Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Organizzazione cognitiva'

Questo lavoro di tesi nasce da un progetto più ampio sviluppato dall’OMS, “The Hospital of Tomorrow”, il quale scaturisce dalla necessità di realizzare un sistema ospedaliero flessibile e più efficiente, in grado di adattarsi e riadattarsi a nuove emergenze e nuovi scenari, anche in seguito alla pandemia di Covid-19 che tutt’oggi stiamo affrontando. Il Policlinico Sant’Orsola si configura, grazie alla sua realtà, come caso di studio ottimale e progetto pilota al fine di creare un processo che sia replicabile ed efficace in altre strutture ospedaliere. In questo contesto il tema del wayfinding risulta essere cruciale: questa tematica, poco presente in Italia sia dal punto di vista teorico che pratico, viene generalmente individuata unicamente nell’uso della segnaletica. In realtà con wayfinding s’intende il modo in cui organizziamo, allestiamo e informiamo lo spazio costruito, così da facilitare la risoluzione di un problema spaziale e permettere agli utenti di orientarsi grazie alla rappresentazione dell’ambiente per mezzo di mappe cognitive. Il wayfinding nei complessi ospedalieri può inoltre essere considerato pari a un intervento di umanizzazione, teso a rendere la struttura meno ostile per l’utenza, permettendole un più alto grado di comprensione della stessa e quindi aumentare il benessere derivante dall’interazione uomo-ambiente. Il lavoro di tesi si sviluppa quindi in tre parti. La prima, mirata alla comprensione del processo del wayfinding, ne analizza i componenti ed esamina le linee guida attualmente seguite. Nella seconda parte si studia l’ambiente ospedaliero e le strategie di wayfinding utilizzate nelle strutture sanitarie. Infine, nella terza parte, si procede con lo studio e l’analisi dello stato attuale del Policlinico Sant’Orsola, esaminando i diversi fattori che concorrono al sistema di wayfinding in uso, per arrivare così alla definizioni di strategie e criteri progettuali da seguire per ottenere gli obiettivi prefissati dall' OMS

This thesis is based on three papers with the aim to investigating how novelty emerges in organizational context, with a focus on cognitive mechanisms. Specifically, this work intends to provide theoretical contribution and empirical evidence on how a concept emerges, by explaining the mechanisms of generating novel concepts, and by determining the role of metaphors in these processes. The first article analyses how novelty is carried out by a new concept lay at the heart of different types of radical innovations, such as product, process or business model. The paper investigates the generation of novelty as a process of conceptual innovation that leads to generate a new business model. In studying conceptual innovation, we depart from research that has been conceiving it as just a stage of a new product development project, claiming that conceptual innovation is an inner dimension of any novelty generation process. Through the case study of The Huffington Post over six years since its inception, we deepen the research on what a conceptual innovation is and what are its mechanisms to generate a new business model. We show how THP brought into the newspaper sector a truly new business model of online journal, that is an original and creative conceptual combination of newspaper and blog. With our research we contribute theoretically to the cognitive perspective on innovation and provide original evidence of the salient features of the conceptual innovation and its dynamics at the basis of business model. The second paper explores novelty from a language perspective, that is the generation of metaphors. Despite in the last three decades, management literature has been investigating metaphor from different theoretical perspectives and methodological lenses, a critical analysis of this debate is still absent. While research on metaphors might be seen as a very specialised discussion among a few experts, leading management scholars have shown that metaphors are central to organizational life and they play a crucial role in understanding organizational problems like interpretation and framing or how individuals deal with complexity. My findings suggest that studies on metaphors have increasingly occupied a central stage in the literature of management, with 3,282 articles published in 679 different journals to which 5,770 scholars contributed. Moreover, several disciplines, such as cognitive science, cognitive, psychology, philosophy of science, and sociology have enriched the debate. A variety of theoretical perspectives have also tackled this topic with a large spectrum of themes analysed. I provide a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of studies on metaphors to management literature, identifying relations among different streams of research and showing what are the key ideas. With this study, I contribute to theoretically understanding of the debate around metaphor and providing novel research questions to investigate. Metaphors and analogies play a crucial role in strategic change and in framing critical events that are constantly faced by organizations, especially during innovation processes. This research explores in depth entrepreneurs’ own perspectives and cognition during innovation activities, providing deeper insights about how critical events are linguistically elaborated and transmitted by ex post narration. Relying on interviews to successful entrepreneurs, we discovered how metaphor is always created by referring to specific semantic domains that act as institutional categories during innovation processes (i.e. war, journey, religion). Then, metaphor is a valuable discursive resource that permits researchers to investigate the broader institutional environment in which entrepreneurs are embedded. This research contributes to the literature of innovation and entrepreneurship, providing empirical evidence about entrepreneurial cognitive mechanisms during innovation processes.

