The Relationship between Perceived Organizational Support and Job Crafting among Hospital Nurses: The Moderating Role of Job Embeddedness

Extended Abstract

Background

Several studies have been carried out over the years to determine what motivates employees to work with great enthusiasm, so much so that they do not feel the passage of time. One of the most important areas that has been considered when addressing this question is the job design issue. The job design procedure is traditionally conducted using a "top-down" approach; this means that managers design employees' jobs and, as a result, individuals’ motivation to work increases in well-designed jobs and favorable working conditions. Due to the limitations of organizations in terms of time, energy, and resources, however, it is not possible to design jobs based on the specific circumstances of employees. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between perceived organizational support and job crafting considering the moderating role of job embeddedness of nurses in this relationship.

Methods

This study was an applied one regarding the purpose, and a descriptive survey regarding the data collection method. The statistical population of this study was the nurses from hospitals affiliated to Qom University of Medical Sciences. A random sampling method was employed to select the sample which consisted of 269 nurses. The standard questionnaires of Slemp & Vella-Brodrick (2013), Eisenberger, et al. (1986), and Felps, et al. (2009) were used for collecting the required data about three main variables of the study, namely job crafting, perceived organizational support, and job embeddedness. The data were analyzed by structural equation modeling using Smart PLS3.2.6 software. The questionnaires were distributed in a quarterly period from October to the end of December 2016. To measure the crafting of nurses' jobs, the standard Slamp and Velabrudic questionnaire was used, which has 15 items. Each one of the dimensions of job crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting has five items. Perceived organizational support was assessed using an eight-item questionnaire developed by Eisenberger, et al. Finally, Phelps, et al.'s questionnaire was used to measure the variable of job entanglement, in which all three dimensions of this variable are measured by three items.

Results

The findings showed that perceived organizational support had a significant positive effect on the relational (0.651 path coefficient) and cognitive (0.681 path coefficient) dimensions of job crafting. However, this relationship was not confirmed for task crafting (0.836 T Value). Furthermore, job embeddedness had a significant moderating role in the relationship between perceived organizational support and all aspects of job crafting (0.461, 0.472 and 0.642 path coefficients). That is to say, employees with job embeddedness were more likely to perform job crafting in all three tasks, relational and cognitive dimensions after perceiving organizational support. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between perceived organizational support as a variable prerequisite for nurses' job regeneration with three dimensions of task, relational and cognitive regeneration. To this end, the moderating role of job entanglement was also explored through testing three hypotheses. The results of the research hypotheses were as follows. The perceived organizational support had a significant effect on two dimensions of nurses' job crafting, means relational and cognitive crafting. However, the relationship between perceived organizational support and task crafting was not confirmed. Nowadays, jobs are highly demanding, complex, interdependent, and cognitive in nature. Therefore, employees are expected to take voluntary and active actions to create enthusiasm in their jobs and to perform their duties and responsibilities, which was previously referred to as job creation. Given the above discussion, however, job creation (i.e., job transformation) has precedents that motivate employees to make positive changes in their jobs. One of these precedents is perceived organizational support. Studies have shown that when nurses perceive the supportive role of the organization, they become highly motivated to positively recreate their jobs. This may be explained by the social exchange theory suggesting that nurses attempt to compensate for organizational support adopting various approaches if they perceive it. Two examples for these methods can improve the quality of interactions or the degree of positive interaction with people (relational crafting) and create a positive attitude towards the job (cognitive crafting).

Conclusion

Since the perceived organizational support was found to affect job crafting in relational and cognitive dimensions, it was suggested that the managers of Qom University of Medical Sciences should pay due attention to the perceived organizational support in the face of the complexity of today's jobs and should consider the role of employees in designing their jobs. One of the most comprehensive studies investigating over 50,000 employees from more than 200 Iranian organizations and evaluating the 34,000 human resources model revealed that the "perceived organizational support" attitude score was underestimated. In other words, this self-assessment found that the status of this variable was much lower than the score of twelve other attitudes such as organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. This statistic clearly highlighted the need to carefully investigate the root causes of the lack of organizational support appreciation. As a preliminary conclusion, however, it was concluded that the creation of a "staff support organization" culture influencing employees' perceptions of psychological support was often overlooked when discussing the perceived organizational support. Therefore, increasing the level of organizational support and, more importantly, its proper interaction and exchange with employees may have increased the employees' perception of organizational support; and as a result, employees with higher perceptions of organizational support may have attempted to positively recreate their jobs. This process in the organization may have been affected by several variables, including job entanglement.