Designing managerial work in production: front-line managers' job crafting

Journal article, 2026

PurposeFront-line managers act as co-designers of their work, but empirical evidence regarding how this bottom-up influence impacts operations remains limited. The purpose of this paper is to expand the knowledge of front-line managers' work in production and how they respond to and influence their work design.Design/methodology/approachUsing a qualitative multi-case design including 4 production plants in northern Europe, this study is based on in-depth interviews with 15 front-line managers and 12 senior managers.FindingsFindings show that front-line managers in production actively engage in job crafting practices not out of personal initiative alone but as a response to misalignment between prescribed and perceived work characteristics. We introduce the compensatory job crafting model, which conceptualises these practices not as self-enrichment but as a necessary mechanism to counterbalance work design deficits.Practical implicationsFor bottom-up redesign to become proactive and align with organisational strategies, it is essential to ensure a sustainable work design in production where job crafting can evolve from compensatory mechanisms to learning and future-oriented practices.Originality/valueThe model contributes to the operations management literature by nuancing the prevailing view that work design in production is a top-down endeavour. It depicts work design as a co-constructed yet unequal process and reveals how compensatory job crafting creates unmanaged variation in front-line manager practices that sustains operations but challenges standardisation principles.