Crafting Your Employability: How Job Crafting Relates to Sustainable Employability Under the Self-Determination Theory and Role Theory

Amid increasing job complexity and evolving career demands, understanding how employees can proactively sustain their employability has become a critical concern for organizations. Although prior research highlights the importance of job crafting for employability, the motivational mechanisms through which this relationship unfolds—and the contextual conditions under which it is strengthened or weakened—remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on self-determination theory and role theory, this study examines how job crafting influences sustainable employability through the mediating role of self-determination and the moderating role of role ambiguity. Using a two-wave, time-lagged survey design, data were collected from 989 employees across diverse industries in Türkiye. Job crafting and role ambiguity were measured at Time 1, while self-determination and sustainable employability were assessed one month later. The proposed relationships were tested using confirmatory factor analysis and conditional process analysis. The results show that job crafting is positively associated with both self-determination and sustainable employability. Self-determination partially mediates the relationship between job crafting and sustainable employability, indicating that proactive job redesign enhances employability by fostering autonomous motivation. Moreover, role ambiguity weakens the positive effects of job crafting on both self-determination and sustainable employability, highlighting the importance of role clarity as a boundary condition. This study advances the job crafting and sustainable employability literature by identifying self-determination as a key motivational mechanism and by demonstrating how role ambiguity constrains the benefits of proactive work behavior. By integrating self-determination theory with role theory, the findings offer nuanced insights into how employee agency and contextual clarity jointly support sustainable employability in dynamic work environments.