ABSTRACT
The coronavirus pandemic has put the spotlight on employee happiness and well-being. Employees’ job satisfaction in a post-COVID-19 scenario is a vital concern for academics and organizations. It is a crucial research question to decipher if employees can proactively rise to challenging job demands and achieve job satisfaction. Also, though the role of job crafting has been studied as an antecedent of job satisfaction, it has not been examined in alliance with job-based psychological ownership (PO). Taking note of this, this study examines the mediating role of job-based PO between seeking challenging job demands (SCJD) and job satisfaction (JS). The study contributes to the growing understanding of post-pandemic employee JS. It provides preliminary empirical evidence of the enabling roles of job-based PO and proactive job crafting in achieving JS. Data for the study were collected from Information Technology (IT) and IT enabled Services (ITeS) sector employees in India using online questionnaires. One hundred eighty-four solicited responses were included in the data analysis and analysed using SPSS and AMOS. Results establish that employees SCJD experience higher job satisfaction. The mediating effect of PO on the association between SCJD and JS has been found. The results have both practical and theoretical implications. This study provides evidence of the beneficiary aspect of proactive employee behaviour. Managers can adopt mechanisms to enable job crafting and ownership. JS can be enhanced by raising the levels of PO and proactive crafting undertaken by SCJD to further learning opportunities at work. Limitations of the study have been discussed. © 2022 Management Development Institute.