When Proactivity Backfires: Subordinates’ Job Crafting, Supervisory Territorial Behavior, and Implications for Sustainable Work Functioning

Job crafting is viewed as a bottom-up practice that supports adaptability and sustainable work design. However, changes in tasks, routines, or relationships may also create tensions for supervisors. These tensions are relevant to workplace sustainability because supervisory territorial behavior may restrict collaboration, information sharing, and sustainable productivity. Drawing on the cognitive–affective system theory of personality (CAPS), this study investigates how subordinates’ job crafting is associated with supervisory territorial behavior through two psychological mechanisms with implications for sustainable work functioning, i.e., the status-related pathway through perceived control and the well-being-related pathway through psychological strain. We tested the model using two-wave, multi-source dyadic data from 81 supervisors and 399 subordinates. The results show that subordinates’ job crafting is indirectly associated with higher supervisory territorial behavior through lower perceived control and greater psychological strain. In addition, the results of conditional effects indicate that subordinates’ interpersonal influence weakens both indirect effects. These findings highlight the potential social costs of job crafting and offer practical implications for supporting individual initiatives while protecting collaboration, well-being, and sustainable work functioning.