Research On The Double-Edged Sword Effect Of Workplace Friendship On Employees’ Job Crafting

Humans are social creatures who naturally want to interact with others.This is also true at work,where employees frequently form relationships with coworkers via sharing,cooperation,and communication.Workplace friendship is one of those relationships that have received significant attention in organizational management research,which has led to much discussion about how they impact employees’ attitudes and behaviors.However,there has been a dearth of research on the impact of workplace friendship on employees’ job crafting,and the little discussions have a great deal of contradictions.According to some researchers,workplace friendship is associated with knowledge sharing,information exchange,and support.As a result,employees are more likely to adopt assertive work behaviors and good work attitudes,e.g.,job crafting.Others scholars contend that workplace friendship has drawbacks and complications that must be taken into consideration,such as the conflict between instrumental and emotional aims and role conflict,which may restrain their initiative.Therefore,this study adopts a dialectical perspective,hypothesizes that workplace friendship has a double-edged sword effect on employees’ job crafting,i.e.,making friends with coworkers has both positive and negative effects,and constructs a double-edged sword effect model in line with this hypothesis.The study used corporate employees as the research subject and used workplace friendship and job crafting as the antecedent and outcome variables,respectively.Thriving at work served as the positive effect path mediator,relationship maintenance as the negative effect path mediator,and paradox mindset was added as the moderating variable.A total of 326 employee matching data were gathered over the course of two time periods for the study project utilizing the Credamo platform,and R was used for structural equation modeling and other analyses.The results discovered that:(1)in the positive path,workplace friendship increases employees’ thriving at work,promoting job crafting;(2)in the negative path,workplace friendship increases employees’ relationship maintenance,impeding job crafting;(3)paradox mindset adversely regulates the effect of workplace friendship on thriving at work and relationship maintenance,respectively;(4)paradox mindset also moderates the mediating effect of relationship maintenance stress and thriving at work,respectively.Finally,the theoretical and practical implications based on the findings are presented,and the research shortcomings and future directions are summarized.