The motivational potential of human resource development: Relationships between perceived opportunities for professional development, job crafting and work engagement

The importance of work engagement for organizational success in a rapidly changing economy has been emphasized in literature for several decades. A possible strategy for organizations to strengthen employees’ work engagement may be related to their professional development. Based on the job crafting and job demands-resources literatures, we hypothesize that perceived opportunities for professional development have a positive relationship with work engagement and that this relationship is partially mediated by employees’ job crafting behavior. To test the hypothesized relationships, we conducted a bootstrapping analysis using a sample of 859 employees working in various sectors and organizations in The Netherlands. The outcomes revealed that job crafting partially mediated the relationship between perceived opportunities for professional development and employees’ work engagement. More specifically, two job crafting strategies were the strongest mediators in the relationship between perceived opportunities for professional development and work engagement, namely increasing structural job resources and increasing challenging job demands. Theoretical contributions, limitations, suggestions for future research and practical implications are discussed.