?
T
Hsiu-Yu Tenga,1, Chien-Yu Chenb,∗ a
Department of Leisure and Recreation Management, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, No. 129, Sanmin Road, Sec. 3, Taichung 404, Taiwan, ROC b Department of Marketing & Logistics Management, Chihlee University of Technology, No. 313, Sec. 1, Wunhua Rd, Banciao District, New Taipei City 220, Taiwan, ROC
A B S T R A C T
Scholars and managers in the tourism industry have recognized the importance of job crafting for workplace effectiveness. However, few studies have investigated job crafting's predictors. Thus, this study addressed the research gap by investigating the influence of proactive personality on job crafting, and the contingent role of job resourcefulness. Data obtained from 508 tour leaders revealed that proactive personality was positively associated with increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources, increasing challenging job demands, and decreasing hindering job demands. Job resourcefulness moderated the influence of proactive personality on increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands. However, the relationship between proactive personality and decreasing hindering job demands was not moderated by job resourcefulness. These findings contribute to theory and practices involving the association between personality traits and job crafting.
1. Introduction The crucial role of tour leaders in tour service has been recognized by researchers and practitioners (Tsaur & Teng, 2017). Tour leaders represent travel agencies and manage tour itineraries to ensure that programs are implemented as indicated in travel agency documents and customer agreements (WFTGA, 2010). Tour leaders' performance influences tourist satisfaction, shopping behavior, and the tour service's success (Chang, 2014). Therefore, travel agencies treat tour leaders as brand representatives. However, tour leaders experience long work hours, heavy workloads, and emotional exhaustion (Yen, Tsaur, & Tsai, 2018), which may impede them from providing tour services. Therefore, investigating tour leaders can elicit new insights and perspectives into the tourism domain (Cheng, Chen, Teng, & Yen, 2016). Studies have provided tour leaders’ job descriptions (Tsaur & Teng, 2017). Among job characteristics, job crafting, meaning that employees reshape work conditions to fit their needs and competence (Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012), has been discussed in the tourism industry (Cheng et al., 2016). Employees who craft their work can shape the work experience (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) and improve their work attitudes (Bavik, Bavik, & Tang, 2017). Therefore, previous research has focused on job crafting outcomes (Cheng et al., 2016). A few determinants of job crafting (i.e. work engagement and future time perspective) have been discussed (e.g. Chen, 2019; Kooij, Tims, & Akkermans, 2017). Therefore, additional studies need to examine
factors that influence job-crafting behaviors (Kooij et al., 2017), especially in the tourism industry. Specifically, proactive personality is a vital determinant of job crafting (Bakker, Tims, & Derks, 2012). Proactive personality refers to a stable disposition to influence changes in circumstances. Previous research has supported a linkage between proactive personality and job crafting (Plomp et al., 2016). However, Wang, Demerouti, and Le Blanc's (2017) findings revealed that proactive personality has no influence on job crafting. In other words, the connection between proactive personality and job crafting is unclear. Additionally, tour leaders' job characteristics are different from those of employees working in an office. Tour leaders' relational boundaries are more broad and complicated. Tour leaders can make strong proactive behavioral changes and create more job and social resources by adjusting their relationships with tourism stakeholders (Yen et al., 2018). Therefore, compared with general office workers, the influence of proactive personality on job crafting may be different for tour leaders. In other words, it is worthwhile to examine the linkage between tour leaders' proactive personality and job crafting. Job resourcefulness means a permanent tendency to earn depleted resources and overcoming hindrance when completing work objectives (Licata, Mowen, Harris, & Brown, 2003). Researchers have stated that job resourcefulness plays a contingent role in employees’ work attitudes (Yavas, Karatepe, & Babakus, 2011). Through conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 2001), individual traits are considered as personal resources to weaken the influence of stressors on strain. Job-
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 2 22576167; fax: +886 2 66215552. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H.-Y. Teng), [email protected] (C.-Y. Chen). 1 Tel.: +886 4 22196512; fax: +886 4 22196511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2019.10.010 Received 9 May 2019; Received in revised form 8 October 2019; Accepted 11 October 2019 1447-6770/ © 2019 CAUTHE - COUNCIL FOR AUSTRALASIAN TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY EDUCATION. Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
Personal-factor-driven job crafting occurs when an employee has a high level of future time perspective and the need for a favorable self-image (Kooij et al., 2017; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Job-factor-driven job crafting entails how workers' work engagement and work discretion are positively related to individual and collaborative crafting (Chen, 2019). People who engage in interdependent tasks demonstrate collaborative crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Moreover, employees having job autonomy and work pressure show willingness to perform job crafting by, for example, seeking resources and decreasing demands (Petrou et al., 2012). Individuals with high approach temperament gather JR and challenging JD (Bipp & Demerouti, 2015). By contrast, employees with high avoidance temperament are inclined to reduce hindering workplace demands. Promotion-focused employees are expected to craft their jobs related to questing challenges and resources, whereas prevention-focused employees exhibit great willingness to reduce hindering JD (Brenninkmeijer & Hekkert-Koning, 2015). The aforementioned findings suggest that employees’ personality traits influence their behaviors toward work conditions. That it, employees with positive personalities have a tendency toward job crafting. Researchers have investigated the effect of proactive personality on job-crafting behaviors. However, Bakker et al.’s (2012) study did not consider decreasing hindering JD. Plomp et al. (2016) investigated only the connection between proactive personality and unidimensional job crafting and collected data from various industries (e.g. teaching, finance, and business), not the tourism industry. Job crafting is a critical topic, particularly in the tourism industry, because tour leaders are required to maintain contact with and receive various demands from their customers during tours (Cheng et al., 2016; Tsaur & Teng, 2017). The job characteristics of tour leaders differ from those of office workers; for example, the relational boundaries of tour leaders are more complicated and extensive. Tour leaders can make more proactive behavioral changes in their work by altering the nature or extent of their relationship with stakeholders (e.g. customers, tour bus drivers, and local suppliers) or creating more structural or social JR compared with workers of other jobs (Yen et al., 2018). Therefore, the literature (e.g. Bakker et al., 2012; Plomp et al., 2016) may be insufficient in explaining the relationship between proactive personality and job crafting from the tourism industry perspective. According to proactive personality theory (Crant, 2000), proactive employees strive to establish a great work environment and generate opportunities for themselves. For instance, people having high proactivity are eager to display proactive behaviors in their work environments (Seibert, Crant, & Kraimer, 1999). Compared with nonproactive employees, proactive employees are more able to manage workplace stress, are more inclined to gain work resources, and are more engaged at work (Bakker et al., 2012). Proactive personality makes employees search for resources and challenges to improve the workplace environments (Tims et al., 2012). Proactive employees are inclined to communicate with their supervisors and seek career development (Li et al., 2010). Accordingly, proactive employees are inclined to seek challenging JD and structural and social JR and strive to diminish hindering JD. Hence, we address this research gap and offer four hypotheses as follows.
resourceful employees can address difficulties and work effectively in a resource-scarce environment (Chen, 2019). Job resourcefulness allows proactive employees to use scarce resources to address work-related challenges and in turn perform job-crafting behaviors. Thus, compared with individuals with low job resourcefulness, proactive personality and job crafting may be more strongly related for employees with high job resourcefulness. However, no study has addressed the contingent influence of job resourcefulness on this relationship. The current study provides the following contributions to the tourism literature. First, Yen et al. (2018) developed a scale for tour leaders' job crafting and discovered that job crafting is correlated with person-job fit. Therefore, the current study complements their work by investigating factors that influence tour leaders' job crafting and conditions that strengthen or weaken the relationship. The current study is also a response to Yen et al.’s (2018) statement that tour leaders' job crafting has received insufficient academic attention and Kooij et al.’s (2017) study that recommended investigating job crafting's antecedents by examining the association between proactive personality and tour leaders' job crafting. Additionally, we supplement Bakker et al.’s (2012) study by considering the role of job resourcefulness. That is, our results enhance the findings on boundary conditions under which proactive personality influences job crafting. Finally, we collected data from a sample of tour leaders to gain valuable insights; results provide practical strategies for human resource managers in travel agencies. 2. Literature review 2.1. 1 Proactive personality and job crafting Proactive personality means that employees actively engage in selfstarting and future-focused activities to enhance their current conditions (Li, Liang, & Crant, 2010). Proactive employees are active in creating meaningful change in the workplace (Crant, 2000) and enhancing their well-being (Plomp et al., 2016). By contrast, less proactive employees are passive and reactive, fail to search for opportunities for change, and adapt to their work environments (Crant, 2000). Hence, proactive personality enhances creativity, organizational citizenship behaviors, and informal leadership status (Li et al., 2010; Pan, Liu, & Qu, 2018). According to COR theory, people strive to preserve and advance their useful resources and overcome obstacles in the pursuit of wealth (Hobfoll, 2001). On the basis of COR theory, Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) proposed that job crafting refers to how workers reshape their job conditions physically and cognitively. Therefore, employees display various types of job crafting behaviors to improve their work conditions (Slemp, Kern, & Vella-Brodrick, 2015). Leana, Appelbaum, and Shevchuk (2009) identified two types of job crafting behaviors: individual crafting, in which employees actively change or restructure their work surroundings, and collaborative crafting, in which employees cooperate to modify their work conditions to achieve work goals. Nielsen and Abildgaard (2012) viewed job crafting as various workers' proactive behaviors to increase job resources (JR), meet challenging job demands (JD), and decrease hindering JD. Therefore, Tims et al. (2012) proposed four job-crafting behaviors: increasing structural JR (e.g. organizing JR such as training and development opportunities), increasing social JR (e.g. seeking assistance and cooperation), increasing challenging JD (e.g. partaking in new programs), and decreasing hindering JD (e.g. avoiding straining works that impede growth). Yen et al. (2018) adopted Tims et al.’s (2012) classification and proposed four job-crafting behaviors of tour leaders: increasing structural JR (e.g. enhancing tour-leading skills), increasing social JR (e.g. seeking assistance from experienced tour leaders), increasing challenging JD (e.g. making work more challenging) and decreasing hindering JD (e.g. making work more simple). Job crafting's antecedents can be classified into personal and job factors (Petrou, Demerouti, Peeters, Schaufeli, & Hetland, 2012).
