Document Type

Post-Print

Publication Date

8-2016

Subjects

Work & family, Quality of work life, Job satisfaction

Abstract

Although work schedulers serve an organizational role influencing decisions about balancing conflicting stakeholder interests over schedules and staffing, scheduling has primarily been described as an objective activity or individual job characteristic. The authors use the lens of job crafting to examine how schedulers in 26 health care facilities enact their roles as they “fill holes” to schedule workers. Qualitative analysis of interview data suggests that schedulers expand their formal scope and influence to meet their interpretations of how to manage stakeholders (employers, workers, and patients). The authors analyze variations in the extent of job crafting (cognitive, physical, relational) to broaden role repertoires. They find evidence that some schedulers engage in rule-bound interpretation to avoid role expansion. They also identify four types of schedulers: enforcers, patient-focused schedulers, employee-focused schedulers, and balancers. The article adds to the job-crafting literature by showing that job crafting is conducted not only to create meaningful work but also to manage conflicting demands and to mediate among the competing labor interests of workers, clients, and employers.

Description

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Industrial & Labor Relations Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication.

A definitive version was subsequently published in August 2016 Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 69(4): 961–990 and can be found online: https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793916642761

DOI

10.1177/0019793916642761

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/18478

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