Volume 9 Number 2, 2024 Faculty of Social Sciences, Enugu State University of Science And Technology EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Prof. Nicholas Attamah MANAGING EDITOR Prof. Barnabas Nwankwo PUBLISHED BY ENUGU STATE UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES 554 Core Self Evaluations and Organizational Climate as Predictors of Job Crafting Among Nurses Eze, Adaobi. C. Aniaku, Chinazom. J. Department of Psychology Enugu State University of Science and Technology Corresponding email: joychinazom12@gmail.com Abstract Organizational careers that occurred within a single work context are nowadays replaced by boundaryless, self-managed work stories, where individuals are regularly asked to shift roles, enhance capabilities and re-adapt to new work environment hence the interest in exploring core self-evaluations and organizational climate as predictors of job crafting among nurses. A total of ninety eight (98) nurses between the ages of 20-45, with the mean age of 38.07 and standard deviation of 8.26 participated in this study. Organizational climate scale (Likert, 1961), Core self evaluations scale (Judge et. Al, 2003) and job crafting scale (Tims & Bakker et. al.) were instruments used in the study. Correlational design and hierarchical multiple regression was adopted. Results indicated that core self-evaluations positively and significantly predicted job crafting while organizational climate failed to predict job crafting among nurses. Based on this outcome, stakeholders in the health sector are encouraged to recruit and sustain nurses who are high on core self-evaluations since they have the greatest ability to craft their job to suit their skills and preference in order to maintain maximum performance. Keywords: Core-self evaluations, Organizational climate, Job crafting, Nurses. Introduction The job crafting behavior can give full play to the creativity of nurses and help them realize themselves while benefiting the organization. Nurses in hospital try as much as they can to be kind to the patients which helps them heal better and faster, these behaviors might be out of their work schedule but they do that because is their own way of making their work fun which in one way or the other gives them a sense of achievement. Organizational careers that occur within their work context are nowadays replaced by boundaryless, self-managed work stories where they are asked to shift roles, enhance capabilities and re-adapt to new work environments (Arthur & Rousseau, 2001; Fugate, Kinicki & Ashforth, 2004; Hall, 2002, Leana & Rousseau, 2000). Job crafting is an individual-driven work design process which refers to self-initiated, proactive, strategies to change the characteristics of ones job to better align the job with personal needs, goals, and skills. Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) initial definition limited job crafting to three forms: change made by employees in their job tasks (i.e. task crafting), job relationship (i.e. relational crafting), and meaning of the job (i.e. cognitive crafting). Individuals who engage in job crafting as a means to greater meaning at work, a positive work identity, better work-related well-being, and better job performance.as a topic of scientific inquiry, job crafting was built on research that suggest employees do not always enact the job descriptions that are formally assigned to them, but instead actively shape and utilize their jobs to fit their needs, values, and preferences. Consequently, job crafting could increase productivity for organizations (Demerouti et.al. 2015). Job crafting also positively contributes to psychological empowerment and control of employees (Miller, 2015; Wrzesniewski and Dutton 2001). Core self-evaluations represents a stable personality trait which encompasses an mailto:joychinazom12@gmail.com 555 individual subconscious, fundamental evaluations about themselves, their own abilities and their own control. People who have high core self-evaluations will think positively of themselves and be confident in their own abilities. Conversely, people with low core self- evaluations will have negative appraisal of themselves and will lack confidence. Core self- evaluation are particularly important because they represent a personality will remain consistent overtime. The concept of core self-evaluations was first examined by Judge, Locke,& Durham (1997) and involves four personality dimensions; Locus of control, Neuroticism, generalized self-efficacy, and self esteem. A recent trend in job crafting research is to explore the influence of organizations on enabling or limiting job crafting (Tims et. al 2014; Hackman & Oldham,2016). However research on the influence of organizational climate is still under developed. The concept of organizational climate was introduced by the human religionists in the late 1940s. now it has become a very useful metaphor for thinking about and describing the social system. climate of an organization is somewhat like the personality of a person. Just as every individual has a personality that makes him unique and different from other persons, each organization has an organizational climate that clearly distinguishes it from other organizations. Basically, the organizational climate reflects a person perception of the organization to which she belongs to. It is a set of unique characteristics and features that are perceived by the employees about their organizations which serves as a major force in influencing their behavior. According