H1. Increasing structural JR is boosted by proactive personality. H2. Increasing social JR is boosted by proactive personality. H3. Increasing challenging JD is boosted by proactive personality. H4. Decreasing hindering JD is boosted by proactive personality.
2.2. Moderating role of job resourcefulness “Do more with less” is an aphorism in service settings. This management strategy often involves employees working in resource-limited 111
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
H5. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and increasing structural JR is enhanced.
workplaces (Licata et al., 2003). Therefore, job resourcefulness, which can be regarded as a personal resource or employee personality trait (Rod & Ashill, 2009; Yavas et al., 2011), is related to managing these resource-depleted work conditions (Karatepe & Aga, 2012). The hierarchical model approach (Mowen, 2000) includes four personality trait levels: elemental (most abstract), compound, situational, and surface (least abstract) traits. People with situational traits, which are influenced by elemental (e.g. agreeableness) and compound (e.g. activity needs) traits, have a permanent personality characteristic of performing unvarying actions in certain environments (Licata et al., 2003). Job resourcefulness is treated as a situational trait (Licata et al., 2003) because employees with high job resourcefulness have a permanent desire to resolve their work problems and achieve work-related in resourcedepleted environments (Karatepe & Aga, 2012). Thus, job-resourceful employees are expected to proactively change their constraints to accomplish job-related tasks and goals efficiently in resource-scarce work situations (Silva & Coelho, 2019; Yavas et al., 2011). Researchers have explored the role of job resourcefulness in service environments, including bank, food service companies, and hotels (Chen, 2019; Rod & Ashill, 2009). However, few studies pertaining to job resourcefulness in the travel industry have been conducted. Based on the job demands-resources model, personal resources offer emotional resilience in unfavorable work conditions and provide individuals with a sense of control over their environments (Bakker et al., 2012). For instance, organizational-based self-esteem mitigates the influence of role ambiguity on depression (Pierce & Gardner, 2004). Moreover, workers’ self-efficacy buffers the negative influence of colleague incivility on emotional exhaustion (Rhee, Hur, & Kim, 2017). Job resourcefulness can be positioned as a personal resource (Karatepe, 2011); job-resourceful employees improve their work conditions and manage work conflicts effectively. COR theory states that individuals struggle to collect, acquire, and preserve existing resources that they value (i.e. objects, conditions, and personal features) (Hobfoll, 2001). Based on COR theory, individuals invest resources to gain, protect, and retain crucial resources in the face of resource loss (Hobfoll, 2001). Therefore, past studies have adopted COR theory to explore the effect of job resourcefulness in several employee-to-workplace interactions (Karatepe, 2011; Yavas et al., 2011). Job resourcefulness can enhance employee confidence in dealing with work difficulties in a resource-limited environment (Chen, 2019). Jobresourceful employees gain more JR to fulfill job-related goals (Rod & Ashill, 2009) and reduce the detrimental influences of workplace conflicts on job satisfaction (Karatepe, 2011). Furthermore, employees who exhibit high job resourcefulness may appraise job resources more favorably and find alternative ways to increase structural and social JR. When facing stressful or demanding situations, job-resourceful employees may discover creative ways to meet the demands (Yavas et al., 2011). Thus, employees with high job resourcefulness are more inclined to display job crafting behaviors (Chen, 2019). On the basis of the aforementioned studies, the interaction between job resourcefulness and proactive personality may affect job crafting. Job resourcefulness is expected to moderate the relationship in which employees’ proactive personality increase their job-crafting behaviors. When job resourcefulness is high, proactive employees actively identify new methods and seek opportunities to improve their work conditions; thus, they exhibit job-crafting behaviors. When employees have high proactive personality but low job resourcefulness, the combination of high ignorance and low inclination toward pursuing work goals may eliminate the positive effect of proactivity. Accordingly, the positive linkage between proactive personality and job crafting is enhanced for job-resourceful employees who actively strive to achieve work goals. In other words, compared with those who have high proactive personality but low job resourcefulness, employees high in proactive personality and job resourcefulness exhibit more job-crafting behaviors in the form of increasing structural JR, social JR, and challenging JD and decreasing hindering JD. Hence, the hypotheses are provided as follows:
H6. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and increasing social JR is enhanced. H7. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and increasing challenging JD is enhanced. H8. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and decreasing hindering JD is enhanced. 3. Research methods 3.1. Sampling and data collection Group package tours (GPTs) are popular in Asia (e.g. Taiwan, Japan, and Korea) (Tsaur & Teng, 2017). Of the Taiwanese tourists who traveled abroad, 31.3% joined GPTs (Taiwan Tourism Bureau, 2017). Tour leaders play essential roles in GPT service quality (Cheng et al., 2016). Hence, we focused on tour leaders from consolidated travel agencies according to Cheng et al.’s (2016) recommendations. In travel practices, tour leaders can be categorized as employee tour leaders, who are fulltime travel agency employees, and freelance tour leaders, who are selfemployed and not committed to a travel agency in the long term (Lin & Hsu, 2016). Both employee and freelance tour leaders were included in this study, but travel agency managers were specifically excluded. Taiwan has 603 consolidated travel agencies, 310 of which are in Taipei. Thus, the researchers contacted the general managers of travel agencies in Taipei. In total, 30 travel agencies agreed to join in our survey. The researchers sent letters to all participating managers to request help in distributing the questionnaire. With the assistance of general managers, 550 tour leaders participated in our survey. A questionnaire, a stamped return envelope, and a gift that incentivized participation were mailed to tour leaders' homes. Participants mailed the return envelope with the completed questionnaire directly back to us to protect their privacy and the questionnaire's security. The researchers gathered 525 questionnaires and ultimately obtained 508 valid responses after removal of 17 questionnaires that contained incomplete or improper answers. Of 508 respondents, 258 (50.8%) were male and 250 (49.2%) were female; 49.6% of respondents were aged between 41 and 50 years old. According to the Ministry of Examination (2017), of the participants who passed the tour leader examination, 30% were older than 46 years. The nature of the tour guiding profession is attractive to people who change their midlife careers. Thus, most of the participating tour leaders were relatively older. Furthermore, the educational level was generally high, with over 90.5% having obtained a college education. Most (69.3%) of the respondents were married, and 43.3% of the respondents had been in their current jobs for 6–10 years. Most (73.9%) of the respondents were freelance tour leaders, and the remaining 26.1% were employee tour leaders. 3.2. Measures This study adopted previous well-established questionnaires to measure proactive personality, job resourcefulness, and job crafting. We conducted back translation with two tour leaders to confirm the accuracy of questionnaire items. No translation bias was observed in this study. All questionnaire items were adopted a Likert-type scale: 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Proactive personality (ten items) was measured on the basis of Seibert et al.’s (1999) study. The sample item was “I excel at identifying opportunities.” Job resourcefulness (four items) was measured from Licata et al. (2003). The sample item was “At my job, I think I am a fairly resourceful person.” Job crafting 112
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
JR (0.57), increasing social JR (0.58), increasing challenging JD (0.51), and decreasing hindering JD (0.30) were all positively related to job resourcefulness.
was measured using 30 questions adopted from Yen et al. (2018). There were four job-crafting behaviors: increasing structural JR (nine items), increasing social JR (eight items), increasing challenging JD (seven items), and decreasing hindering JD (six items). The sample item was “I try to enhance my tour-leading skills.” Regarding control variables, a meta-analysis of job crafting by Rudolph, Katz, Lavigne, and Zacher (2017) reported that age, gender, and tenure are related to job crafting. In the current study, these demographic variables were treated as control variables, and their influences on job crafting were controlled in subsequent analyses.
4.4. Hypotheses testing The results of structural equation modelling offered accepted fit values to the data (χ2/df = 3.28, RMR = 0.06, and RMSEA = 0.07). The paths from proactive personality to increasing structural JR (β = 0.67, p < .01), from proactive personality to increasing social JR (0.64), from proactive personality to increasing challenging JD (0.66), and from proactive personality to decreasing hindering JD (0.44) were all significant. Hence, H1, H2, H3, and H4 were supported. In accordance with Hayes's (2012) study, we used PROCESS macro to test the moderating influence of job resourcefulness. The studied variables were analyzed using the centering method approach, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were adopted. As presented in Table 3, job resourcefulness moderated the linkage between proactive personality and increasing structural JR (β = −0.16, t = −5.53, CI❲-0.21, −0.10❳), the linkage between proactive personality and increasing social JR (−0.14, −4.45, CI❲-0.21, −0.08❳), and the linkage between proactive personality and increasing challenging JD (−0.17, −4.69, CI ❲-0.24, −0.10❳). Although the moderating effect of job resourcefulness was significant, the directions of the relationships contradicted the hypothesized relationships of H1, H2, and H3 (Figs. 1–3). In addition, job resourcefulness did not moderate the linkage between proactive personality and decreasing hindering JD (−0.10, −1.70, CI❲-0.22, 0.02❳). Hence, H5, H6, and H7 were partially supported. H8a was not supported.
