Committed to their craft: Understanding the relationship between job crafting and work commitment among faculty in the United States

Faculty engage in several institutional activities typically categorised as teaching, research and service. Within those activities there are numerous potential tasks, and research denotes that faculty often bemoan this work which can lead to turnover and lack of commitment. We present the job crafting framework as one way to allow faculty to be active participants in increasing their work commitment. The focus of this analysis was understanding which of the three concepts of job crafting (e.g., task, cognitive and relational) is most associated with work commitment among academic staff, or faculty. Employing a polychoric correlation matrix and confirmatory factor analysis to develop a structural equation model accounting for the relationships between job crafting and work commitment, we utilised a unique data set to answer three research questions. Our sample includes associate and full professors (N = 771) from 20 states in the continental United States. Findings highlight the importance of dissecting the construct of job crafting to better understand work commitment as evidenced by the strong positive relationships between work commitment and the relational and cognitive tenets of the job crafting framework. Implications include the potential for positive work commitment when administrators allow faculty more autonomy to define their work.