This study aims to address two shortcomings in sport psychology research: the scarcity of cognitive and developmental psychology studies in sports (Furley & Wood, 2016), and the lack of an integrated approach, i.e. comprising both cognition and emotion, to study sports performance. The aim of this research is to examine the role of general cognitive abilities, attentional style and emotions in predicting performance in different sports, namely volleyball and artistic gymnastics. We tested 218 youth participants (104 artistic gymnasts and 114 volleyball players, aged between 11 and 17 years) with different measures of working memory capacity and executive functions (i.e. updating, shifting and inhibition). They completed two self-report measures, a Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style and a questionnaire on the emotions experienced before a competition. For each participant, we collected the age and years of experience. The scores collected in 2017 competitions were the artistic gymnasts’ performance measures. For each volleyball player, we computed an individual performance index, by asking two independent judges to rate their video-recorded performances in 2017-18 competitions. Then we derived, from our measures, ten predictors, namely a working memory-updating factor, an inhibition-shifting factor, four attentional style indicators and four groups of emotional states derived from the crossing of two dimensions, specifically the arousal (high activation or low activation) and the hedonic tone (pleasant or unpleasant). The regression analyses pointed to a clear dissociation. On the one hand, the working memory-updating factor was the only predictor (together with the experience) of the volleyball players’ performance, with a moderation effect of emotional arousal on this relationship. On the other hand, experience and higharousal unpleasant emotions (the latter with a negative coefficient) were the only predictors of artistic gymnasts’ performance. This evidence underlines how performance in open-skills sports (volleyball), where athletes need to process a significant amount of information, mainly depends on working memory, while in closed-skills sports (artistic gymnastics), where gestures are highly automatized, it is affected by emotion regulation. Further differences between the sports sample are also described in the dissertation.

This thesis bridges ideas from both international business (IB) and institutional perspectives and offers a holistic view of the organizational, cognitive and political concerns characterizing the headquarter (HQ)-subsidiary relationships. The relevance of specific national institutional contexts for multinational corporations (MNCs) is highlighted. Particularly, the HQ-subsidiary perception gap - the difference in perception between subsidiary and HQ managers regarding the subsidiary’s role - is one of the key challenges faced by MNCs. Both IB and institutional approaches, however, have neglected this topic, and, especially, its institutional derivation and political dynamics. In this thesis I investigate the emergence and evolution of an HQ-subsidiary perception gap and its metamorphosis into a politically laden phenomenon. The single case research design with embedded multiple units of analysis draws on qualitative, longitudinal data referring to a process of cross-border, post-acquisition integration. The findings suggest that the emergence of an HQ-subsidiary perception gap is explained by the organizational and institutional distance existing between the two actors of the dyad. Moreover, this relationship is moderated by the status differential between the HQ and the acquired subsidiary, and between the countries in which the actors are located. Once emerged, the perception gap evolves through three different process loops - stabilizing, polarizing and neutralizing of the HQ-subsidiary interactions and of the quality of the HQ-subsidiary relationship - and becomes an instrument of political contention. Beyond the phenomenon of HQ-subsidiary perception gap, this thesis explores the meso level of subsidiaries’ organizational design, a topic that has been hitherto overlooked by institutional scholars. Through a longitudinal and comparative analysis of subsidiaries’ organizational configurations and boards of directors composition, I bring attention to the enduring relevance of societal specific logics. Overall, this thesis portrays MNCs as places in which institutional-bound organizational, cognitive and political issues dynamically coexist and interact.

This work, following the conceptual recombination theory, by which ideas and concepts are mentally merged to transform and extend knowledge, explores and summarizes the current sources of academic literature, simultaneously engaging research in the fields of entrepreneurship and creativity. A bibliometric co-citation analysis was applied to identify the invisible colleges and the latent relationships among the most significant papers. Multivariate analyses including cluster, latent class, multidimensional scaling, and Pathfinder were combined to map the nodes positioning the literature. The goal of this study is (1) to increase the awareness of scholars by detecting and visualizing the intellectual structure of the shared ground among both sets of literature; (2) to identify the connected schools of thought, methods, constructs, and theories to problematize or literature gaps to be filled; (3) to reveal the network structure the central, bridge, and peripheral nodes and to hypothesize trailblazing trends, sidings, or forgotten contributions; and (4) to generate, thanks to a creativity grant, new insights to enable entrepreneurs to explore new frontiers. Using creativity techniques and a panel of experts in support, 26 keywords were generated, extracted, assessed and exploited to identify the research unit of 1533 articles. Following a further evaluation process, 73 major co-cited items were finally selected. Given the transverse nature of the creativity domain and of the search for academic interdisciplinary comminglings, data were collected from Science (SCI), Social Sciences (SSCI) and Arts and Humanities (A&HCI) citation indices for the 1991-2013 period.