4. Results 4.1. Reliability and validity of measurement properties All reliability values of measurement scales ranged from 0.9 to 0.94; because all values were more than 0.7, all our questionnaire items were reliable. Regarding the validity of questionnaire items, one item on proactive personality, one item on increasing structural JR, and two items on increasing social JR were removed in further study because of low factor loadings. After removing these four items, the proposed framework had good fit values (χ2/df = 2.97, CFI = 0.9, IFI = 0.9, RMR = 0.03, SRMR = 0.05, and RMSEA = 0.06). Additionally, the standardized factor loadings of all observable indicators ranged from 0.63 to 0.87 and were statistically significant. The composite reliability scores ranged between 0.9 and 0.94, all more than 0.6. The values of average variance extracted (AVE) all exceeded 0.5. Thus, convergent validity was supported. Each AVE exceeded the squared correlation for all pairs of constructs, implying that discriminant validity was evident (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
5. Conclusion and discussion 4.2. Social desirability biases
The effect of job crafting on outcome variables has received attention (Bavik et al., 2017; Cheng et al., 2016; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). However, researchers and practitioners have not focused on the job crafting's antecedents, especially in the tourism industry. Thus, this research addresses the research gap by exploring the relationship of proactive personality with job crafting and clarifying the contingent influence of job resourcefulness. The findings reveal that proactive workers aim to increase structural JR, social JR, and challenging JD, and decrease hindering JD. Except for decreasing hindering JD, job resourcefulness moderates the effect of proactive personality on the other three job-crafting behaviors. Beyond examining the direct effect, the current research makes contributions by investigating the moderating influence of job resourcefulness on the association between proactive personality and job-crafting behaviors among a sample of tour leaders. First, this study considers personality as well as job design theory to examine how proactive employees change their work conditions. Proactive employees are inclined to increase structural and social JR and challenging JD as well as diminish hindering JD. Therefore, proactive tour leaders strive to shape their work features and manage their work conditions. That is, they seek and create structural JR (e.g. acquiring new knowledge), social JR (e.g. increasing supervisors' encouragement) and challenging JD (e.g. seeking challenging tasks). They also decrease hindering JD by avoiding difficult decisions. Our findings support the statements of Plomp et al. (2016) that proactive employees are inclined to display job-crafting behaviors. In addition, this study complements Bakker et al.’s (2012) study by examining the influence of proactive personality on decreasing hindering JD. Second, although job resourcefulness has been identified as a crucial personal employee resource in past studies, its contingent role in the influence of employee traits is unknown. Researchers have investigated whether the connection between work conflict and job outcomes is moderated by job resourcefulness (Karatepe, 2011; Yavas et al., 2011). To the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to explore whether
Our study collected data from a single source. To reduce the effect of social desirability biases, this study adopted procedural and statistical techniques (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). First, the letters described the purpose of the research and guaranteed that participation was anonymous and that participant information would remain confidential. Second, the questionnaire items of studied variables were listed on different questionnaire pages to produce a psychological separation. Finally, we recruited 30 tour leaders for a pretest to avoid using unclear questionnaire items that may induce response bias. Regarding statistical approaches, we adopted Harman's single-factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results of Harman's single-factor analysis demonstrated that several factors had eigenvalues of > 1. The first factor explained a total variance of 39.98%, which was lower than Lin's (2007) proposed criterion. Additionally, the CFA results indicated that the fit values of the one-factor model were lower than those of the hypothesized model (Table 1). Thus, social desirability biases did not affect our results. 4.3. Intercorrelations analysis As shown in Table 2, proactive personality was positively related to increasing structural JR (r = 0.53, p < .01), increasing social JR (0.53), increasing challenging JD (0.53), decreasing hindering JD (0.34), and job resourcefulness (0.73). In addition, increasing structural Table 1 Fit values for the measurement models. Models
χ2/df
RMR
SRMR
RMSEA
CFI
I FI
Criteria Hypothesized Model One-factor model
<3 2.97 9.52
≦ .080 0.03 0.09
≦ .08 0.05 0.11
≦ .08 0.06 0.13
≧ .9 0.90 0.57
≧ .90 0.90 0.57
113
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
Table 2 Correlation analysis. Variable a
1.Gender 2.Ageb 3.Tenurec 4.Proactive personality 5.Increasing structural JR 6.Increasing social JR 7.Increasing challenging JD 8.Decreasing hindering JD 9.Job resourcefulness
Mean
SD
AVE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1.49 2.91 1.95 4.10 4.52 4.38 4.32 4.10 4.29
0.50 0.87 0.93 0.54 0.51 0.58 0.62 0.93 0.57
– – – 0.52 0.57 0.60 0.60 0.75 0.72
0.10* 0.01 0.20** 0.11* 0.12** 0.11* 0.05 0.17**
−0.02 0.05 0.02 −0.03 0.04 −0.11* 0.05
0.01 −0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.02
0.53** 0.53** 0.53** 0.34** 0.73**
0.71** 0.62** 0.42** 0.57**
0.60** 0.38** 0.58**
0.43** 0.51**
0.30**
9
Note: a 1 = male, 2 = female; b 1 = less than 30 years old, 2 = 31–40, 3 = 41–50, 4 = 51 and over; c 1 = less than 5, 2 = 6–10, 3 = 11–15, 4 = 16–20; *p < .05; **p < .01. Table 3 Moderating analysis results. Dependent variable
Independent variable
B
se
t
p
LLCI
ULCI
Increasing structural JR
Constant
4.58
0.09
51.79
0.00
4.40
4.75
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR Constant
0.01 −0.01 −0.01 0.25 0.26 −0.16 4.48
0.04 0.02 0.02 0.05 0.05 0.03 0.10
0.27 −0.30 −0.45 5.13 5.45 −5.53 44.71
0.79 0.76 0.65 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
−0.06 −0.05 −0.05 0.16 0.17 −0.21 4.28
0.08 0.03 0.03 0.35 0.35 −0.10 4.68
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR Constant
0.03 −0.04 0.00 0.25 0.35 −0.14 4.30
0.04 0.02 0.02 0.06 0.05 0.03 0.11
0.64 −1.69 0.06 4.49 6.38 −4.45 38.43
0.53 0.09 0.95 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
−0.06 −0.09 −0.04 0.14 0.24 −0.21 4.08
0.11 0.01 0.04 0.36 0.45 −0.08 4.52
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR Constant
0.02 0.01 0.00 0.40 0.19 −0.17 4.41
0.05 0.03 0.02 0.06 0.06 0.04 0.19
0.35 0.33 0.10 6.55 3.17 −4.69 23.22
0.73 0.74 0.92 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
−0.08 −0.05 −0.05 0.28 0.07 −0.24 4.03
0.11 0.06 0.05 0.53 0.31 −0.10 4.78
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR
−0.01 −0.12 0.05 0.48 0.11 −0.10
0.08 0.04 0.04 0.10 0.10 0.06
−0.18 −2.77 1.14 4.56 1.11 −1.70
0.85 0.01 0.25 0.00 0.26 0.09
−0.17 −0.21 −0.03 0.27 −0.09 −0.22
0.14 −0.04 0.13 0.68 0.32 0.02
Increasing social JR
Increasing challenging JD
Decreasing hindering JD
Fig. 1. Interaction of proactive personality x job resourcefulness on increasing structural job resources.
Fig. 2. Interaction of proactive personality x job resourcefulness on increasing social job resources.
Note. PP: Proactive personality; JR: Job resourcefulness.
job resourcefulness moderates the proactive personality-job crafting relationship. Specifically, proactive personality has a more positive influence on increasing structural JR, increasing social JR, and increasing challenging JD for workers with low job resourcefulness than for those with high job resourcefulness. These results contradict the hypothesized relationships. In other words, job resourcefulness negatively moderates the link between proactive personality and jobcrafting behaviors possibly because job-resourceful employees tend to fulfill work-related objectives and improve the work conditions (Karatepe & Aga, 2012). Employees with high job resourcefulness intrinsically engage in increasing their structural JR, social JR, and challenging JD more frequently than do employees with low job resourcefulness, who require proactive personality to drive them to
Fig. 3. Interaction of proactive personality x job resourcefulness on increasing challenging job demands.
engage in these job-crafting behaviors to achieve work goals. In addition, past study indicated that proactive employees are most likely to exhibit job-crafting behaviors (Bakker et el., 2012). Prior research also reported that job resourcefulness can be regarded as a situational 114
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
5.3. Conclusions
personality trait (Mowen, 2000). A large amount of situational trait variance can be explained by more basic compound and elemental traits (Licata et al., 2003), such as proactive personality. Lefevor and Fowers (2016) discovered that personality traits have a greater influence on helping behaviors than situational factors do. Thus, in contrast to relative influences of proactive personality and job resourcefulness on job crafting, when job resourcefulness is low, proactive personality is the key positive antecedent of job crafting. Therefore, job resourcefulness attenuates the linkage between proactive personality and job crafting. The linkage between proactive personality and decreasing hindering JD was not moderated by job resourcefulness; this is probably because job resourcefulness has no negative influence on JD and has a positive influence on JR (Rod & Ashill, 2009). Compared with JR, job resourcefulness relates less to JD. In addition, past studies have explored the interaction of moderators (e.g. organizational identification and optimism) with the antecedents (e.g. leadership) of decreasing hindering JD (Thun & Bakker, 2018; Wang, Demerouti, & Le Blanc, 2017). Moderating influence has not been supported in these studies. Therefore, these aforementioned findings suggest that job resourcefulness has no moderating influence on the proactive personality-decreasing hindering JD relationship.
