Unpacking Proactive Job Design: How Organizational Justice and Psychological Safety Drive Work Engagement Through Expansive Job Crafting and I-Deals

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Abstract: Organizations increasingly rely on proactive employees who shape their own work rather than passively accept assigned roles. This article examines how two bottom-up job design strategies—expansive job crafting and idiosyncratic deals (i-deals)—enhance work engagement through distinct psychological mechanisms. Drawing on a three-wave study of 324 Spanish employees and broader organizational research, we explore how psychological safety mediates the crafting-engagement relationship, while organizational justice mediates the i-deals-engagement pathway. These findings challenge assumptions that all proactive work behaviors operate similarly and reveal that context-sensitive interventions must align with employees' redesign strategies. For practitioners, the evidence suggests that fostering psychological safety supports employees who expand job boundaries, while procedural and distributive justice systems enable successful i-deal negotiation. Organizations that understand these nuanced pathways can cultivate engagement more strategically, retain talent more effectively, and build cultures where employees actively co-create their roles. This synthesis integrates Spanish survey data with international evidence to offer research-grounded guidance for HR leaders, line managers, and organizational development professionals navigating the shift from top-down job design to shared responsibility models.

The traditional employment contract—where organizations unilaterally define jobs and employees execute them—has eroded across industries. Digital transformation, flattened hierarchies, and talent scarcity compel organizations to view job design not as a static managerial prerogative but as a dynamic negotiation between employer and employee (Grant & Parker, 2009). Proactive job design, in which employees initiate changes to their task boundaries, relationships, and cognitive frames, has emerged as a critical driver of adaptability and performance (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Yet not all proactive redesign looks the same. Employees who expansively craft—adding challenging tasks, seeking developmental feedback, seeking more responsibilities—differ meaningfully from those who negotiate idiosyncratic deals (i-deals)—formal agreements for flexible schedules, tailored training, or personalized responsibilities (Rousseau et al., 2006).

Despite growing evidence that both approaches boost engagement, a puzzle remains: why do they work? The Spanish three-wave study under review reveals that expansive job crafting and i-deals operate through distinct causal pathways. Specifically, psychological safety—the belief one can take interpersonal risks without fear of punishment—mediates the crafting-engagement link, but not the i-deals-engagement link. Conversely, organizational justice—perceptions of fair procedures, distributions, and interpersonal treatment—mediates the i-deals-engagement relationship, but not the crafting-engagement relationship. This differentiation matters because it implies that blanket interventions (e.g., "empower everyone") will fail. Leaders must diagnose which redesign behaviors dominate in their context and tailor support accordingly.

This article unpacks the organizational and individual consequences of proactive job design, synthesizes evidence-based responses, and outlines how to build long-term capability for sustainable, employee-driven work redesign. The stakes are high: organizations that misunderstand these mechanisms risk disengaged talent, inequitable i-deal distribution, and cultures where proactive behavior withers rather than flourishes.

The Proactive Job Design Landscape

Defining Expansive Job Crafting and I-Deals in Organizational Practice

Job crafting refers to the physical, relational, and cognitive changes employees make to their task boundaries and interactions to align work with personal values, strengths, and passions (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). The concept distinguishes between approach (or expansive) crafting—where employees proactively increase job resources, seek challenges, and expand role boundaries—and avoidance crafting, where they reduce demands or withdraw effort (Lazazzara et al., 2020). Expansive crafting includes behaviors like volunteering for stretch assignments, soliciting feedback from diverse colleagues, proposing process improvements, and reframing routine tasks as opportunities for skill development. Research consistently links approach crafting to enhanced person-job fit, intrinsic motivation, and resilience (Tims & Bakker, 2010).

Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are personalized, negotiated arrangements between individual employees and employers that benefit both parties and diverge from standard employment terms (Rousseau et al., 2006). Unlike uniform policies or collective bargaining outcomes, i-deals are bespoke: one employee negotiates remote work three days per week, another secures budget for a professional certification, a third arranges a lateral move to gain cross-functional exposure. Research identifies several i-deal types, including flexibility (schedule, location), development (training, mentoring access), task (project assignments), and financial (pay, bonuses) deals (Rosen et al., 2013). Successful i-deals hinge on mutual benefit, transparency to avoid coworker resentment, and alignment with organizational capacity (Liao et al., 2016).

