Making sense of the twin transformation: a process model of integrative job crafting and employee agency
Davide de Gennaro, Filomena Buonocore, Viviana Colombi Evangelista, Rosario MarrapodiPurpose
This study aims to explore how employees navigate the intertwined challenges of sustainability and digitalization – referred to as the twin transformation – through integrative job crafting. Specifically, it examines how employees interpret competing transformation logics through perception-based sensemaking and translate these interpretations into proactive role redesign.
Design/methodology/approach
We conducted a qualitative study in a global Big Four professional services firm and analyzed 32 semi-structured interviews using Gioia-inspired coding to develop a process model of integrative job crafting under the twin transformation.
Findings
The findings reveal a dynamic and iterative process in which employees interpret competing transformation logics through perception-based sensemaking (e.g. interpretive ambiguity, legitimacy uncertainty, perceived coherence, and perceived scope for action), which in turn enables integrative job crafting practices, including integrative task crafting, digital resource enactment, peer-supported relational crafting, and coherence-building cognitive crafting. Over time, these practices generate reinforcing learning loops and culminate in hybrid role identities and employee-driven innovation.
Practical implications
Organizations pursuing the twin transformation should recognize employees as active sensemakers and support employees' integrative job crafting through consistent leadership, enabling digital tools, and cross-team learning, thereby fostering bottom-up innovation aligned with sustainability and digitalization goals.
Originality/value
This study provides one of the first process-based models of job crafting under the twin transformation. It extends job crafting theory by conceptualizing competing transformation logics as a distinct contextual condition and by explaining how perception-based sensemaking connects organizational conditions with integrative job crafting. The study also demonstrates how these processes contribute to hybridization and employee-driven innovation.