Individual responses to job insecurity and declining professional prestige: The role of job crafting

Drawing on the job crafting and activation theories, in this study we examine how accountants react to the precarization of their profession to maintain their motivation. More specifically, we examine whether job insecurity and perceived external prestige are significantly associated to professionals’ tendency to engage in job crafting behaviors. A two–wave study was conducted among 321 accountants operating in Southern Italy, a region hit by a harsh economic recession. The results indicate that the relations between job insecurity and perceived external prestige are curvilinear, inverted U–shaped for job insecurity and U–shaped for perceived external prestige Accountants were more likely to engage in job crafting behaviors when they perceived moderate levels of job insecurity; whereas they were more likely to craft their job in presence of low and high perceived external prestige. Implications for theory and practice are discussed