Tour leaders’ job-crafting behaviors have theoretical and managerial implications in the tourism industry. Thus, this study develops a framework that examines how proactive personality and job resourcefulness influence job crafting. Data from Taiwanese tour leaders reveal that proactive personality has positive relationships with four types of job-crafting behaviors. Job resourcefulness moderates the influence of proactive personality on increasing structural JR, increasing social JR, and increasing challenging JD. Thus, for tour agency managers, proactive personality can be considered in selection criteria and performance appraisal. Additionally, the role of job resourcefulness cannot be ignored when encouraging job-crafting behaviors among tour leaders with low proactive personality. References Bakker, A. B., Tims, M., & Derks, D. (2012). Proactive personality and job performance: The role of job crafting and work engagement. Human Relations, 65(10), 1359–1378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726712453471. Bavik, A., Bavik, Y. L., & Tang, P. M. (2017). Servant leadership, employee job crafting, and citizenship behaviors: A cross-level investigation. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 58(4), 364–373. https://doi.org/10.1177/1938965517719282. Bipp, T., & Demerouti, E. (2015). Which employees craft their jobs and how? Basic dimensions of personality and employees' job crafting behavior. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(4), 631–655. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12089. Brenninkmeijer, V., & Hekkert-Koning, M. (2015). To craft or not to craft: The relationships between regulatory focus, job crafting and work outcomes. Career Development International, 20(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-12-2014-0162. Chang, K. C. (2014). Examining the effect of tour guide performance, tourist trust, tourist satisfaction, and flow experience on tourists' shopping behavior. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 19(2), 219–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/10941665.2012. 739189. Chen, C. Y. (2019). Does work engagement mediate the influence of job resourcefulness on job crafting? An examination of frontline hotel employees. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 31(4), 1684–1701. https://doi.org/10.1108/ IJCHM-05-2018-0365. Cheng, J. C., Chen, C. Y., Teng, H. Y., & Yen, C. H. (2016). Tour leaders' job crafting and job outcomes: The moderating role of perceived organizational support. Tourism Management Perspectives, 20, 19–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2016.06.001. Crant, J. (2000). Proactive behavior in organizations. Journal of Management, 26(3), 435–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600304. Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104. Hayes, A. F. (2012). Process: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling. [White paper]. Retrieved from http://www.afhayes.com/public/process2012.pdf. Hobfoll, S. E. (2001). The influence of culture, community, and the nested-self in the stress process: Advancing conservation of resources theory. Applied Psychology: International Review, 50(3), 337–421. https://doi.org/10.1111/1464-0597.00062. Karatepe, O. M. (2011). Job resourcefulness as a moderator of the work–family conflictjob satisfaction relationship: A study of hotel employees in Nigeria. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 18(1), 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1375/jhtm.18. 1.10. Karatepe, O. M., & Aga, M. (2012). Work engagement as a mediator of the effects of personality traits on job outcomes: A study of frontline employees. Services Marketing Quarterly, 33(4), 343–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332969.2012.715053. Kooij, D. T., Tims, M., & Akkermans, J. (2017). The influence of future time perspective on work engagement and job performance: The role of job crafting. European Journal of Work & Organizational Psychology, 26(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1359432X.2016.1209489. Leana, C., Appelbaum, E., & Shevchuk, I. (2009). Work process and quality of care in early childhood education: The role of job crafting. Academy of Management Journal, 52(6), 1169–1192. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2009.47084651. Lefevor, G. T., & Fowers, B. J. (2016). Traits, situational factors, and their interactions as explanations of helping behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 92, 159–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.12.042. Licata, J. W., Mowen, J. C., Harris, E. G., & Brown, T. J. (2003). On the trait antecedents and outcomes of service worker job resourcefulness: A hierarchical model approach. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(3), 256–271. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0092070303031003004. Li, N., Liang, J., & Crant, J. M. (2010). The role of proactive personality in job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior: A relational perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(2), 395–404. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018079. Lin, C. P. (2007). To share or not to share: Modeling knowledge sharing using exchange ideology as a moderator. Personnel Review, 36(3), 457–475. https://doi.org/10.1108/ 00483480710731374. Lin, C. T., & Hsu, S. C. (2016). Constructing a travel risks' evaluation model for tour freelancers based on the ANP Approach. Advances in Operations Research, 2016, 1–13.
5.1. Managerial contributions The current study provides several key implications for practitioners. First, past studies have suggested improving tour leaders’ work conditions through bottom-up work redesign (Cheng et al., 2016). Our study corroborated the suggestions that proactive personality positively affects four job-crafting behaviors. Our study prompts practitioners to consider proactive personality as a mean of establishing synergistic effects that improve the job performance of tour leaders and say positive things about the travel agencies that employ them. Second, a crucial effect of job crafting on positive employee consequences is evident (Cheng et al., 2016). Hence, human resource managers in the travel industry should consider organizational interventions (e.g. recruitment and selection) to employ qualified tour leaders to form strong linkages between proactive personality and job crafting. Finally, for tour leaders with low job resourcefulness (e.g. few personal resources), proactive personality should be developed to change their work attitudes and encourage engagement in job crafting. Therefore, travel agency managers should plan training programs to enhance the proactive personality of their employees.
5.2. Research limitations and future studies Some research limitations are identified as follows. First, our data collection approach adopted a cross-sectional research design, which may limit the causal relationship among our variables. Hence, the causality between proactive personality and job crafting could be considered in future studies by adopting other research designs (i.e. longitudinal study). Second, we gathered data from a sample of only tour leaders; this may reduce the generalizability of research findings. Other frontline employees in the tourism industry (e.g. tour guides) can be considered in the future research to confirm external validity. Third, the current study employed procedural and statistical techniques to decrease the effect of social desirability biases. Multisource data gathering could be adopted in further studies. Finally, we explored the moderating role of job resourcefulness on the influence of proactive personality on job-crafting behaviors. Past studies have indicated that some positions or work environments may not allow for much personal initiative (Seibert et al., 1999), which may influence job crafting. Future studies could examine the roles of other employee and work characteristic variables in the linkage between proactive personality and job crafting. 115
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
jvb.2017.05.008. Seibert, S. E., Crant, J. M., & Kraimer, M. L. (1999). Proactive personality and career success. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(3), 416–427. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0021-9010.84.3.416. Silva, D., & Coelho, A. (2019). The impact of emotional intelligence on creativity, the mediating role of worker attitudes and the moderating effects of individual success. Journal of Management and Organization, 25(2), 284–302. https://doi.org/10.1017/ jmo.2018.60. Slemp, G. R., Kern, M. L., & Vella-Brodrick, D. A. (2015). Workplace well-being: The role of job crafting and autonomy support. Psychology of Well-Being Theory, Research and Practice, 5, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13612-015-0034-y. Taiwan Tourism Bureau (2017). Travel agents statistics in Taiwan. Taipei: Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communication. Thun, S., & Bakker, A. B. (2018). Empowering leadership and job crafting: The role of employee optimism. Stress and Health, 34(4), 573–581. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi. 2818. Tims, M., Bakker, A. B., & Derks, D. (2012). Development and validation of the job crafting scale. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(1), 173–183. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.jvb.2011.05.009. Tsaur, S. H., & Teng, H. U. (2017). Exploring tour guiding styles: The perspective of tour leader roles. Tourism Management, 59, 438–448. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman. 2016.09.005. Wang, H. J., Demerouti, E., & Le Blanc, P. (2017). Transformational leadership, adaptability, and job crafting: The moderating role of organizational identification. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 100, 185–195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2017.03.009. WFTGA (2010). What is a tourist guide? Retrieved March 17, 2011, from http://www. wftga.org/main.php?page=what_is_a_tourist_guide. Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201. https://doi. org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011. Yavas, U., Karatepe, O. M., & Babakus, E. (2011). Do customer orientation and job resourcefulness moderate the impact of interrole conflicts on frontline employees' performance. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11(2), 148–159. https://doi.org/10. 1057/thr.2010.25. Yen, C. H., Tsaur, S. H., & Tsai, C. H. (2018). Tour leaders' job crafting: Scale development. Tourism Management, 69, 52–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2018.05. 017.
https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/7968792. Ministry of Examination (2017). 2016 Examination statistics. Available from: http:// wwwc.moex.gov.tw/main/content/wfrmContentLink.aspx?menu_id=268, Accessed date: 15 July 2019. Mowen, J. C. (2000). The 3M model of motivation and personality: Theory and empirical applications to consumer behavior. Boston: Kluwer. Nielsen, K., & Abildgaard, J. S. (2012). The development and validation of a job crafting measure for use with blue-collar workers. Work & Stress, 26(4), 365–384. https://doi. org/10.1080/02678373.2012.733543. Pan, J., Liu, S., & Qu, B. M. Z. (2018). How does proactive personality promote creativity? A multilevel examination of the interplay between formal and informal leadership. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 91(4), 852–874. https://doi. org/10.1111/joop.12221. Petrou, P., Demerouti, E., Peeters, M. C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Hetland, J. (2012). Crafting a job on a daily basis: Contextual correlates and the link to work engagement. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(8), 1120–1141. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1783. Pierce, J. L., & Gardner, D. G. (2004). Self-esteem within the work and organizational context: A review of the organizational-based self-esteem literature. Journal of Management, 30(5), 591–622. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jm.2003.10.001. Plomp, J., Tims, M., Akkermans, J., Khapova, S. N., Jansen, P. G. W., & Bakker, A. B. (2016). Career competencies and job crafting: How proactive employees influence their well-being. Career Development International, 21(6), 587–602. https://doi.org/ 10.1108/CDI-08-2016-0145. Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 879–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0021-9010.88.5.879. Rhee, S. Y., Hur, W. M., & Kim, M. (2017). The relationship of coworker incivility to job performance and the moderating role of self-efficacy and compassion at work: The job demands-resources (JD-R) approach. Journal of Business and Psychology, 32(6), 711–726. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-016-9469-2. Rod, M., & Ashill, N. J. (2009). Symptoms of burnout and service recovery performance: The influence of job resourcefulness. Managing Service Quality, 19(1), 60–84. https:// doi.org/10.1108/09604520910926818. Rudolph, C. W., Katz, I. M., Lavigne, K. N., & Zacher, H. (2017). Job crafting: A metaanalysis of relationships with individual differences, job characteristics, and work outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 102, 112–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
116
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhtm
Proactive personality and job crafting in the tourism industry: Does job resourcefulness matter?
