The Validity and Functionality of Job Crafting across Cultures: A three-sample study

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between job crafting dimensions and job satisfaction across three samples of nurses from different cultures, and to assess whether and the extent to which basic need satisfaction plays a mediating role in this relationship across the distinguished cultural contexts. We conducted a cross-sectional survey study in hospital settings in three cultural contexts (Lebanon, N = 109; India, N = 115; USA, N = 139). Our results indicated that increasing social job resources is directly related to job satisfaction, only in the Lebanese sample, and that increasing challenging job demands is related to job satisfaction via the need for autonomy in the Lebanese and USA samples. We found no relationship between any of the job crafting dimensions and job satisfaction in the Indian sample. We concluded that job crafting might be a concept that manifests differently depending on the cultural context. Our data showed that job crafting is not always related to positive work outcomes and that consideration of cultural contexts is of utmost importance to better understand its predictive value and the underlying mechanisms in relationships under study. This study sheds light on the applicability and functionality of job crafting in the nursing profession. Furthermore, by studying this phenomenon in two underrepresented cultural contexts (i.e., Lebanon and India), and comparing our findings with the ones from the USA, we gain more insight into aspects of measurement (in)variance and cross-cultural (dis)similarities in the relationships under study.