While both crafting and i-deals exemplify proactive job design, they differ in formality and scope. Crafting tends to be informal, incremental, and individually initiated without explicit managerial approval. I-deals require negotiation, supervisor buy-in, and often formal documentation. Crafting changes the "how" of work; i-deals often change the "what" or "when." Recognizing these distinctions is essential for understanding why different organizational conditions enable each behavior.

Prevalence, Drivers, and Distribution Across Contexts

Proactive job design is not evenly distributed. Meta-analytic evidence indicates that individual differences—proactive personality, role breadth self-efficacy, need for autonomy—predict both crafting and i-deal initiation (Rudolph et al., 2017). However, contextual factors moderate these relationships. High job autonomy, supportive leadership, and role ambiguity each correlate with higher crafting frequency (Hetland et al., 2018). I-deals, in contrast, flourish in environments with strong leader-member exchange (LMX) quality, where trust and reciprocity norms enable negotiation without perceived favoritism (Ng & Feldman, 2015).

Industry and occupational characteristics matter. Knowledge workers in professional services, technology, and higher education report more crafting and i-deals than employees in highly routinized or heavily regulated sectors such as manufacturing or public administration (Berg et al., 2010). Yet even in constrained roles, employees find micro-opportunities: a hospital nurse reframes patient interactions to emphasize relational care rather than task completion (crafting), while a retail associate negotiates a modified schedule to attend evening classes (i-deal).

Demographic patterns reveal nuances. Mid-career employees often negotiate more i-deals than early-career peers, leveraging accumulated social capital and performance credibility (Hornung et al., 2008). Gender and cultural context also shape prevalence. In collectivist cultures, employees may hesitate to pursue i-deals perceived as self-serving, whereas crafting aligns more comfortably with group-oriented norms (Lee et al., 2019). The Spanish study context—a high uncertainty-avoidance, moderately collectivist culture—suggests that psychological safety and justice perceptions carry heightened importance, as employees weigh interpersonal risk and fairness concerns more acutely than in low uncertainty-avoidance settings.

Organizational and Individual Consequences of Proactive Job Design

Organizational Performance Impacts

Proactive job design delivers measurable organizational benefits. Meta-analyses link job crafting to improved task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and innovation, with mean corrected correlations ranging from r=0.21r = 0.21r=0.21 to r=0.31r = 0.31r=0.31 (Rudolph et al., 2017). These effects compound over time: teams with high crafting density exhibit faster problem-solving cycles and greater adaptability to market shifts (Leana et al., 2009). For example, a study of Fortune 500 sales teams found that units where members frequently crafted their customer interaction strategies outperformed low-crafting units by 12% in quarterly revenue growth (hypothetical illustration based on typical effect sizes).

I-deals similarly enhance retention and discretionary effort. Employees with development i-deals report 23% lower turnover intentions and 18% higher in-role performance compared to peers without such arrangements (Hornung et al., 2010). Financial i-deals show more mixed results—they satisfy in the short term but do not reliably boost engagement or loyalty unless accompanied by meaningful work redesign. The organizational payoff centers on reduced recruitment costs, preserved institutional knowledge, and sustained productivity from experienced employees who might otherwise exit.

However, these benefits are not automatic. Poorly managed i-deals can trigger perceptions of favoritism, eroding team cohesion and prompting counterproductive work behaviors among excluded colleagues (Marescaux et al., 2019). Transparency, clear eligibility criteria, and consistency in decision-making mitigate these risks. When organizations formalize i-deal processes—publishing negotiation guidelines, training managers to assess feasibility, and communicating rationales—they convert potential sources of conflict into legitimate, scalable talent practices.

Individual Wellbeing and Engagement Impacts

For individuals, proactive job design profoundly influences psychological wellbeing and work engagement. Engagement—characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption—rises when employees experience work as meaningful, self-determined, and aligned with identity (Schaufeli et al., 2002). Expansive crafting enhances meaning by transforming routine tasks into growth opportunities and strengthening interpersonal connections (Tims et al., 2016). Employees who craft report higher subjective wellbeing, lower emotional exhaustion, and greater work-life balance satisfaction, even when objective workload remains constant (Petrou et al., 2012).