T
Hsiu-Yu Tenga,1, Chien-Yu Chenb,∗ a
Department of Leisure and Recreation Management, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, No. 129, Sanmin Road, Sec. 3, Taichung 404, Taiwan, ROC b Department of Marketing & Logistics Management, Chihlee University of Technology, No. 313, Sec. 1, Wunhua Rd, Banciao District, New Taipei City 220, Taiwan, ROC
A B S T R A C T
Scholars and managers in the tourism industry have recognized the importance of job crafting for workplace effectiveness. However, few studies have investigated job crafting's predictors. Thus, this study addressed the research gap by investigating the influence of proactive personality on job crafting, and the contingent role of job resourcefulness. Data obtained from 508 tour leaders revealed that proactive personality was positively associated with increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources, increasing challenging job demands, and decreasing hindering job demands. Job resourcefulness moderated the influence of proactive personality on increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands. However, the relationship between proactive personality and decreasing hindering job demands was not moderated by job resourcefulness. These findings contribute to theory and practices involving the association between personality traits and job crafting.
1. Introduction The crucial role of tour leaders in tour service has been recognized by researchers and practitioners (Tsaur & Teng, 2017). Tour leaders represent travel agencies and manage tour itineraries to ensure that programs are implemented as indicated in travel agency documents and customer agreements (WFTGA, 2010). Tour leaders' performance influences tourist satisfaction, shopping behavior, and the tour service's success (Chang, 2014). Therefore, travel agencies treat tour leaders as brand representatives. However, tour leaders experience long work hours, heavy workloads, and emotional exhaustion (Yen, Tsaur, & Tsai, 2018), which may impede them from providing tour services. Therefore, investigating tour leaders can elicit new insights and perspectives into the tourism domain (Cheng, Chen, Teng, & Yen, 2016). Studies have provided tour leaders’ job descriptions (Tsaur & Teng, 2017). Among job characteristics, job crafting, meaning that employees reshape work conditions to fit their needs and competence (Tims, Bakker, & Derks, 2012), has been discussed in the tourism industry (Cheng et al., 2016). Employees who craft their work can shape the work experience (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001) and improve their work attitudes (Bavik, Bavik, & Tang, 2017). Therefore, previous research has focused on job crafting outcomes (Cheng et al., 2016). A few determinants of job crafting (i.e. work engagement and future time perspective) have been discussed (e.g. Chen, 2019; Kooij, Tims, & Akkermans, 2017). Therefore, additional studies need to examine
factors that influence job-crafting behaviors (Kooij et al., 2017), especially in the tourism industry. Specifically, proactive personality is a vital determinant of job crafting (Bakker, Tims, & Derks, 2012). Proactive personality refers to a stable disposition to influence changes in circumstances. Previous research has supported a linkage between proactive personality and job crafting (Plomp et al., 2016). However, Wang, Demerouti, and Le Blanc's (2017) findings revealed that proactive personality has no influence on job crafting. In other words, the connection between proactive personality and job crafting is unclear. Additionally, tour leaders' job characteristics are different from those of employees working in an office. Tour leaders' relational boundaries are more broad and complicated. Tour leaders can make strong proactive behavioral changes and create more job and social resources by adjusting their relationships with tourism stakeholders (Yen et al., 2018). Therefore, compared with general office workers, the influence of proactive personality on job crafting may be different for tour leaders. In other words, it is worthwhile to examine the linkage between tour leaders' proactive personality and job crafting. Job resourcefulness means a permanent tendency to earn depleted resources and overcoming hindrance when completing work objectives (Licata, Mowen, Harris, & Brown, 2003). Researchers have stated that job resourcefulness plays a contingent role in employees’ work attitudes (Yavas, Karatepe, & Babakus, 2011). Through conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 2001), individual traits are considered as personal resources to weaken the influence of stressors on strain. Job-
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 2 22576167; fax: +886 2 66215552. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H.-Y. Teng), [email protected] (C.-Y. Chen). 1 Tel.: +886 4 22196512; fax: +886 4 22196511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2019.10.010 Received 9 May 2019; Received in revised form 8 October 2019; Accepted 11 October 2019 1447-6770/ © 2019 CAUTHE - COUNCIL FOR AUSTRALASIAN TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY EDUCATION. Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
Personal-factor-driven job crafting occurs when an employee has a high level of future time perspective and the need for a favorable self-image (Kooij et al., 2017; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Job-factor-driven job crafting entails how workers' work engagement and work discretion are positively related to individual and collaborative crafting (Chen, 2019). People who engage in interdependent tasks demonstrate collaborative crafting (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Moreover, employees having job autonomy and work pressure show willingness to perform job crafting by, for example, seeking resources and decreasing demands (Petrou et al., 2012). Individuals with high approach temperament gather JR and challenging JD (Bipp & Demerouti, 2015). By contrast, employees with high avoidance temperament are inclined to reduce hindering workplace demands. Promotion-focused employees are expected to craft their jobs related to questing challenges and resources, whereas prevention-focused employees exhibit great willingness to reduce hindering JD (Brenninkmeijer & Hekkert-Koning, 2015). The aforementioned findings suggest that employees’ personality traits influence their behaviors toward work conditions. That it, employees with positive personalities have a tendency toward job crafting. Researchers have investigated the effect of proactive personality on job-crafting behaviors. However, Bakker et al.’s (2012) study did not consider decreasing hindering JD. Plomp et al. (2016) investigated only the connection between proactive personality and unidimensional job crafting and collected data from various industries (e.g. teaching, finance, and business), not the tourism industry. Job crafting is a critical topic, particularly in the tourism industry, because tour leaders are required to maintain contact with and receive various demands from their customers during tours (Cheng et al., 2016; Tsaur & Teng, 2017). The job characteristics of tour leaders differ from those of office workers; for example, the relational boundaries of tour leaders are more complicated and extensive. Tour leaders can make more proactive behavioral changes in their work by altering the nature or extent of their relationship with stakeholders (e.g. customers, tour bus drivers, and local suppliers) or creating more structural or social JR compared with workers of other jobs (Yen et al., 2018). Therefore, the literature (e.g. Bakker et al., 2012; Plomp et al., 2016) may be insufficient in explaining the relationship between proactive personality and job crafting from the tourism industry perspective. According to proactive personality theory (Crant, 2000), proactive employees strive to establish a great work environment and generate opportunities for themselves. For instance, people having high proactivity are eager to display proactive behaviors in their work environments (Seibert, Crant, & Kraimer, 1999). Compared with nonproactive employees, proactive employees are more able to manage workplace stress, are more inclined to gain work resources, and are more engaged at work (Bakker et al., 2012). Proactive personality makes employees search for resources and challenges to improve the workplace environments (Tims et al., 2012). Proactive employees are inclined to communicate with their supervisors and seek career development (Li et al., 2010). Accordingly, proactive employees are inclined to seek challenging JD and structural and social JR and strive to diminish hindering JD. Hence, we address this research gap and offer four hypotheses as follows.
resourceful employees can address difficulties and work effectively in a resource-scarce environment (Chen, 2019). Job resourcefulness allows proactive employees to use scarce resources to address work-related challenges and in turn perform job-crafting behaviors. Thus, compared with individuals with low job resourcefulness, proactive personality and job crafting may be more strongly related for employees with high job resourcefulness. However, no study has addressed the contingent influence of job resourcefulness on this relationship. The current study provides the following contributions to the tourism literature. First, Yen et al. (2018) developed a scale for tour leaders' job crafting and discovered that job crafting is correlated with person-job fit. Therefore, the current study complements their work by investigating factors that influence tour leaders' job crafting and conditions that strengthen or weaken the relationship. The current study is also a response to Yen et al.’s (2018) statement that tour leaders' job crafting has received insufficient academic attention and Kooij et al.’s (2017) study that recommended investigating job crafting's antecedents by examining the association between proactive personality and tour leaders' job crafting. Additionally, we supplement Bakker et al.’s (2012) study by considering the role of job resourcefulness. That is, our results enhance the findings on boundary conditions under which proactive personality influences job crafting. Finally, we collected data from a sample of tour leaders to gain valuable insights; results provide practical strategies for human resource managers in travel agencies. 2. Literature review 2.1. 1 Proactive personality and job crafting Proactive personality means that employees actively engage in selfstarting and future-focused activities to enhance their current conditions (Li, Liang, & Crant, 2010). Proactive employees are active in creating meaningful change in the workplace (Crant, 2000) and enhancing their well-being (Plomp et al., 2016). By contrast, less proactive employees are passive and reactive, fail to search for opportunities for change, and adapt to their work environments (Crant, 2000). Hence, proactive personality enhances creativity, organizational citizenship behaviors, and informal leadership status (Li et al., 2010; Pan, Liu, & Qu, 2018). According to COR theory, people strive to preserve and advance their useful resources and overcome obstacles in the pursuit of wealth (Hobfoll, 2001). On the basis of COR theory, Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) proposed that job crafting refers to how workers reshape their job conditions physically and cognitively. Therefore, employees display various types of job crafting behaviors to improve their work conditions (Slemp, Kern, & Vella-Brodrick, 2015). Leana, Appelbaum, and Shevchuk (2009) identified two types of job crafting behaviors: individual crafting, in which employees actively change or restructure their work surroundings, and collaborative crafting, in which employees cooperate to modify their work conditions to achieve work goals. Nielsen and Abildgaard (2012) viewed job crafting as various workers' proactive behaviors to increase job resources (JR), meet challenging job demands (JD), and decrease hindering JD. Therefore, Tims et al. (2012) proposed four job-crafting behaviors: increasing structural JR (e.g. organizing JR such as training and development opportunities), increasing social JR (e.g. seeking assistance and cooperation), increasing challenging JD (e.g. partaking in new programs), and decreasing hindering JD (e.g. avoiding straining works that impede growth). Yen et al. (2018) adopted Tims et al.’s (2012) classification and proposed four job-crafting behaviors of tour leaders: increasing structural JR (e.g. enhancing tour-leading skills), increasing social JR (e.g. seeking assistance from experienced tour leaders), increasing challenging JD (e.g. making work more challenging) and decreasing hindering JD (e.g. making work more simple). Job crafting's antecedents can be classified into personal and job factors (Petrou, Demerouti, Peeters, Schaufeli, & Hetland, 2012).
