Study On The Relationship Of Front-line Technical Workers' Job Crafting And Innovative Work Behavior

Front-line technical workers constitute the backbone of the manufacturing staff in Chinese manufacturing sector.Under the background of industrial transformation and upgrading,the severe pressure of innovation and the development of employees,self?awareness have promoted the innovation work behavior and job crafting of front-line technical workers to become the important basis for the cultivation of the innovative capability of manufacturing enterprises in China.In view of the past literature mostly focused on the innovation performance and job crafting(JC)of high-tech or R&D talents,less attention was paid to how to motivate front-line technical workers to generate innovative work behavior(IWB)and the possible impact of their JC on IWB.Therefore,this study focuses on exploring the mechanism of JC and organizational commitment(OC)of front-line technical workers in China's manufacturing industry on innovative work behavior,and will also analyze the differences of labor force with different characteristics in the process of innovation.Based on this background,this paper studies the innovative motivation of front-line technical workers from the perspective of external resource changes and self-development needs.The study used questionnaire survey method to investigate a large manufacturing enterprise in Western China.276 valid questionnaires from front-line technical workers were collected on the spot with the help of enterprise managers.The data were processed and analysed by statistical analysis softwares SPSS 21.0 and Mplus 7.4,with correlation analysis,structural equation model and other methods.The results show that,with the rise of artificial intelligence and the sudden change of manufacturing situation,changing the level of JC of workers can change the generation of IWB.Specially,JC refers to increase workers' job resources,including increasing structural job resources and social job resources,positively promote the generation of IWB.As for JC refers to change workers' job demands,including increasing challenging job demands and decreasing hindering job demands,the former has significant positive effect in the process of JC-IWB,while the latter has no effect.In addition,according to the consistency of attitude and behavior,we find that affective commitment(AC)as a mediating variable plays a role in the mechanism of JC on IWB.Specifically,the positive effect of increasing structural resources and social resources on IWB can only be achieved through AC.That is to say,the JC of increasing resources will first promote the promotion of workers' AC,and then positively affect the performance level of innovative work behavior.The promotion effect of increasing challenging job demands on IWB includes two parts:direct impact and indirect impact through AC.The higher the level of decreasing hindering demands,the lower the AC of front-line technical workers to the organization.In this analysis,differences in demographic variables are highlighted.The level of AC and increasing structural job resources of married employees is obviously higher than that of unmarried employees;the intention of supervisors' decreasing the hindering job demands is far lower than that of ordinary workers,but their level of increasing challenging job demands is higher.The level of increasing structural job resources of senior staff is higher than of the junior one.The main theoretical contribution of this study lies in the proposed dynmnic mechanism that can deeply analyze the relationship between JC dimensions,OC and IWB of front-line technical workers based on the consistency of employees' attitudes and behaviors.This paper finds that workers,behavior of increasing job resources will increase their AC and IWB when they perceive the dynamic change of workplace resources.It is worth noting that the impact of the initiative to increase challenging job demands on IWB is particularly evident.Workers,efforts to decrease hindering job demands can reduce AC based on defensive mechanisms,which is different from previous studies that decreasing hindering job demands can promote peopled positive behavior.The results highlight that enough attention should be paid to job crafting during the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry.Generally speaking,from the micro-perspective of front-line technical workers,this paper elaborates and empirically tests the influence mechanism of JC-AC-IWB in four different dimensions of JC,which not only enriches the research on the theory of IWB,JC and OC of front-line technical workers,but also provide a reference to understand and solve the problems of manufacturing industry under the background of industrial transformation and upgrading.