Imagine Americans, Israelis and Japanese participating in an international management training program. They all assemble in one lecture room, each with a personal computer with an Internet connection. The training session begins with an in-basket simulation. Each participant gets a set of problems to solve. The instructor lets them know that they can use any method they want to work out the problems. They can sit in class or go outside. They can use Google to get more information, exchange ideas with each other, or both. The instructor then observes their free styles of gathering information. What he sees is the following: The Americans open up Google in search of relevant information, and continue to work on the problem individually. The Israelis look around and signal to each other to go outside and talk in small groups. They exchange ideas about solving the problems, and then approach the instructor to ask whether they can work as a team and submit a team project rather than individual projects. The Japanese participants are most confused with the lack of a clear task structure. They are not sure whether they can go outside and talk to each other or not. They are also not sure about the seniority differences among the group members. Consequently, each Japanese participant stays in the room and does his job, feeling very hesitant and uncomfortable.
The short scenario above demonstrates the influence of culture on job crafting. Individuals often shape their job to enhance its meaningfulness (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Yet, the way people craft their job also seems to be influenced by certain codes that differ across cultures. These codes determine whether a certain form of job design is considered more favorable and meaningful than others.
Job design-the structure, content, and configuration of a person's work tasks and roles (Parker & Ohly, 2008)-is the direct representation of the person's work environment. As such, it has an immediate influence on the individual's perception of the situation as facilitating or inhibiting the opportunity for being successful and for experiencing self-worth and well-being (Erez, 2008).
The Tayloristic approach to job design created an environment that from a ''scientific'' perspective should facilitate employees' efficiency and productivity. However, this approach overlooked the importance of job design to a person's sense of self-worth and well-being-crucial for motivating employees to stay on the job and be effective. The need for self-worth and well-being is universal (Gelfand, Erez, & Aycan, 2007;Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003). Accordingly, the critical question is: What job design maximizes a person's sense of self-worth and well-being? Apparently, this question has different answers in different cultures.
Job designs are nested within organizations and nations. National-level cultural values, being internalized through the process of socialization, serve as criteria for evaluating whether a certain job