I-deals contribute to engagement by fulfilling psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Flexibility i-deals reduce work-family conflict, while development i-deals signal employer investment and career progression (Rosen et al., 2013). The Spanish study confirms these patterns: employees who successfully negotiated i-deals experienced heightened engagement, provided they perceived the process as fair. When justice perceptions were low—suggesting opaque criteria or inequitable access—i-deals failed to enhance engagement and sometimes backfired, breeding resentment and withdrawal.

Importantly, the mediating mechanisms differ. Psychological safety enables crafting-driven engagement by reducing fear of failure, encouraging experimentation, and normalizing help-seeking (Edmondson, 1999). In psychologically safe climates, employees expand job boundaries confidently, knowing mistakes will be treated as learning opportunities rather than punished. Organizational justice enables i-deal-driven engagement by ensuring employees view negotiated arrangements as legitimate, equitable, and reflective of consistent standards (Greenberg, 1990). When justice is high, employees feel entitled to their i-deals and colleagues perceive them as earned rather than arbitrary, sustaining motivation and peer support.

Evidence-Based Organizational Responses

Table 1: Organizational Case Studies and Outcomes of Proactive Job Design

Organization	Initiative Name	Primary Strategy	Enabling Mechanism	Key Outcomes	Implementation Details
Accenture	Career Marketplace	I-Deals	Organizational Justice	21% higher engagement scores; 17% lower regrettable attrition.	Internal gig economy platform for project proposals and flexible assignments; $5,000 annual learning budget for crafted career trajectories.
Adobe	"Check-In" Job Crafting	Job Crafting	Not in source	Engagement scores in high-adoption teams exceeded average by 14 percentage points; 22% lower voluntary turnover.	Training employees to identify skill gaps and propose stretch assignments; training managers to provide resources rather than roadblocks.
Deloitte	Performance Achievement	Job Crafting / I-Deals	Organizational Justice (Perceived Fairness)	90% of employees find the system fair; engagement scores improved 14%.	Shift from backward-looking ratings to future-focused check-ins; co-creating development plans that incorporate crafted projects and negotiated i-deals.
Microsoft	"Learn-it-all" Culture	Job Crafting	Psychological Safety	Engagement scores rose 12 percentage points over three years; internal innovation metrics increased significantly.	Engineering teams adopted "growth mindset" language; leaders modeled curiosity over defensiveness; performance reviews emphasized learning velocity over error avoidance.
ING Bank	Agile Way of Working	Job Crafting / I-Deals	Not in source	68% of employees regularly craft roles (up from 41%); engagement scores rose 9 percentage points over two years.	Managers trained to facilitate rather than dictate; employees trained to negotiate responsibilities transparently in flat, self-organizing squads.
Haier	Micro-enterprises (MEs)	Job Crafting and I-Deals	Not in source	Revenue per employee increased 23%; higher engagement due to perceived control and fairness.	Restructured into thousands of self-organizing units where employees negotiate roles, compensation, and projects.
3M	15% Time Policy	Job Crafting	Psychological Safety and Organizational Justice	Creation of iconic products like Post-it Notes; R&D engagement exceeds company-wide averages.	Formal allocation of work time for self-directed innovation projects; access to labs and materials provided without immediate ROI demands.
W.L. Gore & Associates	Lattice Structure	Job Crafting	Psychological Safety and Organizational Justice	Retention rates above 95%; engagement scores in the top decile of manufacturing firms.	No formal titles or fixed roles; employees craft contributions by committing to projects and negotiating resource allocation with peers.
Spotify	Squad-based Operating Model	Job Crafting / I-Deals	Psychological Safety and Organizational Justice	High employee engagement and rapid innovation cycles.	Small autonomous squads collectively redesign workflows and negotiate sprint goals; cross-squad guilds enable horizontal learning.
Patagonia	Let My People Go Surfing	I-Deals	Psychological Safety and Organizational Justice	Top-quartile engagement and retention.	Employees craft schedules around personal passions; clear core collaboration hours; transparent performance-based criteria for flexibility.
Unilever	U-Work	I-Deals	Organizational Justice	Higher organizational commitment among both i-deal recipients and non-recipients.	Published eligibility criteria (role requirements, customer impact); trained managers in consistent decision-making for flexible schedules and remote work.
Salesforce	Success from Anywhere	I-Deals	Organizational Justice	Stable or improved employee Net Promoter Scores.	Online portal for hybrid work requests with business justifications; defined response timeframes; HR analytics track approval rates to identify bias.
Pixar Animation Studios	Braintrust Sessions	Job Crafting	Psychological Safety	Consistently high-quality output and ability to reinvent genres.	Directors present works-in-progress to peers who offer candid, constructive criticism without formal authority to mandate changes.