to Forehand &Gilmer (1964)”climate consists of a set of characteristics that describes an organization, distinguish it from other organizations, are relatively enduring overtime and influences the behavior of people in it.” According to Campbell, (1993) ”organizational climate can be defined as a set of attributes specific to a particular organization that may be induced from the way that organization deals with its members and it’s environment. For the individual members within the organization, climate takes the form of a set of attitudes and experiences which describes the organization in terms of both static characteristics (such as degree of autonomy) and behavior outcome and outcome-outcome contingencies. The theory of planned behavior is adopted as the theoretical framework because is a cognitive- based theory that deals with the relations among beliefs, norms, control, intentions, and behavior, which has a widespread application due to its practical approach to change behaviors by changing the cognitive structures underlying those behaviors (Fox & Spencer, 2010). According to this theory, the primary driver of behavior is individual willingness to perform a behavior. In turn, such willingness (or intentions) is preceded by individual perception of efficacy regarding their ability to engage in the target behavior, by attitude toward the outcomes resulting in social structures in which it occurs. Specifically, intentions in the TPB is an indication of a person’s readiness to perform a given behavior and is assumed to be the immediate antecedent of behavior (Ajzen, 1991). Accordingly, employees will engage in job crafting behaviors based on the strength of their intentions. If individuals believe that significant others like coworkers supervisors etc approves of job crafting, then it is likely that they will engage in such behaviors. Hence the following tested hypotheses: • Core self evaluations will significantly predict job crafting. • Organizational climate will significantly predict job crafting. 556 Methods Participants Ninety eight Nurses which comprises of ninety two (92) female and six (6) male were drawn using available sampling techniques from five private hospital in enugu south. The facilities were selected using simple random sampling techniques. The participants were between the ages of 20-45yrs with the mean age of 38.07 and standard deviation of 8.26. Instrument Three set of instrument were used: • Jugde, Bono & Thorensen (2003) core self evaluation scale. • Likert (1967) organizational climate questionnaire • Tims and Bakkers (2010) job crafting scales Jugde, Bono & Thorensen (2003) core self evaluation scale This is a 12 item scale designed to measure stable interpersonal trait of an individual. the responses was design on 5 point likert responses format, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. All scores are reverse scores, examples of the items are, 1) I am confident i get the success i deserve in life. 2) sometimes i fell depressed. 3) when i try i generally succeed. The mean scores are about 3.8 to 3.9. Likert (1967) organizational climate questionnaire The organizational climate scale is a 15item scale designed to measure the shared perception of people of organizational events, practices, and procedures. The items are scored directly by adding the responses giving by the individual in the responses collum. The total score for each is calculated. A high score indicates that the employes perceives the organization more favorably. The test reliability coefficient is 0.51. examples of the items in the scale are: I am willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in other to help this organization be successful; I talk up the organization to my friends as a great organization to work for; I feel very little loyalty to this organization. Tims and Bakkers (2010) job crafting scales The job crafting scale is a 21item scale designed to measure how employees transform the characteristics of their job to match them in their needs and preferences. The items are scored directly and the scores are calculated, the higher the score the higher the tendency of the employee to craft the job. Examples of the items in the scale I try to develop myself professionally; I try to learn new things at work; I make sure that I use my capacity to the fullest. Procedure A total of 120 questionnaires on core self evaluations, job crafting and organizational climate were randomly distributed within a period of three weeks on the target populations. In selecting the hospital that participated the researcher wrote down the of the hospitals in Agbani road, folded it into a small nylon bag and handpicked five this process is called lucky dip and is also a form of simple random sampling. On the other hand nurses present at the of research participated. the researcher after meeting hospital administrators, introduced herself to the front 557 desk nurses which helped give out the questionnaire to her fellow nurses and collected it too. thus, 112 were collected and 98 were correctly filled and analyzed and 14 was discarded. Design and statistics Correlational design was adopted in the study. this is because the researcher is interested to find the prediction between the study variables and the instruments were administered to the participants without manipulations of experimental variables. Therefore, the statistics for the study was hierarchical multiple regression using SPSS vs 25. Result Table 1: Zero order correlation coefficient matrix showing Core self-evaluations and organizational climate as predictors of job crafting among Nurses. M SD 1 2 3 4 5 Age Gender Core self evaluations Organizational climate Job crafting Coefficient or determinant(r2) 38.07 .80 36.41 41.04 46.82 8.26 .41 13.91 12.68 19.17 1 .05 -.06 -.06 -.09 1 -.15 -.09 -.10 1 .78** .95** .90 1 .73** .53 1 The result shows that Core self evaluation correlated significantly with job crafting (r= .95, p<.01, r2 = .90). Organizational climate correlated significantly with job crafting (r =.73, p<.01, r2=.53). Table 2: Summary of hierarchical multiple Regression Analysis for Variables predicting job crafting (N=98). Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Age Gender Core self evaluation Organizational climate R R2 ∆R2 F 𝛃 t -.09 -.84 -.10 -.94 .13 .02 .02 .84(2,95) 𝛃 t .96 29.97** .95 .91 .89 898.04(1, 94) β 𝑡 -.05 -1.02 .95 .91 .00 1.048(1,93) Note * p< .05; **p< .01 558 Result of the hierarchical multiple regressions for the test of the first factors of job crafting index is shown in the Table 1 above, the variables were entered in stepwise models. The demographic variables (age) in step 1 of the regression analysis and it had no significant relationship with job crafting. Age, b = -.09, t = -.84, p>.05. Also, the demographic variable gender had no significant relationship with job crafting. Gender, b = -.10.t = -94, p>.05. hence the demographic variables age and gender serves as control variables in the study and is why they are keyed is step 1. In step 2, core self evaluations was entered and it predicted job crafting (b = .96, t = 29.97, at p<.01). the contribution of core self evaluation in explaining the variance in job crafting was 89%. Therefore, core self evaluations is a significant predictor of job crafting among nurses. In step 3 organizational climate were entered and it did not predict job crafting (b = -.05, t = - 1.02, at p>.05). the contribution of organizational climate in explaining the variance in job crafting was 00%. Therefore, organizational climate is not significant predictor of job crafting among Nurses. Discussion The findings of this study revealed that the hypothesis tested which stated that “core self evaluations and organizational climate will significantly predict job crafting among nurses” was accepted. This means that core self evaluations is positive and significantly a predictor of job crafting among nurses. Hence nurses who score high on core self evaluations performed well on job crafting and ones who did not perform performed low on job crafting. Job crafting also predicted other indices of well being at work. Tims, Bakker, and Derks (2013) found in a longitudinal study that employees who increased their job resources had higher job satisfaction and decreased burnout. Job crafting has been suggested to be functional in mitigating the felling of boredom at work and consequently minimizing its negative outcomes (e.g depressive compliant, counterproductive work behaviors, distress) (Hooff & hoft, 2014). Slempp and Vella-Brodrick (2014) found that job crafting predicted the satisfaction of basic psychological needs (e.g autonomy, competence, and relatedness), which in turn directly predicted the level of subjective well-being (e.g positive affect and life satisfaction) and indirectly psychological well-being(optimal functioning of the individual).on the other hand , job crafting may be harmful to the goals of the organizations and produce negative effects. Therefore, in addition to allowing room for crafting, managers must build a shred understanding with employees that job is encouraged so long as it aligns with the organizational overall strategy (Dulton, 2001). Maintaining open lines of communication between managers and employees and building trust may promote positive job crafting which is favorable to both the individual crafter and the organization. Implications of findings The findings of this study indicates that nurses who have stable personality traits and a positive appraisal of oneself have the greatest ability to craft their job to suit their skills and preference, therefore stakeholders in the health care sectors are by the reason of this study encouraged to look out for the nurse who are high in core self evaluations. Limitations of findings One major shortcoming of this study was the use of small sample size out of the myriad of nurses. This is because the researcher lacks financial power that give her the opportunity to sample enough participants. Also, the study is limited to only private hospitals in Agbani road, which of course affect the ability to extrapolate the finding. 559 Suggested for further study In view of the above finding, the researcher thereby suggest that future researchers should carry out similar studies by looking for other factors such as Workers career identity and proactive personality, that may predict job crafting and also increase the sample size and extend the study to general hospitals to cross validate the outcome of this study. Summary and conclusion Based on the outcome of this study the researcher hereby concludes that core self evaluations is positive and significantly a predictor of job crafting among nurses while organization climate did not. References Mel, F. Angelo J. K. Blake, E. Ashforth (2004) Employability: A Psycho-Social Construct, Its Dimensions, and Applications Southern Methodist University Journal of Vocational Behavior 65(1):14-38 Madeline M. Crocitto Michael B. Arthur Denise M. 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