When do colleagues respond to proactive behaviors of those they work with?

What is it about?

This paper discusses that proactive behaviors, like job crafting, should be studied from an interpersonal context. Especially job crafting, that is about making changes in your work tasks and relationship, may have implications for the work tasks and relationships of colleagues. If this is the case, colleagues will try to understand the motive for the behavior (is it just for you or does it also help me?). Colleagues will support job crafting behaviors when they feel that the job crafter also took their interests into account but will antagonize job crafting behaviors when they perceive it as a selfish behavior. These colleague responses to job crafting may be highly influential in determining the outcomes of job crafting for the job crafter. One can imagine that being supported allows the job crafter to achieve his/her goals whereas being antagonized will prevent the job crafter from fully reaping the benefits of this proactive behavior.

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Why is it important?

This paper is important because job crafting research and implications have mainly originated from self-reports without considering the role of colleagues in the process of optimizing one's work.