Designing my job – Wie mit Job Crafting Führungspersonen im mittleren Spitalmanagement ihre Arbeit gestalten

The aim of the study is to investigate job crafting among managers of different professional groups in middle management in hospitals. Job crafting is the self-initiated behavior of employees in organizations, which results in changing their own tasks (task crafting), creating relationships in the workplace (relational crafting) and changing the way they think about their own tasks (cognitive crafting). The sample consists of 25 managers. A mixed-method approach (QUAL Quant) with two qualitative studies (individual interviews and evaluation of work activities) and one quantitative study (diary study) will be conducted. The results illustrate that all managers are engaged in job crafting. The managers have a different repertoire of job crafting forms. They vary their behaviour strongly between days, and this change does not happen arbitrarily. In total, more than one third of the leaders show frequent to very frequent daily task and cognitive crafting. Only twelve percent of the people demonstrate frequent to very frequent daily Relational Crafting. The majority of the leaders experience a supportive context of high autonomy and creative freedom with regard to the design of their work. However, the high degree of autonomy and creative freedom experienced contrasts with the organizational discipline required. This discipline leads the leaders to engage in job crafting, which is strongly focused on task crafting and also requires that effective cognitive strategies are used by the managers (cognitive crafting) in order to achieve the required performance in this tense context. It is necessary to further investigate which forms of Relational Crafting shape the relationship between the manager and the employee. The main motive for job crafting to show improved performance is related to the leadership function. In order to be able to pursue professional career steps, an orientation towards performance is necessary. Through job crafting, managers experience meaningfulness and an even work-life balance. This study illustrates that job crafting embodies a strength of human behavior to adapt to a given organizational context through proactive and adaptive behavior. The findings of this study can be directly applied to the hospital's middle management to help them consciously design their jobs. Hospital managers can also use the results to support middle management with targeted job crafting training.