Organisational Politics as Predictors of Teachers’ Job Crafting Profiles in K-12 Schools

Abstract

Organisational politics and job crafting are two self-directed strategies through which teachers actively shape their work experiences, professional roles and social relations. This study examines the extent to which organisational political behaviours are associated with teachers’ job-crafting profiles in K-12 schools. Using survey data from 306 teachers, latent profile analysis identified three distinct patterns of job crafting: proactive profile (high approach, moderate-to-high avoidance), active profile (moderate-to-high approach, moderate avoidance) and reactive profile (low approach, low avoidance). Among the five organisational political behaviours, the exchange of favours—used as a strategic means to access social resources—significantly predicted the active job crafting profile, highlighting social exchanges as a key facilitator of the increasing resource-seeking and moderate demand-avoidance tendency. Results also showed that female teachers are more likely to engage in the proactive job crafting. These findings underscore the importance of social reciprocity in shaping teachers’ job crafting within the K-12 school context. Practically, our results suggest that fostering structured opportunities for reciprocal support, such as peer mentoring or collaborative resource-sharing routines between teachers, may improve schools channel socially grounded organisational politics into more productive and proactive teacher behaviours.