H1. Increasing structural JR is boosted by proactive personality. H2. Increasing social JR is boosted by proactive personality. H3. Increasing challenging JD is boosted by proactive personality. H4. Decreasing hindering JD is boosted by proactive personality.
2.2. Moderating role of job resourcefulness “Do more with less” is an aphorism in service settings. This management strategy often involves employees working in resource-limited 111
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
H5. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and increasing structural JR is enhanced.
workplaces (Licata et al., 2003). Therefore, job resourcefulness, which can be regarded as a personal resource or employee personality trait (Rod & Ashill, 2009; Yavas et al., 2011), is related to managing these resource-depleted work conditions (Karatepe & Aga, 2012). The hierarchical model approach (Mowen, 2000) includes four personality trait levels: elemental (most abstract), compound, situational, and surface (least abstract) traits. People with situational traits, which are influenced by elemental (e.g. agreeableness) and compound (e.g. activity needs) traits, have a permanent personality characteristic of performing unvarying actions in certain environments (Licata et al., 2003). Job resourcefulness is treated as a situational trait (Licata et al., 2003) because employees with high job resourcefulness have a permanent desire to resolve their work problems and achieve work-related in resourcedepleted environments (Karatepe & Aga, 2012). Thus, job-resourceful employees are expected to proactively change their constraints to accomplish job-related tasks and goals efficiently in resource-scarce work situations (Silva & Coelho, 2019; Yavas et al., 2011). Researchers have explored the role of job resourcefulness in service environments, including bank, food service companies, and hotels (Chen, 2019; Rod & Ashill, 2009). However, few studies pertaining to job resourcefulness in the travel industry have been conducted. Based on the job demands-resources model, personal resources offer emotional resilience in unfavorable work conditions and provide individuals with a sense of control over their environments (Bakker et al., 2012). For instance, organizational-based self-esteem mitigates the influence of role ambiguity on depression (Pierce & Gardner, 2004). Moreover, workers’ self-efficacy buffers the negative influence of colleague incivility on emotional exhaustion (Rhee, Hur, & Kim, 2017). Job resourcefulness can be positioned as a personal resource (Karatepe, 2011); job-resourceful employees improve their work conditions and manage work conflicts effectively. COR theory states that individuals struggle to collect, acquire, and preserve existing resources that they value (i.e. objects, conditions, and personal features) (Hobfoll, 2001). Based on COR theory, individuals invest resources to gain, protect, and retain crucial resources in the face of resource loss (Hobfoll, 2001). Therefore, past studies have adopted COR theory to explore the effect of job resourcefulness in several employee-to-workplace interactions (Karatepe, 2011; Yavas et al., 2011). Job resourcefulness can enhance employee confidence in dealing with work difficulties in a resource-limited environment (Chen, 2019). Jobresourceful employees gain more JR to fulfill job-related goals (Rod & Ashill, 2009) and reduce the detrimental influences of workplace conflicts on job satisfaction (Karatepe, 2011). Furthermore, employees who exhibit high job resourcefulness may appraise job resources more favorably and find alternative ways to increase structural and social JR. When facing stressful or demanding situations, job-resourceful employees may discover creative ways to meet the demands (Yavas et al., 2011). Thus, employees with high job resourcefulness are more inclined to display job crafting behaviors (Chen, 2019). On the basis of the aforementioned studies, the interaction between job resourcefulness and proactive personality may affect job crafting. Job resourcefulness is expected to moderate the relationship in which employees’ proactive personality increase their job-crafting behaviors. When job resourcefulness is high, proactive employees actively identify new methods and seek opportunities to improve their work conditions; thus, they exhibit job-crafting behaviors. When employees have high proactive personality but low job resourcefulness, the combination of high ignorance and low inclination toward pursuing work goals may eliminate the positive effect of proactivity. Accordingly, the positive linkage between proactive personality and job crafting is enhanced for job-resourceful employees who actively strive to achieve work goals. In other words, compared with those who have high proactive personality but low job resourcefulness, employees high in proactive personality and job resourcefulness exhibit more job-crafting behaviors in the form of increasing structural JR, social JR, and challenging JD and decreasing hindering JD. Hence, the hypotheses are provided as follows:
H6. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and increasing social JR is enhanced. H7. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and increasing challenging JD is enhanced. H8. When job resourcefulness is stronger, the positive connection between proactive personality and decreasing hindering JD is enhanced. 3. Research methods 3.1. Sampling and data collection Group package tours (GPTs) are popular in Asia (e.g. Taiwan, Japan, and Korea) (Tsaur & Teng, 2017). Of the Taiwanese tourists who traveled abroad, 31.3% joined GPTs (Taiwan Tourism Bureau, 2017). Tour leaders play essential roles in GPT service quality (Cheng et al., 2016). Hence, we focused on tour leaders from consolidated travel agencies according to Cheng et al.’s (2016) recommendations. In travel practices, tour leaders can be categorized as employee tour leaders, who are fulltime travel agency employees, and freelance tour leaders, who are selfemployed and not committed to a travel agency in the long term (Lin & Hsu, 2016). Both employee and freelance tour leaders were included in this study, but travel agency managers were specifically excluded. Taiwan has 603 consolidated travel agencies, 310 of which are in Taipei. Thus, the researchers contacted the general managers of travel agencies in Taipei. In total, 30 travel agencies agreed to join in our survey. The researchers sent letters to all participating managers to request help in distributing the questionnaire. With the assistance of general managers, 550 tour leaders participated in our survey. A questionnaire, a stamped return envelope, and a gift that incentivized participation were mailed to tour leaders' homes. Participants mailed the return envelope with the completed questionnaire directly back to us to protect their privacy and the questionnaire's security. The researchers gathered 525 questionnaires and ultimately obtained 508 valid responses after removal of 17 questionnaires that contained incomplete or improper answers. Of 508 respondents, 258 (50.8%) were male and 250 (49.2%) were female; 49.6% of respondents were aged between 41 and 50 years old. According to the Ministry of Examination (2017), of the participants who passed the tour leader examination, 30% were older than 46 years. The nature of the tour guiding profession is attractive to people who change their midlife careers. Thus, most of the participating tour leaders were relatively older. Furthermore, the educational level was generally high, with over 90.5% having obtained a college education. Most (69.3%) of the respondents were married, and 43.3% of the respondents had been in their current jobs for 6–10 years. Most (73.9%) of the respondents were freelance tour leaders, and the remaining 26.1% were employee tour leaders. 3.2. Measures This study adopted previous well-established questionnaires to measure proactive personality, job resourcefulness, and job crafting. We conducted back translation with two tour leaders to confirm the accuracy of questionnaire items. No translation bias was observed in this study. All questionnaire items were adopted a Likert-type scale: 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Proactive personality (ten items) was measured on the basis of Seibert et al.’s (1999) study. The sample item was “I excel at identifying opportunities.” Job resourcefulness (four items) was measured from Licata et al. (2003). The sample item was “At my job, I think I am a fairly resourceful person.” Job crafting 112
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
JR (0.57), increasing social JR (0.58), increasing challenging JD (0.51), and decreasing hindering JD (0.30) were all positively related to job resourcefulness.
was measured using 30 questions adopted from Yen et al. (2018). There were four job-crafting behaviors: increasing structural JR (nine items), increasing social JR (eight items), increasing challenging JD (seven items), and decreasing hindering JD (six items). The sample item was “I try to enhance my tour-leading skills.” Regarding control variables, a meta-analysis of job crafting by Rudolph, Katz, Lavigne, and Zacher (2017) reported that age, gender, and tenure are related to job crafting. In the current study, these demographic variables were treated as control variables, and their influences on job crafting were controlled in subsequent analyses.
4.4. Hypotheses testing The results of structural equation modelling offered accepted fit values to the data (χ2/df = 3.28, RMR = 0.06, and RMSEA = 0.07). The paths from proactive personality to increasing structural JR (β = 0.67, p < .01), from proactive personality to increasing social JR (0.64), from proactive personality to increasing challenging JD (0.66), and from proactive personality to decreasing hindering JD (0.44) were all significant. Hence, H1, H2, H3, and H4 were supported. In accordance with Hayes's (2012) study, we used PROCESS macro to test the moderating influence of job resourcefulness. The studied variables were analyzed using the centering method approach, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were adopted. As presented in Table 3, job resourcefulness moderated the linkage between proactive personality and increasing structural JR (β = −0.16, t = −5.53, CI❲-0.21, −0.10❳), the linkage between proactive personality and increasing social JR (−0.14, −4.45, CI❲-0.21, −0.08❳), and the linkage between proactive personality and increasing challenging JD (−0.17, −4.69, CI ❲-0.24, −0.10❳). Although the moderating effect of job resourcefulness was significant, the directions of the relationships contradicted the hypothesized relationships of H1, H2, and H3 (Figs. 1–3). In addition, job resourcefulness did not moderate the linkage between proactive personality and decreasing hindering JD (−0.10, −1.70, CI❲-0.22, 0.02❳). Hence, H5, H6, and H7 were partially supported. H8a was not supported.