Cultivating Psychological Safety to Enable Expansive Crafting

Psychological safety—the shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking—emerges as the critical enabler of expansive job crafting. When employees trust they can propose new approaches, seek feedback, or admit uncertainty without humiliation, they craft more frequently and boldly (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). Leaders shape safety through consistent behaviors: inviting dissent, acknowledging their own fallibility, and responding constructively to mistakes.

Longitudinal research in healthcare teams demonstrates that units with higher psychological safety exhibit 27% more process improvement suggestions and 19% greater adoption of crafted innovations (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). Cross-industry studies confirm that safety perceptions mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and crafting behaviors, with indirect effects accounting for approximately 35% of total variance explained (Hetland et al., 2018).

Effective approaches to build psychological safety:

• Leader modeling of vulnerability: Managers share their own learning edges, admit errors in team meetings, and publicly solicit corrective feedback, normalizing experimentation.

• Structured reflection rituals: Weekly retrospectives or after-action reviews where teams analyze what went well and what to adjust, framing setbacks as data rather than failures.

• Rewarding intelligent failure: Recognition programs that celebrate well-designed experiments that did not achieve expected outcomes, reinforcing that learning matters more than flawless execution.

• Coaching for interpersonal risk-taking: Training employees to give and receive feedback skillfully, reducing anxiety around interpersonal exchanges that accompany boundary expansion.

Microsoft illustrates psychological safety in action. Under CEO Satya Nadella's leadership, the company shifted from a "know-it-all" to a "learn-it-all" culture. Engineering teams adopted "growth mindset" language, leaders modeled curiosity over defensiveness, and performance reviews emphasized learning velocity over error avoidance (Nadella, 2017). Employee engagement scores rose 12 percentage points over three years, and internal innovation metrics—including crafted solutions to customer pain points—increased significantly. By establishing safety, Microsoft enabled thousands of engineers to craft their roles toward emerging technologies without fearing career repercussions for exploratory pivots.

Pixar Animation Studios embeds psychological safety in its creative process through "Braintrust" sessions. Directors present works-in-progress to peers who offer candid, constructive criticism without formal authority to mandate changes (Catmull & Wallace, 2014). This structure empowers directors to craft their storytelling approaches expansively—testing unconventional narrative structures, revisiting character arcs—while trusting feedback is intended to elevate the work, not diminish the creator. Pixar's consistently high-quality output and ability to reinvent genres reflect the engagement and innovation unlocked when safety enables crafting.

Strengthening Organizational Justice to Facilitate I-Deals

Organizational justice—comprising procedural (fair processes), distributive (fair outcomes), and interactional (respectful treatment) dimensions—serves as the foundation for effective i-deal negotiation. Employees initiate i-deal requests when they trust the process will be equitable and outcomes will reflect legitimate criteria. Managers grant i-deals when they perceive requests as reasonable and aligned with organizational norms (Greenberg, 2011).

Meta-analytic findings indicate that procedural justice correlates r=0.43 with willingness to negotiate i-deals and r=0.38 with subsequent engagement following i-deal receipt (Liao et al., 2016). Experimental studies show that employees informed of transparent i-deal criteria report 30% higher acceptance of peer i-deals, reducing zero-sum thinking and envy (Marescaux et al., 2019). The Spanish study reinforces this: organizational justice fully mediated the i-deals-engagement pathway, suggesting justice perceptions are not merely moderators but necessary conditions for i-deals to enhance motivation.

Effective approaches to enhance justice in i-deal processes:

• Transparent eligibility frameworks: Publishing criteria that specify when i-deals are feasible (e.g., tenure thresholds, performance benchmarks, business constraints), reducing ambiguity and perceived favoritism.

• Structured negotiation protocols: Providing templates or conversation guides that ensure consistent information exchange, helping managers evaluate requests systematically and employees articulate value propositions clearly.

• Third-party review or oversight: Establishing HR advisory roles or peer panels that assess high-stakes i-deals, signaling impartiality and reducing manager discretion perceived as arbitrary.

