Research depicts job crafting as a desirable, ongoing employee behavior rather than a one-off event. However, insights are lacking into how employees’ active engagement in job crafting may be ...sustained across time. In this study, we advance a dynamic framework of how changes that follow employees’ periods of job crafting may, in turn, motivate versus impede continued crafting of one’s job role over time. Drawing from self-concordance theorizing, we propose and test a framework on how job crafting and employees’ attainment of self-concordant and organizational work goals are reciprocally related over time. Longitudinal data from a large, three-wave study collected over four years among church ministers support a positive reciprocal relationship between job crafting and self-concordant goal attainment, as well as an indirect positive relationship between job crafting and organizational goal attainment via self-concordant goal attainment. However, in line with our theorizing, organizational goal attainment did not predict subsequent job crafting. Instead, high organizational goal attainment weakened the extent to which job crafting at one time point positively related to job crafting at the next time point. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for employees’ continued engagement in job crafting in organizations.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to elaborate on two mechanisms of self-concordance theory (SCT; Sheldon and Elliot in Pers Soc Psychol 24(5):546,
1998
)—goal-specific efficacy and perceived ...person–organization (PO) fit—as mediators of the relationships between autonomous and controlled goal motives and goal accomplishment and job satisfaction.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Data were from two independently collected samples of administrative employees (N1 = 37, N2 = 102) and their significant others across two points in time.
Findings
Results indicated that autonomous motives were positively related to goal-specific efficacy and perceived PO fit (Time 1), and showed indirect effects on goal accomplishment and other-rated job satisfaction (Time 2). Controlled motives were negatively related to the same intermediaries and outcomes.
Implications
Goal motives implicate goal-specific outcomes, and individuals’ overall composition of goal motives—across their goals—shape their goal efficacy and PO fit perceptions. These mechanisms relate to distal outcomes of goal accomplishment and job satisfaction. The research offers theoretical implications for the proximal outcomes of goal motives, but also practical implications for ways in which organizations can improve incumbent PO fit perceptions.
Originality/Value
Although research has shown that having self-concordant goals is positively associated with individual outcomes, existing research has yet to understand why this is the case. In addition, most studies of SCT apply difference scores to study the construct at the individual-level rather than specifying motives separately and considering a multilevel perspective. Our research offers a novel investigation of the proximal outcomes of SCT and the levels at which they operate.
Research on the dualistic model of passion has investigated harmonious and obsessive passion in many domains. However, few studies have investigated passion for studying and the role passion for ...studying plays in student engagement and well-being. The present study investigated the relationships between harmonious and obsessive passion for studying and academic engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) and burnout (exhaustion, cynicism and inefficacy) in 105 university students, controlling for the effects of autonomous and controlled motivation. Both harmonious and obsessive passion explained variance in academic engagement and burnout beyond autonomous and controlled motivation: harmonious passion predicted higher dedication and lower cynicism, obsessive passion predicted higher absorption, and both harmonious and obsessive passion predicted higher vigour and lower inefficacy. The findings suggest that passion for studying explains individual differences in students' academic engagement and burnout beyond autonomous and controlled motivation and thus deserves more attention from educational psychology.
In 2014, Armed Forces & Society published Ali’s work, “Contradiction of Concordance Theory: Failure to Understand Military intervention in Pakistan.” Shortly thereafter in 2015, Schiff, the author of ...concordance theory, responded with “Concordance Theory in Pakistan: Response to Zulfiqar Ali.”
Schiff, in the Disputatio Sine Fine (DSF) section of Armed Forces & Society, defends concordance theory and puts forward four challenges to Ali’s article. Here, this reply explains again why concordance theory not only fails to generate an adequate account of military intervention in Pakistan but also unintentionally imposes a Western style of governance.
There are several theoretical frameworks proposed by a wide range of scholars to explicate and understand civil and military relations. Rebecca Schiff’s concordance theory is one of the recent models ...in this theoretical tradition. She argues that the theory of separation of civil and military relations given by Huntington not only fails to give an adequate account of domestic military interventions in Pakistan but also attempts to impose the American model of civil and military relations on it. Given the problems and flaws of the separation model, she proposes the concordance theory in place of the separation model. Schiff claims that the concordance theory provides an appropriate model to explain and to avoid military intervention in Pakistan. She purports to demonstrate that a military coup takes place due to discordance among three partners on four indicators. This article will show through the case study of Pakistan that concordance theory fails on four accounts. First, Pakistan’s military coup is not the consequence of discordance but concordance. Second, there are not three partners but two. Third, the notion of four indicators runs the risk of oversimplification. Fourth, concordance theory makes somewhat the same mistake committed by the separation model attempting to superimpose the American civil and military framework upon Pakistan. This article will demonstrate that concordance theory draws the civil and military relations upon two rival approaches: abstract theoretical and multicultural approach. By consequence it goes through the internal contradiction because of which it is fated to fail.
Concordance Theory in Pakistan Schiff, Rebecca L.
Armed forces and society,
01/2016, Volume:
42, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In Zulfiqar Ali’s article regarding concordance theory in Pakistan, Dr. Ali asserts that concordance theory does not explain domestic military intervention in Pakistan. He also suggests that ...concordance theory superimposes a Western theoretical model on Pakistan, like Huntington’s theory of objective civilian control. In response to Dr. Ali’s claims, this article reiterates how concordance theory can in fact explain why Pakistan has suffered from domestic military intervention—the alienation of the Bengali community and subsequent lack of agreement among the three concordance partners being one significant factor. Additionally, Huntington’s theory focuses on institutional and dichotomous civil–military relations, grounded in the post–World War II US case study. By contrast, concordance theory views the relationship between military and society from both cultural and institutional perspectives and embraces those indigenous qualities that may encourage or discourage domestic military intervention.
This study introduces the new concept of targeted partnership, which encourages robust dialogue between military officers and policy makers to create and implement effective military strategy such as ...counterinsurgency. Targeted partnership is a distillate form of concordance theory or agreement involving reciprocity between the military, political elites, and society for a limited period of time to accomplish a very specific objective. Targeted partnership may involve the temporary co-mingling of military, political, and societal boundaries even when the broader institutional and cultural relationship between military and society may be one of separation. In other words, separation and integration may exist at the same time for very specific reasons central to a nation’s foreign policy. Targeted partnership is a practical extension of concordance theory that enables the military to have effective interactive dialogue with policy makers to explore critical military strategies, such as counterinsurgency, while considering the cultural and institutional contexts of foreign nations.
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