4. Results 4.1. Reliability and validity of measurement properties All reliability values of measurement scales ranged from 0.9 to 0.94; because all values were more than 0.7, all our questionnaire items were reliable. Regarding the validity of questionnaire items, one item on proactive personality, one item on increasing structural JR, and two items on increasing social JR were removed in further study because of low factor loadings. After removing these four items, the proposed framework had good fit values (χ2/df = 2.97, CFI = 0.9, IFI = 0.9, RMR = 0.03, SRMR = 0.05, and RMSEA = 0.06). Additionally, the standardized factor loadings of all observable indicators ranged from 0.63 to 0.87 and were statistically significant. The composite reliability scores ranged between 0.9 and 0.94, all more than 0.6. The values of average variance extracted (AVE) all exceeded 0.5. Thus, convergent validity was supported. Each AVE exceeded the squared correlation for all pairs of constructs, implying that discriminant validity was evident (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).
5. Conclusion and discussion 4.2. Social desirability biases
The effect of job crafting on outcome variables has received attention (Bavik et al., 2017; Cheng et al., 2016; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). However, researchers and practitioners have not focused on the job crafting's antecedents, especially in the tourism industry. Thus, this research addresses the research gap by exploring the relationship of proactive personality with job crafting and clarifying the contingent influence of job resourcefulness. The findings reveal that proactive workers aim to increase structural JR, social JR, and challenging JD, and decrease hindering JD. Except for decreasing hindering JD, job resourcefulness moderates the effect of proactive personality on the other three job-crafting behaviors. Beyond examining the direct effect, the current research makes contributions by investigating the moderating influence of job resourcefulness on the association between proactive personality and job-crafting behaviors among a sample of tour leaders. First, this study considers personality as well as job design theory to examine how proactive employees change their work conditions. Proactive employees are inclined to increase structural and social JR and challenging JD as well as diminish hindering JD. Therefore, proactive tour leaders strive to shape their work features and manage their work conditions. That is, they seek and create structural JR (e.g. acquiring new knowledge), social JR (e.g. increasing supervisors' encouragement) and challenging JD (e.g. seeking challenging tasks). They also decrease hindering JD by avoiding difficult decisions. Our findings support the statements of Plomp et al. (2016) that proactive employees are inclined to display job-crafting behaviors. In addition, this study complements Bakker et al.’s (2012) study by examining the influence of proactive personality on decreasing hindering JD. Second, although job resourcefulness has been identified as a crucial personal employee resource in past studies, its contingent role in the influence of employee traits is unknown. Researchers have investigated whether the connection between work conflict and job outcomes is moderated by job resourcefulness (Karatepe, 2011; Yavas et al., 2011). To the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to explore whether
Our study collected data from a single source. To reduce the effect of social desirability biases, this study adopted procedural and statistical techniques (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). First, the letters described the purpose of the research and guaranteed that participation was anonymous and that participant information would remain confidential. Second, the questionnaire items of studied variables were listed on different questionnaire pages to produce a psychological separation. Finally, we recruited 30 tour leaders for a pretest to avoid using unclear questionnaire items that may induce response bias. Regarding statistical approaches, we adopted Harman's single-factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results of Harman's single-factor analysis demonstrated that several factors had eigenvalues of > 1. The first factor explained a total variance of 39.98%, which was lower than Lin's (2007) proposed criterion. Additionally, the CFA results indicated that the fit values of the one-factor model were lower than those of the hypothesized model (Table 1). Thus, social desirability biases did not affect our results. 4.3. Intercorrelations analysis As shown in Table 2, proactive personality was positively related to increasing structural JR (r = 0.53, p < .01), increasing social JR (0.53), increasing challenging JD (0.53), decreasing hindering JD (0.34), and job resourcefulness (0.73). In addition, increasing structural Table 1 Fit values for the measurement models. Models
χ2/df
RMR
SRMR
RMSEA
CFI
I FI
Criteria Hypothesized Model One-factor model
<3 2.97 9.52
≦ .080 0.03 0.09
≦ .08 0.05 0.11
≦ .08 0.06 0.13
≧ .9 0.90 0.57
≧ .90 0.90 0.57
113
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
Table 2 Correlation analysis. Variable a
1.Gender 2.Ageb 3.Tenurec 4.Proactive personality 5.Increasing structural JR 6.Increasing social JR 7.Increasing challenging JD 8.Decreasing hindering JD 9.Job resourcefulness
Mean
SD
AVE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1.49 2.91 1.95 4.10 4.52 4.38 4.32 4.10 4.29
0.50 0.87 0.93 0.54 0.51 0.58 0.62 0.93 0.57
– – – 0.52 0.57 0.60 0.60 0.75 0.72
0.10* 0.01 0.20** 0.11* 0.12** 0.11* 0.05 0.17**
−0.02 0.05 0.02 −0.03 0.04 −0.11* 0.05
0.01 −0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.02
0.53** 0.53** 0.53** 0.34** 0.73**
0.71** 0.62** 0.42** 0.57**
0.60** 0.38** 0.58**
0.43** 0.51**
0.30**
9
Note: a 1 = male, 2 = female; b 1 = less than 30 years old, 2 = 31–40, 3 = 41–50, 4 = 51 and over; c 1 = less than 5, 2 = 6–10, 3 = 11–15, 4 = 16–20; *p < .05; **p < .01. Table 3 Moderating analysis results. Dependent variable
Independent variable
B
se
t
p
LLCI
ULCI
Increasing structural JR
Constant
4.58
0.09
51.79
0.00
4.40
4.75
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR Constant
0.01 −0.01 −0.01 0.25 0.26 −0.16 4.48
0.04 0.02 0.02 0.05 0.05 0.03 0.10
0.27 −0.30 −0.45 5.13 5.45 −5.53 44.71
0.79 0.76 0.65 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
−0.06 −0.05 −0.05 0.16 0.17 −0.21 4.28
0.08 0.03 0.03 0.35 0.35 −0.10 4.68
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR Constant
0.03 −0.04 0.00 0.25 0.35 −0.14 4.30
0.04 0.02 0.02 0.06 0.05 0.03 0.11
0.64 −1.69 0.06 4.49 6.38 −4.45 38.43
0.53 0.09 0.95 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
−0.06 −0.09 −0.04 0.14 0.24 −0.21 4.08
0.11 0.01 0.04 0.36 0.45 −0.08 4.52
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR Constant
0.02 0.01 0.00 0.40 0.19 −0.17 4.41
0.05 0.03 0.02 0.06 0.06 0.04 0.19
0.35 0.33 0.10 6.55 3.17 −4.69 23.22
0.73 0.74 0.92 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
−0.08 −0.05 −0.05 0.28 0.07 −0.24 4.03
0.11 0.06 0.05 0.53 0.31 −0.10 4.78
Gender Age Tenure PP JR PP x JR
−0.01 −0.12 0.05 0.48 0.11 −0.10
0.08 0.04 0.04 0.10 0.10 0.06
−0.18 −2.77 1.14 4.56 1.11 −1.70
0.85 0.01 0.25 0.00 0.26 0.09
−0.17 −0.21 −0.03 0.27 −0.09 −0.22
0.14 −0.04 0.13 0.68 0.32 0.02
Increasing social JR
Increasing challenging JD
Decreasing hindering JD
Fig. 1. Interaction of proactive personality x job resourcefulness on increasing structural job resources.
Fig. 2. Interaction of proactive personality x job resourcefulness on increasing social job resources.
Note. PP: Proactive personality; JR: Job resourcefulness.
job resourcefulness moderates the proactive personality-job crafting relationship. Specifically, proactive personality has a more positive influence on increasing structural JR, increasing social JR, and increasing challenging JD for workers with low job resourcefulness than for those with high job resourcefulness. These results contradict the hypothesized relationships. In other words, job resourcefulness negatively moderates the link between proactive personality and jobcrafting behaviors possibly because job-resourceful employees tend to fulfill work-related objectives and improve the work conditions (Karatepe & Aga, 2012). Employees with high job resourcefulness intrinsically engage in increasing their structural JR, social JR, and challenging JD more frequently than do employees with low job resourcefulness, who require proactive personality to drive them to
Fig. 3. Interaction of proactive personality x job resourcefulness on increasing challenging job demands.
engage in these job-crafting behaviors to achieve work goals. In addition, past study indicated that proactive employees are most likely to exhibit job-crafting behaviors (Bakker et el., 2012). Prior research also reported that job resourcefulness can be regarded as a situational 114
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
5.3. Conclusions
personality trait (Mowen, 2000). A large amount of situational trait variance can be explained by more basic compound and elemental traits (Licata et al., 2003), such as proactive personality. Lefevor and Fowers (2016) discovered that personality traits have a greater influence on helping behaviors than situational factors do. Thus, in contrast to relative influences of proactive personality and job resourcefulness on job crafting, when job resourcefulness is low, proactive personality is the key positive antecedent of job crafting. Therefore, job resourcefulness attenuates the linkage between proactive personality and job crafting. The linkage between proactive personality and decreasing hindering JD was not moderated by job resourcefulness; this is probably because job resourcefulness has no negative influence on JD and has a positive influence on JR (Rod & Ashill, 2009). Compared with JR, job resourcefulness relates less to JD. In addition, past studies have explored the interaction of moderators (e.g. organizational identification and optimism) with the antecedents (e.g. leadership) of decreasing hindering JD (Thun & Bakker, 2018; Wang, Demerouti, & Le Blanc, 2017). Moderating influence has not been supported in these studies. Therefore, these aforementioned findings suggest that job resourcefulness has no moderating influence on the proactive personality-decreasing hindering JD relationship.
