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From Surviving to Thriving: Towards Career Wellbeing

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Abstract

In the long-term future, the quality, brand and reputation of universities would be crucial factors impacting experiences of work of knowledge and innovation workers. Academics in universities will play a significant role in preparing knowledge and innovation workers for their work. The aim of this chapter was to investigate the relationship between job crafting, high-performance human resource management practices and thriving of academics in higher education institutions. A cross-sectional survey design was used. A convenience sample of 276 academic employees from three universities of technology in South Africa participated in the study. The participants completed the Job Crafting Questionnaire, the High-Performance Human Resource Practices Questionnaire, and the Thriving at Work Scale. As hypothesised, thriving, job crafting, and high-performance human resource practices were positively related. Additionally, a significant interaction between job crafting and high-performance human resource practices was found. The relationship between job crafting and thriving was found to differ with respect to the extent to which academics perceived high-performance human resource practices. When human resource practices were perceived to be good, academics’ thriving depended less on job crafting. However, when human resource practices were perceived to be poor, job crafting was needed for academics to thrive. The implications of these results are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Resource Management, Vaal University of Technology, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa

    Fathima Essop Mahomed

  2. Optentia Research Focus Area, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa

    Sebastiaan Rothmann

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  1. Fathima Essop Mahomed
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  2. Sebastiaan Rothmann
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Correspondence to Sebastiaan Rothmann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Resource Management, University of South Africa, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

    Ingrid L. Potgieter

  2. Department of Human Resource Management, University of South Africa, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

    Nadia Ferreira

  3. Department of Industrial and Organisational Psychology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

    Melinde Coetzee

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Mahomed, F.E., Rothmann, S. (2019). From Surviving to Thriving: Towards Career Wellbeing. In: Potgieter, I., Ferreira, N., Coetzee, M. (eds) Theory, Research and Dynamics of Career Wellbeing . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28180-9_5

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