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Using positive psychology theories, the authors build a model to test whether episodic fluctuations in strengths use coincide with changes in flow experiences and further predict risk-taking behavior and attentional performance.

A field study covering five working days was conducted among 164 Chinese employees; twice a day, they were asked to complete questionnaires regarding their strengths use and flow experiences during the previous hour (N = 938 observations). Immediately afterward, their risk-taking behaviors and attentional performance were tested using computerized tasks.

Multilevel analyses showed that when employees used their strengths more often in the previous hour, they also reported an increase in flow. Episodic fluctuations in flow were positively associated with risk taking and negatively related to attentional performance.

Employees should be encouraged to use their strengths more at work, as this might increase their flow experiences. At the same time, they should pay attention to the downsides of flow (i.e. less attention after flow) at an episodic level.

The authors add to previous studies by using a more objective approach, namely employing computerized tasks on risk-taking behavior and attention to capture the behavioral outcomes of work-related flow.

This study investigates when and for whom job crafting may turn into job quitting. The authors hypothesize that approach job crafting relates more positively to turnover intentions and subsequent voluntary job changes among employees with (a) high (vs low) need for career challenges and (b) those with high (vs low) self-esteem.

Data were collected from 575 employees of a large public organization in the Netherlands with two measurement moments three months apart. Hypotheses were tested using cross-lagged regression analyses and path modeling.

Supporting the hypotheses, approach crafting related positively to an increase in turnover intentions only among employees with high need for challenge or high self-esteem. Moreover, via turnover intentions at Time 1, approach crafting related positively to the voluntary job change at Time 2 for employees with (a) high need for challenge, as well as those with (b) high self-esteem. These findings held after controlling for avoidance crafting.

This study has been conducted in a relatively homogenous sample. Future research may test the predictions in a more heterogeneous sample, including participants from different cultural and economic contexts.

The authors advise human resource (HR) professionals to facilitate the job crafting efforts of employees with a high need for challenge and those with high self-esteem because these groups are particularly at risk of voluntarily quitting their jobs. Adopting insights from the wise proactivity model may help ensure that job crafting benefits both employees and employers.

This study brings clarity to the inconsistent relationships between job crafting and job quitting by using the wise proactivity model as an explanatory framework.

The aim is to expand the challenge-hindrance framework and develop a coherent theoretical framework that explains individual differences in the way small business owners appraise their job demands. Literature has shown that dealing effectively with job demands leads to competitive advantage and depends on individual appraisals.

For this qualitative study, 20 in-depth interviews were analyzed using a partially grounded theory approach.

Open and axial coding revealed a broader range of demands than have hitherto been studied, related to actions rather than job characteristics. Selective coding confirmed expectations based on the Conservation of Resources Theory that appraisals of demands differ between business owners and change over time depending on role identities, and material, social, personal and energy resource levels, via the valence (identities) and degree of anticipated outcomes. Business owners appraised certain demands as challenging when they were co-occurring with other demands usually categorized as challenges, whereas these same demands were appraised as hindering when co-occurring with demands usually categorized as hindrances.

The results imply that appraisals can be influenced by societal context, life events, processes of formal and informal learning, personal growth and aging. These topics would be interesting avenues for future research.

The results of this study challenge our understanding of job demands in general and current categorizations of job demands as challenges versus hindrances in specific, by providing an in-depth, contextualized and dynamic view of the appraisal of demands related to owning and running a business.