Tour leaders’ job-crafting behaviors have theoretical and managerial implications in the tourism industry. Thus, this study develops a framework that examines how proactive personality and job resourcefulness influence job crafting. Data from Taiwanese tour leaders reveal that proactive personality has positive relationships with four types of job-crafting behaviors. Job resourcefulness moderates the influence of proactive personality on increasing structural JR, increasing social JR, and increasing challenging JD. Thus, for tour agency managers, proactive personality can be considered in selection criteria and performance appraisal. Additionally, the role of job resourcefulness cannot be ignored when encouraging job-crafting behaviors among tour leaders with low proactive personality. References Bakker, A. B., Tims, M., & Derks, D. (2012). Proactive personality and job performance: The role of job crafting and work engagement. Human Relations, 65(10), 1359–1378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726712453471. Bavik, A., Bavik, Y. L., & Tang, P. M. (2017). Servant leadership, employee job crafting, and citizenship behaviors: A cross-level investigation. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 58(4), 364–373. https://doi.org/10.1177/1938965517719282. Bipp, T., & Demerouti, E. (2015). Which employees craft their jobs and how? Basic dimensions of personality and employees' job crafting behavior. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(4), 631–655. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12089. Brenninkmeijer, V., & Hekkert-Koning, M. (2015). To craft or not to craft: The relationships between regulatory focus, job crafting and work outcomes. Career Development International, 20(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-12-2014-0162. Chang, K. C. (2014). Examining the effect of tour guide performance, tourist trust, tourist satisfaction, and flow experience on tourists' shopping behavior. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 19(2), 219–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/10941665.2012. 739189. Chen, C. Y. (2019). Does work engagement mediate the influence of job resourcefulness on job crafting? An examination of frontline hotel employees. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 31(4), 1684–1701. https://doi.org/10.1108/ IJCHM-05-2018-0365. Cheng, J. C., Chen, C. Y., Teng, H. Y., & Yen, C. H. (2016). Tour leaders' job crafting and job outcomes: The moderating role of perceived organizational support. Tourism Management Perspectives, 20, 19–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2016.06.001. Crant, J. (2000). Proactive behavior in organizations. Journal of Management, 26(3), 435–462. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600304. Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104. Hayes, A. F. (2012). Process: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling. [White paper]. Retrieved from http://www.afhayes.com/public/process2012.pdf. Hobfoll, S. E. (2001). The influence of culture, community, and the nested-self in the stress process: Advancing conservation of resources theory. Applied Psychology: International Review, 50(3), 337–421. https://doi.org/10.1111/1464-0597.00062. Karatepe, O. M. (2011). Job resourcefulness as a moderator of the work–family conflictjob satisfaction relationship: A study of hotel employees in Nigeria. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 18(1), 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1375/jhtm.18. 1.10. Karatepe, O. M., & Aga, M. (2012). Work engagement as a mediator of the effects of personality traits on job outcomes: A study of frontline employees. Services Marketing Quarterly, 33(4), 343–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332969.2012.715053. Kooij, D. T., Tims, M., & Akkermans, J. (2017). The influence of future time perspective on work engagement and job performance: The role of job crafting. European Journal of Work & Organizational Psychology, 26(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1359432X.2016.1209489. Leana, C., Appelbaum, E., & Shevchuk, I. (2009). Work process and quality of care in early childhood education: The role of job crafting. Academy of Management Journal, 52(6), 1169–1192. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2009.47084651. Lefevor, G. T., & Fowers, B. J. (2016). Traits, situational factors, and their interactions as explanations of helping behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 92, 159–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.12.042. Licata, J. W., Mowen, J. C., Harris, E. G., & Brown, T. J. (2003). On the trait antecedents and outcomes of service worker job resourcefulness: A hierarchical model approach. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(3), 256–271. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0092070303031003004. Li, N., Liang, J., & Crant, J. M. (2010). The role of proactive personality in job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior: A relational perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(2), 395–404. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018079. Lin, C. P. (2007). To share or not to share: Modeling knowledge sharing using exchange ideology as a moderator. Personnel Review, 36(3), 457–475. https://doi.org/10.1108/ 00483480710731374. Lin, C. T., & Hsu, S. C. (2016). Constructing a travel risks' evaluation model for tour freelancers based on the ANP Approach. Advances in Operations Research, 2016, 1–13.
5.1. Managerial contributions The current study provides several key implications for practitioners. First, past studies have suggested improving tour leaders’ work conditions through bottom-up work redesign (Cheng et al., 2016). Our study corroborated the suggestions that proactive personality positively affects four job-crafting behaviors. Our study prompts practitioners to consider proactive personality as a mean of establishing synergistic effects that improve the job performance of tour leaders and say positive things about the travel agencies that employ them. Second, a crucial effect of job crafting on positive employee consequences is evident (Cheng et al., 2016). Hence, human resource managers in the travel industry should consider organizational interventions (e.g. recruitment and selection) to employ qualified tour leaders to form strong linkages between proactive personality and job crafting. Finally, for tour leaders with low job resourcefulness (e.g. few personal resources), proactive personality should be developed to change their work attitudes and encourage engagement in job crafting. Therefore, travel agency managers should plan training programs to enhance the proactive personality of their employees.
5.2. Research limitations and future studies Some research limitations are identified as follows. First, our data collection approach adopted a cross-sectional research design, which may limit the causal relationship among our variables. Hence, the causality between proactive personality and job crafting could be considered in future studies by adopting other research designs (i.e. longitudinal study). Second, we gathered data from a sample of only tour leaders; this may reduce the generalizability of research findings. Other frontline employees in the tourism industry (e.g. tour guides) can be considered in the future research to confirm external validity. Third, the current study employed procedural and statistical techniques to decrease the effect of social desirability biases. Multisource data gathering could be adopted in further studies. Finally, we explored the moderating role of job resourcefulness on the influence of proactive personality on job-crafting behaviors. Past studies have indicated that some positions or work environments may not allow for much personal initiative (Seibert et al., 1999), which may influence job crafting. Future studies could examine the roles of other employee and work characteristic variables in the linkage between proactive personality and job crafting. 115
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 41 (2019) 110–116
H.-Y. Teng and C.-Y. Chen
jvb.2017.05.008. Seibert, S. E., Crant, J. M., & Kraimer, M. L. (1999). Proactive personality and career success. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(3), 416–427. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0021-9010.84.3.416. Silva, D., & Coelho, A. (2019). The impact of emotional intelligence on creativity, the mediating role of worker attitudes and the moderating effects of individual success. Journal of Management and Organization, 25(2), 284–302. https://doi.org/10.1017/ jmo.2018.60. Slemp, G. R., Kern, M. L., & Vella-Brodrick, D. A. (2015). Workplace well-being: The role of job crafting and autonomy support. Psychology of Well-Being Theory, Research and Practice, 5, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13612-015-0034-y. Taiwan Tourism Bureau (2017). Travel agents statistics in Taiwan. Taipei: Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communication. Thun, S., & Bakker, A. B. (2018). Empowering leadership and job crafting: The role of employee optimism. Stress and Health, 34(4), 573–581. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi. 2818. Tims, M., Bakker, A. B., & Derks, D. (2012). Development and validation of the job crafting scale. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 80(1), 173–183. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.jvb.2011.05.009. Tsaur, S. H., & Teng, H. U. (2017). Exploring tour guiding styles: The perspective of tour leader roles. Tourism Management, 59, 438–448. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman. 2016.09.005. Wang, H. J., Demerouti, E., & Le Blanc, P. (2017). Transformational leadership, adaptability, and job crafting: The moderating role of organizational identification. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 100, 185–195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2017.03.009. WFTGA (2010). What is a tourist guide? Retrieved March 17, 2011, from http://www. wftga.org/main.php?page=what_is_a_tourist_guide. Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201. https://doi. org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011. Yavas, U., Karatepe, O. M., & Babakus, E. (2011). Do customer orientation and job resourcefulness moderate the impact of interrole conflicts on frontline employees' performance. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11(2), 148–159. https://doi.org/10. 1057/thr.2010.25. Yen, C. H., Tsaur, S. H., & Tsai, C. H. (2018). Tour leaders' job crafting: Scale development. Tourism Management, 69, 52–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2018.05. 017.
https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/7968792. Ministry of Examination (2017). 2016 Examination statistics. Available from: http:// wwwc.moex.gov.tw/main/content/wfrmContentLink.aspx?menu_id=268, Accessed date: 15 July 2019. Mowen, J. C. (2000). The 3M model of motivation and personality: Theory and empirical applications to consumer behavior. Boston: Kluwer. Nielsen, K., & Abildgaard, J. S. (2012). The development and validation of a job crafting measure for use with blue-collar workers. Work & Stress, 26(4), 365–384. https://doi. org/10.1080/02678373.2012.733543. Pan, J., Liu, S., & Qu, B. M. Z. (2018). How does proactive personality promote creativity? A multilevel examination of the interplay between formal and informal leadership. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 91(4), 852–874. https://doi. org/10.1111/joop.12221. Petrou, P., Demerouti, E., Peeters, M. C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Hetland, J. (2012). Crafting a job on a daily basis: Contextual correlates and the link to work engagement. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(8), 1120–1141. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1783. Pierce, J. L., & Gardner, D. G. (2004). Self-esteem within the work and organizational context: A review of the organizational-based self-esteem literature. Journal of Management, 30(5), 591–622. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jm.2003.10.001. Plomp, J., Tims, M., Akkermans, J., Khapova, S. N., Jansen, P. G. W., & Bakker, A. B. (2016). Career competencies and job crafting: How proactive employees influence their well-being. Career Development International, 21(6), 587–602. https://doi.org/ 10.1108/CDI-08-2016-0145. Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: A critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 879–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0021-9010.88.5.879. Rhee, S. Y., Hur, W. M., & Kim, M. (2017). The relationship of coworker incivility to job performance and the moderating role of self-efficacy and compassion at work: The job demands-resources (JD-R) approach. Journal of Business and Psychology, 32(6), 711–726. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-016-9469-2. Rod, M., & Ashill, N. J. (2009). Symptoms of burnout and service recovery performance: The influence of job resourcefulness. Managing Service Quality, 19(1), 60–84. https:// doi.org/10.1108/09604520910926818. Rudolph, C. W., Katz, I. M., Lavigne, K. N., & Zacher, H. (2017). Job crafting: A metaanalysis of relationships with individual differences, job characteristics, and work outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 102, 112–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
116