I am my Own Project Manager: How Project Workers’ Self-Leadership Triggers Job Crafting and their Creative Performance

Abstract

Individual agencies are crucial for fostering creativity and enhancing performance in software development organizations, particularly those with project-based operations. Through the mediating role of job crafting, this study examines how self-leadership, which refers to an individual's ability to inspire and influence themselves to enhance creative project performance, is facilitated. Additionally, this study examines how perceived organizational support for creativity serves as a moderator, suggesting that a supportive corporate climate enhances the benefits of job crafting on creativity. Grounded in Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory, this study examines how project workers utilize their personal job resources through self-leadership and redefine their roles through job crafting by accumulating these resources to enhance their creative project performance. Furthermore, in the presence of additional job resources from perceived organizational support, project employees are motivated and engaged in job crafting to further strengthen the proposed relationships. A quantitative, time-lagged survey design will be employed to test the proposed framework, collecting data from employees involved in software development projects. The findings aim to advance theoretical understanding of the interplay between self-leadership, job crafting, and organizational support in enhancing creativity. Practically, the results offer valuable insights into the software industry in formulating strategies and interventions that encourage self-leadership and job crafting behaviors to boost creative project performance