The Relationship Between Job Crafting And Successful Aging At Work

The trend of aging will not only reduce the supply of labor,but also increase the number of older workers.With the decrease of the fertility rate and the great progress of living conditions,the proportion of older workers in China has gradually increased.However,older workers are facing a contradictory situation.On one hand,for those older general workers of their company are hard to be reused because of the negative stereotype(For example,older workers have problems dealing with changes of themselves and the working environment).On the other hand,most of the older workers are facing the situation which they are not rich enough before getting older.In order to lengthen older workers’ life in career,how to make the best use of their ability in late career is a very important question.Present research introduced the concept "successful aging at work" to solve this problem.Zacher(2015)thinks that employees are only aging successfully when they are more successful than others’average level in subjective(e.g.Work motivation,work attitude etc.)and objective(e.g.Work performance,work ability etc.)work outcomes.Whereas Kooij(2015)views successful aging from a sustainability perspective,as the maintenance of workers’ health,motivation,and working capacity or work ability now and in the future.As people aged,they will carry out some proactive behaviors to adapt to the change of the organization and themselves.Present research considered the actions of job crafting as a proactive person-environment fit behaviors,can be a way to enhance the level of older workers’ person-job fit and achieve successful aging at work.What’s more,present research figured out "how the contextual variables affect job crafting from the perspective of person-environment fit",whether the dynamic work environment and job autonomy can influence the effect of job crafting and further impact successful aging at work.The first study was based on 140 longitudinal data which has been measured in 6 months interval.First,the present research investigated the characteristics of older workers’ job crafting behaviors and found out that there was no difference between age grades(40～45,46～50,51 and above).As time goes by,their job crafting behaviors has increased in some level.By using the cross-lagged regression analysis,the result showed that T1 job crafting could significantly predict the T2 successful aging at work,the T1 successful aging at work cannot predict T2 job crafting in reverse.This result indicated that job crafting was the reason of successful aging at work.What’s more,the result further found out that the promotion-focused job crafting can be a better way to achieve successful aging at work,while prevention-focused job crafting may not be useful for keeping good work outcomes.In the second study,the data were analyzed by the SPSS 22.0,Mplus 7.0 and PROCESS procedures.The results indicated that:1)older workers’job crafting behavior could positively predict successful aging at work through the mediation role of person-job fit;2)the mediation role of person-job fit between job crafting and successful aging at work was moderated by dynamic work environment,namely the mediation effect was positively potent when dynamic worker environment was strong;3)the mediation role of person-job fit between job crafting and successful aging at work was moderated by job autonomy,namely the mediation effect was positively potent when older workers have enough job autonomy.According to the results,several meaningful practical implications can be showed from the study.First,managers need to change their opinions about older employees,attach more intention on their proactive change and development.What’s more,managers should encourage older workers take useful actions,like job crafting,to proactively adapt to the change of the workers themselves or the environment,and enhance the level of person-job fit.Older workers should not ignore the positive impact of the proactive behavior.They should adopt effective behavioral and emotional strategies to make the best use of their own resources so that to arise their work wellbeing and job performance.Second,the organization should give more job autonomy to older workers so that they could find their best way of working.Facing the development of economic globalization,companies are involved in an uncertain work environment.Under this circumstance,the more job autonomy is giving by the organization,the better person-job fit older workers will be.Job crafting is an effective way for them to achieve successful aging.