An identity-based integrative needs model of crafting: Crafting within and across life domains

In recent years, there has been heightened interest in the active role of employees in shaping activities and experiences in their pursuit of optimal functioning (i.e., feeling and performing well), referred to as job-, leisure-, home-, and work-life balance crafting. Various perspectives have emphasized distinct dimensions within the crafting process (i.e., motives, behaviors, life domains, and outcomes), yielding a rich but fragmented theoretical account. With psychological needs satisfaction as the underlying process, we propose an integrative model to account for past conceptualizations of crafting motives and efforts across a person's various role identities. This integration highlights the importance of recognizing unfulfilled needs, matching needs and crafting efforts, within- and between-level temporal dynamics of the crafting process, and possibilities for spillover and compensation processes across identity domains. Accordingly, the Integrative Needs Model of Crafting explains (1) why and how people craft, (2) when and why crafting efforts may (not) be effective in achieving optimal functioning, (3) the sequential process of crafting over time, and (4) how crafting processes unfold across different identity domains.