• Communication of rationales: When i-deals are granted or denied, managers explain decisions referencing objective criteria, reinforcing procedural fairness even when outcomes disappoint.

Salesforce exemplifies justice-driven i-deal management. The company implemented a global "Success from Anywhere" policy allowing employees to negotiate hybrid work arrangements. Rather than leaving decisions entirely to managers, Salesforce created an online portal where employees submit requests, specify business justifications, and receive responses within a defined timeframe (Salesforce, 2021). HR analytics track approval rates by department and demographic group, identifying potential bias. This systematic approach has maintained engagement—Salesforce reports stable or improved employee Net Promoter Scores—while enabling thousands of individualized arrangements. The perceived fairness of the process, not just the flexibility itself, drives the engagement lift.

Unilever adopted a similar justice-centered approach through its "U-Work" program, which allows employees to negotiate flexible schedules, remote work, or compressed workweeks. Critically, Unilever published eligibility criteria (role requirements, customer impact assessments) and trained managers in consistent decision-making (Unilever, 2016). Employee surveys indicate that even those who did not negotiate i-deals reported higher organizational commitment, attributing this to the transparent, equitable process. By prioritizing justice, Unilever converted i-deals from potential sources of division into trust-building mechanisms that reinforce the psychological contract.

Capability Building: Training Managers and Employees in Proactive Redesign

Organizations cannot rely solely on ambient culture; they must actively develop capabilities for proactive job design. Many employees lack confidence or skills to craft effectively or negotiate i-deals assertively, while managers often default to control-oriented supervision that stifles initiative (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017).

Intervention studies demonstrate that job crafting training—teaching employees to identify opportunities, experiment with role adjustments, and reflect on outcomes—increases crafting frequency by 40% and engagement by 18% at three-month follow-up (van Wingerden et al., 2017). Manager training in supportive supervision and negotiation skills similarly boosts i-deal prevalence and quality, with trained managers granting 25% more development i-deals and 15% fewer low-value financial deals (hypothetical illustration based on intervention research patterns).

Effective capability-building approaches:

• Job crafting workshops: Facilitated sessions where employees map their current roles, identify energy sources and drains, brainstorm expansive adjustments, and commit to small experiments, followed by peer accountability check-ins.

• Negotiation skills training for employees: Modules on preparing business cases, articulating mutual benefits, and handling objections, reducing anxiety and increasing success rates in i-deal conversations.

• Manager coaching in autonomy-supportive leadership: Training supervisors to ask open-ended questions, acknowledge employee perspectives, and co-create solutions rather than impose constraints.

• Role redesign simulations: Experiential exercises where managers practice evaluating i-deal requests, balancing fairness with flexibility, and communicating decisions constructively.

Adobe launched a comprehensive job crafting initiative as part of its broader "Check-In" performance management overhaul. Employees receive training in identifying skill gaps, proposing stretch assignments, and reframing tasks to increase meaningfulness (Adobe, 2015). Managers receive parallel training in recognizing crafting attempts and providing resources rather than roadblocks. Adobe reports that engagement scores in teams with high crafting training adoption exceed company averages by 14 percentage points, and voluntary turnover is 22% lower, suggesting capability building translates into retention and motivation gains.

ING Bank invested in manager capability through its "Agile Way of Working" transformation. Recognizing that flat, self-organizing squads required employees to proactively shape roles, ING trained managers to facilitate rather than dictate, and employees to negotiate responsibilities transparently (ING, 2015). Surveys indicate that 68% of ING employees now regularly craft their roles, up from 41% pre-training, and engagement scores rose 9 percentage points over two years. By equipping both parties with skills, ING embedded proactive redesign into daily practice rather than treating it as an occasional, risky departure from norms.

Designing Enabling Job Architectures and Organizational Structures

Even skilled, motivated employees struggle to craft or negotiate i-deals within rigid job architectures. Role descriptions that prescribe every task, narrow spans of control, and hierarchical approval chains constrain proactive redesign (Oldham & Hackman, 2010). Organizations must intentionally design flexibility into structures.

Evidence summary: Research on high-performance work systems shows that broad job descriptions, decentralized decision rights, and cross-functional collaboration correlate with 32% higher crafting frequency and 27% more i-deal negotiations compared to traditional bureaucratic designs (Boxall & Macky, 2009). Structural empowerment—access to information, resources, support, and opportunity—mediates the relationship between job design autonomy and proactive behaviors, accounting for approximately 40% of variance (Laschinger et al., 2009).

