Interest incongruence and employee thriving at work: the roles of job crafting and servant leadership

Based on the conservation of resource theory, this study investigated whether and how misfit at work (i.e., interest incongruence) results in positive outcomes (i.e., thriving at work). We examined our hypotheses with three-wave survey data collected from 308 Chinese participants, finding that interest incongruence was positively related to job crafting towards interests (JC-interests), and JC-interests was positively related to employee thriving at work. Furthermore, servant leadership positively moderated the effect of interest incongruence on JC-interests and the indirect effect of interest incongruence on thriving at work through JC-interests. We concluded that by crafting their jobs towards their interests, individuals can proactively optimize their person-environment fit and as a consequence experience thriving at work, especially under conditions of high levels of servant leadership.