Family and career in the lives of youth: The value potential of job-crafting technologies

Abstract

The aim of our analysis was to study the harmonizing potential of job-crafting technologies (proactive job design) in achieving a balance between a successful career and a happy family by young people. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the young people of today tend to postpone starting a family, focusing on their career instead. This looks rather alarming given current demographic trends in Russia. Job-crafting technologies abroad were developed to a large extent in order to solve the issue of striking a balance between career and family for working people. It looks promising to assess the harmonizing potential of these technologies in student youth through the analysis of their value and semantic correlates. Methods: S. Schwartz ‘Portrait Values Questionnaire PVQ-RR’ (2012), used to measure 19 values; Job Crafting Questionnaire (JCQ) Slemp G. R., Vella-Brodrick, D. A., as adapted by the. Participants: 101 respondents representing student youth in St-Petersburg, aged 21 to 24. Results. Skills related to a proactive attitude to work have a wide zone of development among the respondents. Cognitive crafting, which, in our opinion, is leading in the general structure of proactive human behavior, refracts extremely generalized values associated with a responsible attitude to both specific people and law, as well as to natural environment. In this respect, meaning crafting has as its subject the value integration of a person’s world view. Task crafting presupposes a balance between the values of freedom in self-expression and safety of the environment in which this self-expression is realized (relatives, society, nature). Consequently, task crafting is aimed at effective maneuvering by a young person in the meanings leading to him/her. The value correlates of relationship crafting characterize the balancing between freedom in self-expression and active management of one’s social environment.