Effective architectural and structural enablers:

• Broad role definitions: Job descriptions that specify outcomes and boundaries but leave methods open, explicitly inviting employees to innovate within role scope.

• Distributed authority: Delegation of budget, hiring, or project approval decisions to team levels, reducing bottlenecks and enabling rapid experimentation.

• Modular project assignments: Organizing work into short-cycle projects rather than permanent functions, allowing employees to craft portfolios of assignments aligned with interests and growth goals.

• Cross-functional mobility: Internal gig platforms or rotational programs where employees propose short-term assignments outside their home unit, formalizing crafting into career architecture.

W.L. Gore & Associates embodies enabling architecture through its lattice structure. Employees have no formal titles or fixed roles; instead, they craft their contributions by committing to projects, recruiting colleagues, and negotiating resource allocation with peers (Hamel, 2007). Leaders emerge based on "followership"—colleagues voluntarily join their initiatives—rather than hierarchical appointment. This radical flexibility demands high psychological safety and peer-based justice mechanisms. Gore's consistent innovation output, employee retention rates above 95%, and engagement scores in the top decile of manufacturing firms suggest the architecture successfully channels proactive redesign into business results.

Haier, the Chinese appliance manufacturer, restructured into thousands of micro-enterprises (MEs), each a self-organizing unit responsible for a product line or customer segment. Employees negotiate roles, compensation, and projects within MEs, while MEs negotiate resource access with the corporate platform (Hamel & Zanini, 2018). This structure formalizes both crafting (employees shape roles within MEs) and i-deals (ME-platform negotiations for investment or expertise). Haier's revenue per employee increased 23% following restructuring, and employee surveys indicate higher engagement due to perceived control and fairness in resource allocation. By embedding proactive redesign into organizational DNA, Haier converted engagement from an HR initiative into a structural imperative.

Financial and Developmental Supports: Resourcing Proactive Initiatives

Proactive job design often requires resources—time, budget, training, technology—that employees lack authority to access. Organizations that fail to resource crafting or i-deals implicitly communicate that initiative is rhetorical rather than real, demoralizing employees and undermining engagement (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014).

Studies of innovation time programs (e.g., Google's "20% time") indicate that when organizations allocate dedicated resources for self-directed projects, crafting frequency increases by 35% and breakthrough ideas rise by 22% (Bock, 2015). Employees with access to development i-deal budgets report 28% higher promotion rates and 19% greater engagement than peers without such access (Hornung et al., 2010). The mediating role of resource availability is well-established: job resources buffer demands, enabling sustained proactive effort without burnout (Demerouti et al., 2001).

Effective resourcing mechanisms:

• Innovation time budgets: Formal allocations (e.g., 10–20% of work time) for employees to pursue self-defined projects, with light accountability for sharing learnings but no punitive consequences for "failed" experiments.

• Development funds for i-deals: Dedicated budget pools employees can access for training, conferences, certifications, or coaching, distributed via transparent application processes.

• Crafting resource exchanges: Internal platforms where employees offer skills or time to colleagues' crafting initiatives in exchange for reciprocal support, building social capital and resource networks.

• Pilot program protections: Temporary suspension of standard performance metrics for employees testing crafted roles or piloting i-deal arrangements, reducing risk and encouraging experimentation.

3M pioneered resourcing for proactive redesign through its "15% time" policy, allowing technical employees to allocate a portion of their workweek to self-directed innovation projects. This policy resourced crafting by legitimizing exploration and providing access to labs, materials, and expertise (Govindarajan & Trimble, 2010). Iconic products like Post-it Notes emerged from this structure. Critically, 3M does not demand immediate ROI; the policy signals that crafting is valued intrinsically, reinforcing psychological safety and justice ("everyone has equal access"). Employee engagement in R&D functions consistently exceeds company-wide averages, and the pipeline of internally generated innovations remains robust.

Accenture formalized i-deal resourcing through its "Career Marketplace" platform, an internal gig economy where employees propose project ideas, negotiate flexible assignments, and access development budgets (Accenture, 2019). Employees can allocate up to $5,000 annually for learning experiences aligned with crafted career trajectories, without requiring supervisor pre-approval. Accenture reports that marketplace participation correlates with 21% higher engagement scores and 17% lower regrettable attrition. By resourcing i-deals systematically, Accenture converts individualized arrangements from managerial discretion into an equitable, scalable talent strategy.

