In this weekly diary study, we integrated research on job crafting to explore the associations between expansion and contraction oriented relational job crafting, work engagement and manager-rated employee behaviours (work performance and voice). Furthermore, we investigated cross-level moderations of prosocial and impression management motives on our proposed associations. We tested our hypotheses with matched data collected over seven weeks in Istanbul, Turkey. The results from multilevel analyses revealed that (a) expansion oriented relational job crafting is positively related with work performance and voice via work engagement, while (b) contraction oriented relational job crafting is negatively related with work performance and voice via work engagement, all measured at the week level. Furthermore, impression management motives of employees moderated the association between expansion oriented relational job crafting and work engagement in that this positive association is stronger for employees low on impression management motives. Our results contribute to job crafting research in two ways. First, it focuses on relational job crafting and discusses how and why the two opposite types of relational job crafting (expansion versus contraction oriented) impact on work engagement and employees’ key outcomes in the way they do. This addresses the question ‘is there a dark side to job crafting?’ Second, it focuses on the importance of context and integrates two motives relevant to understand how relational job crafting unfolds, thereby taking a step to address questions for whom (i.e. what kinds of employees), relational job crafting is more effective and translates into enhanced (vs deteriorated) work outcomes. Moreover, our use of a weekly within-person design adds to a recently growing research stream emphasizing the dynamic nature of job crafting.

The individualization of working conditions has culminated in the form of “i-deals,” which are uniquely negotiated arrangements between employees (i-dealers) and their supervisor. Implementing such idiosyncratic deals, however, only makes sense when their benefits outweigh their costs. To assess their merit, co-worker reactions should be considered. Do i-deals trigger fairness perceptions and emotions among co-workers? And how do these factors influence co-workers’ behaviors? To date, the cognitive and emotional mechanisms of co-workers’ behavioral reactions have been underdeveloped. In this article, we build on social comparison theory to develop a process model. We argue that social comparison is not a given, as co-workers might not necessarily compare themselves with the i-dealer. Yet, if they engage in comparison, this can be upward when they feel disadvantaged or, alternatively, downward. Such comparisons include a unique set of emotions and fairness perceptions, which together influence co-workers’ behaviors positively or negatively. Moreover, we argue that the boundary conditions of the relational context within which i-deals unfold play an important role. Our model offers theoretical insights into co-worker reactions to i-deals as well as a future research agenda. The model also aids practitioners in understanding co-workers’ reactions and in guiding them to assure positive reactions.

This study examines the extent to which perceptions of family‐friendly organisational culture relate to employees' satisfaction with work–family balance (SATWFB) and how this, in turn, associates with their turnover intentions (TIs). Furthermore, we explore the extent to which employee experiences of different levels of government effectiveness (GE; high, medium and low) moderate these associations. Drawing on the work–home resources (W‐HR) model, we test our hypotheses with a sample of 1185 employees drawn from countries with substantially different levels of GE—Nigeria, the Philippines, Guatemala and Spain. Our results show that employees' perceptions of SATWFB mediate the relationship between the two dimensions of family‐friendly organisational culture and TIs of employees. This mediation is weaker for countries where employees experience high GE. Our findings contribute to research on the drivers of work–family balance satisfaction from a cultural and organisational perspective. We expand this line of research by introducing a new resource: GE. Our focus on four different national contexts also strengthens the comparative work–family balance literature.

In today’s competitive landscape, employees increasingly negotiate idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), referring to personalized work arrangements that address recipients’ unique work needs and preferences. While i-deals unfold in a dyadic context between subordinates and their managers, the consequences of i-deals concern everyone including co-workers and the organization. Focusing on task and development i-deals, we propose a trickle-down model to explore whether and how organizations benefit from i-deals. First, we argue that managers’ task and development i-deals cascade down to their subordinates, leading them to have similar i-deals with downstream consequences for co-workers and the organization. Furthermore, we propose that effective implementation of task and development i-deals are context-specific: we integrate the role of managers’ servant leadership as a boundary condition to explore the association between managers’ and subordinates’ task and development i-deals. We also integrate subordinates’ prosocial motives to explore the association between subordinates’ task and development i-deals and their work outcomes. We draw on work adjustment, social learning and social information processing theories to study our proposed associations. The results of a matched employee–manager dataset collected in the Philippines support our hypothesized model. This study contributes to i-deals research by: (1) testing whether and how task and development i-deals can be mutually beneficial for all the involved parties; and (2) revealing how the context, at the individual level, explains how and when task and development i-deals can best be implemented in workplaces. This study highlights that individualization of HR practices need not be a zero-sum game.