Job crafting, meaningfulness and affective commitment by gig workers towards crowdsourcing platforms

Purpose Through focusing on gig workers registered in three crowdsourcing platforms, the authors investigate how individual and collaborative job crafting may be positively related to the meaningful work and affective commitment those gig workers develop towards the crowdsourcing platforms they register in. Design/methodology/approach The authors employed a quantitative research method in which they focused on date from surveys completed by 327 gig workers. They tested the hypotheses using SmartPLS 3, which is more suitable when dealing with complex models, non-normal data, small samples and higher-order constructs. Findings The results showed that the proactive behaviour embedded within both individual and collaborative job crafting may lead to a sense of meaningfulness for gig workers and subsequently, their affective commitment towards the crowdsourcing platforms they register in. Specifically, the more gig workers undertake individual (H1) and collaborative (H2) job crafting behaviour, the greater the sense of meaningfulness they develop. Moreover, meaningfulness for gig workers positively affects their affective commitment towards the crowdsourcing platforms they register with (H3). Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of its kind in the context of France and the European Union to focus on job crafting and its effect on both meaningful work and the affective commitment of non-traditional workers. This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resource (HR) management, in which empirical studies that address gig work have been limited so far.