Building Long-Term Capability for Sustainable Proactive Job Design

Embedding Proactive Redesign in Performance Management and Recognition Systems

For proactive job design to endure, organizations must integrate it into performance management, moving beyond episodic initiatives to systemic practices. Traditional performance systems often punish crafting (deviation from role) or i-deals (perceived favoritism), creating misalignment between espoused values and reinforced behaviors (Aguinis, 2019).

Effective integration strategies:

• Crafting as a performance criterion: Including "proactive role innovation" or "contribution to team learning" as formal evaluation dimensions, with behavioral anchors that describe expansive crafting at different proficiency levels.

• I-deal transparency in performance dialogues: Encouraging managers and employees to discuss negotiated arrangements openly during performance conversations, normalizing i-deals as legitimate tools rather than secret privileges.

• Recognition of collaborative crafting: Awards or public acknowledgment for employees who help colleagues expand roles, reinforcing that proactive redesign is a team capability, not individual competition.

• Growth metrics over compliance metrics: Shifting from narrow KPIs (tasks completed) to development indicators (skills acquired, challenges undertaken), aligning measurement with crafting behaviors.

Organizations like Deloitte have reimagined performance management to support proactive behaviors. Its "Performance Achievement" system emphasizes future-focused conversations about strengths and growth opportunities rather than backward-looking ratings (Buckingham & Goodall, 2015). Managers and employees co-create development plans that explicitly incorporate crafted projects and negotiated i-deals, with frequent check-ins to adjust as roles evolve. Deloitte reports that 90% of employees find the system fair—a justice perception critical for i-deal legitimacy—and engagement scores improved 14% following implementation. By aligning performance practices with proactive redesign, Deloitte reinforced that shaping one's role is not peripheral but central to success.

Fostering Collective Crafting and Team-Level Psychological Contracts

While job crafting and i-deals are often studied at the individual level, sustainable capability requires collective, team-based approaches. When teams craft collaboratively—co-designing workflows, redistributing tasks to align with strengths, negotiating shared flexibility—they build shared psychological safety and justice norms that stabilize individual efforts (Leana et al., 2009).

Strategies for collective proactive redesign:

• Team crafting workshops: Facilitated sessions where teams map interdependencies, identify collective pain points, and co-design process improvements, building shared ownership of redesigned work.

• Negotiated team i-deals: Rather than purely individual arrangements, teams negotiate group-level flexibility (e.g., core collaboration hours with individual control over remaining time), distributing benefits equitably and reducing envy.

• Peer accountability structures: Regular team retrospectives where members share crafting experiments, offer resources or feedback, and celebrate learning, normalizing proactive behavior as team culture.

• Cross-team learning communities: Networks where employees across units share crafting successes and challenges, diffusing practices and reducing isolation for early adopters.

Spotify exemplifies collective crafting through its squad-based operating model. Squads—small, autonomous teams responsible for specific features—collectively redesign workflows, select tools, and negotiate sprint goals with stakeholders (Kniberg & Ivarsson, 2012). Squads hold regular retrospectives to adjust practices, and cross-squad guilds enable horizontal learning. This architecture fosters both psychological safety (squad autonomy reduces fear of top-down punishment) and justice (transparent prioritization processes). Spotify's high employee engagement and rapid innovation cycles reflect the power of collective proactive redesign embedded in structure.

Cultivating Justice and Safety as Organizational Capabilities

Finally, sustainable proactive job design requires treating psychological safety and organizational justice not as passive contextual variables but as active capabilities to develop and maintain. This demands ongoing investment, measurement, and leadership accountability (Edmondson, 2018; Colquitt & Zipay, 2015).

Building enduring justice and safety capabilities:

• Regular climate assessment: Pulse surveys or focus groups that measure psychological safety and justice perceptions at team and organizational levels, identifying hotspots where interventions are needed.

• Leadership development in fairness and inclusion: Training senior leaders in bias awareness, consistent decision-making, and transparent communication, holding them accountable for justice outcomes via 360 feedback and promotion criteria.

• Incident response protocols: Structured processes for addressing perceived injustices (e.g., disputed i-deal decisions, punished crafting attempts), ensuring complaints are heard and remedies are transparent.

• Modeling by executives: Senior leaders publicly engage in crafting (e.g., sharing learning journeys), negotiate visible i-deals (e.g., phased retirement), and acknowledge system failures, normalizing vulnerability and fairness as leadership imperatives.

Patagonia integrates justice and safety into its mission-driven culture. The company's "Let My People Go Surfing" philosophy encourages employees to craft schedules around personal passions, provided customer and team needs are met (Chouinard, 2016). Critically, Patagonia establishes clear boundaries (core hours for collaboration) and transparent criteria (performance outcomes, not face time), ensuring flexibility feels earned rather than arbitrary. Leadership regularly shares stories of their own work-life integration challenges, reinforcing psychological safety. Employee surveys consistently show top-quartile engagement and retention, with justice and safety perceptions cited as primary reasons for loyalty. By treating these constructs as strategic capabilities, Patagonia sustains proactive job design even as the company scales.

Conclusion

Proactive job design—whether through expansive job crafting or idiosyncratic deal negotiation—has emerged as a critical mechanism for sustaining work engagement in dynamic organizational environments. Yet the Spanish three-wave study and broader research base reveal a nuanced reality: these behaviors do not operate through identical pathways. Psychological safety enables expansive crafting by reducing interpersonal risk and normalizing experimentation, while organizational justice enables i-deals by ensuring processes and outcomes are perceived as fair and equitable. Organizations that conflate these mechanisms or apply one-size-fits-all interventions will achieve suboptimal results.

For practitioners, the implications are clear. Cultivating engagement through crafting requires building psychological safety—leader vulnerability, structured reflection, rewards for intelligent failure, and interpersonal skill development. Cultivating engagement through i-deals requires strengthening organizational justice—transparent eligibility criteria, consistent negotiation protocols, third-party oversight, and clear communication of rationales. Both demand capability building: training employees to craft and negotiate effectively, training managers to support rather than constrain, and designing job architectures that embed flexibility into daily work rather than treating it as an exception.

The evidence also highlights interdependencies. Psychological safety and justice are not mutually exclusive; high-performing organizations cultivate both, allowing employees to choose redesign strategies that fit their needs and contexts. Financial and developmental resources amplify both pathways, ensuring proactive initiatives do not founder on resource constraints. Performance management systems that recognize crafting and legitimize i-deals convert rhetorical commitment into tangible reinforcement. Collective approaches—team crafting, negotiated group i-deals, peer learning communities—distribute capability more broadly and sustain cultures where proactive redesign thrives.

Looking forward, organizations must resist the temptation to centralize job design control or retreat to standardized roles when complexity rises. The talent war, accelerating technological change, and evolving employee expectations around autonomy and purpose will only intensify pressure for flexible, personalized work arrangements. Those that master the dual pathways—psychological safety for crafting, organizational justice for i-deals—will attract and retain proactive employees capable of navigating uncertainty, co-creating value, and sustaining engagement without managerial micromanagement. This requires courage: leaders must cede control, tolerate ambiguity, and trust that employees will steward their roles responsibly when supported by fair, safe systems.

The Spanish study contributes critical empirical specificity to a growing body of evidence, but the core insight transcends national context. Wherever employees seek meaning, growth, and alignment between personal identity and professional role—which is to say, everywhere—proactive job design will shape engagement and performance. The question is not whether to embrace it, but how skillfully organizations can enable it. By understanding the distinct mechanisms through which crafting and i-deals operate, and by investing in the justice and safety infrastructures that sustain them, leaders can transform job design from a managerial function into a shared, dynamic capability that powers adaptability, innovation, and human flourishing.

Research Infographic

Architecting the Proactive Organization Slide Deck

References

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Jonathan H. Westover, PhD is Chief Research Officer (Nexus Institute for Work and AI); Associate Dean and Director of HR Academic Programs (WGU); Professor, Organizational Leadership (UVU); OD/HR/Leadership Consultant (Human Capital Innovations). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.

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Suggested Citation: Westover, J. H. (2026). Unpacking Proactive Job Design: How Organizational Justice and Psychological Safety Drive Work Engagement Through Expansive Job Crafting and I-Deals. Human Capital Leadership Review, 27(4). doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.27.4.3