This dissertation is about social relations in organizations and their implications for individuals. The dissertation is divided into three parts. In the first part, I analyze the effects of individual structural positions within social networks and the effects of self-monitoring, a personality trait, on work performance. In the second part, I analyze the effects of social relations and self-monitoring on the degree of organizational commitment of the members of the organization. Finally, in the third part I analyze the effects of structural positions and self-monitoring on the degree of accuracy with which individuals perceive their social networks. I address all my research questions and test my hypotheses in the context of a large multinational company.
La presente tesi di dottorato ha come oggetto le relazioni sociali esistenti all’interno delle organizzazioni e le implicazioni che queste hanno per gli individui. L’elaborato è suddiviso in tre parti. Nella prima parte analizzo gli effetti delle posizioni individuali nelle reti sociali e del self-monitoring, un tratto della personalità, sulla performance lavorativa. Nella seconda parte, analizzo gli effetti delle relazioni sociali e del self-monitoring sul livello di commitment (impegno) dei membri dell’organizzazione. Infine, nella terza parte, analizzo gli effetti delle posizioni strutturali e del self-monitoring sull’accuratezza con la quale gli individui percepiscono le loro reti sociali. Tutte le domande di ricerca e le ipotesi della presente ricerca sono analizzate e testate nel contesto di una grande impresa multinazionale.

Networks are pervasive in social life, and thus the investigation of their evolutionary dynamics, as well as coordination and cooperation mechanisms at the bases of their functioning, have attracted a lot of interest. Research in this field still presents some gaps, notwithstanding the substantial development of theories of network governance in the last decades, from Powell's (1990) seminal call for a “new conceptual toolkit” to study network forms as akin to markets and hierarchies. The analysis of political considerations in the study of network forms of governance is still underdeveloped, and it needs to find an integration with the more traditional approaches to the research on network advantages as well as on its problems and dysfunctionalities. This dissertation endeavors to contribute to the literature on network governance bridging different existing sociological and organizational theories. Specifically, the focus is on how political considerations can give precious insights to the study of networks development, and how coalitions formed within and across organizational boundaries can affect the evolution of cooperation.
L'analisi delle forme organizzative a rete ha attratto in modo significativo l'interesse della comunità scientifica, in particolare per quanto riguarda le dinamiche evolutive e i meccanismi di coordinamento e cooperazione alla base del loro funzionamento. La ricerca in questo campo presenta ancora alcune lacune, nonstante il significativo sviluppo delle network theories avvenuto negli anni recenti, a seguito dell'appello di Powell (1990) sulla necessità di sviluppare un nuovo framework concettuale per lo studio delle reti come forme organizzative paragonabili a mercato e gerarchia. L'analisi di considerazioni politiche nello studio delle reti è ancora poco sviluppata, e necessita di trovare un'integrazione con gli approcci più tradizionali alla ricerca di vantaggi e svantaggi delle reti. Questa tesi vuole contribuire a questa letteratura proponendo un collegamento tra le teorie sociologiche e organizzative esistenti. Nello specifico, il focus è posto sul come lo studio delle considerazioni politiche possa fornire importanti intuizioni sullo sviluppo delle reti, e su come le coalizioni formate all'interno e attraverso i confini organizzativi possano influenzare l'evoluzione della cooperazione.

2013/2014
Public Service Motivation (PSM) is a theorized attribute of public employees that provides them with the desire to serve the public interest. Although PSM definition varies among studies, its fundamental principle is that individuals are oriented to act in the public sector for the purpose of doing good for others and society. The PSM theory, thus, provides a useful basis for understanding the public employees motivation. However, the various studies have not always used the same PSM measurement instrument due to the construct complexity and differences among cultures. The purpose of the present study was to arrange a PSM questionnaire for the Italian public context. Eighty-one PSM items were collected from various questionnaire appeared in literature and submitted to a translation-back translation procedure. A pilot study grounded in a sample composed by 216 public employees verified the discriminating power of items and assessed their understandability. As a consequence, the number of items was reduced to 62. After randomization, the items were administered to a sample of 780 public employees and, through a series of factor analyses, a four-dimensions PSM model was obtained. The final outcome of this study is the Italian PSM Questionnaire, which is the first PSM questionnaire based on an Italian normative sample. The questionnaire includes a method to check the reliability of the answers of respondents as well. Factor score analyses of normative sample are illustrated. The questionnaire can be used for open recruitment procedures, as well as management, and development of public employees.
La Public Service Motivation (PSM) è un costrutto relativo ai dipendenti pubblici che riconosce il loro desiderio di servire l'interesse pubblico. Sebbene la definizione di PSM vari tra i vari studi presenti in letteratura, il suo principio fondamentale è che gli individui sarebbero orientati ad agire nel settore pubblico al fine di fare del bene per gli altri e per la società. La teoria PSM, quindi, fornisce una base utile per comprendere la motivazione dei dipendenti pubblici. Tuttavia, a causa della complessità del costrutto e delle differenze tra le culture, i vari studi non sempre hanno usato lo stesso strumento per misurare la PSM. Lo scopo di questo lavoro è pertanto quello di organizzare un questionario di misura della PSM per il contesto pubblico italiano. Ottantuno item relativi alla PSM sono stati raccolti da vari questionari apparsi in letteratura e sono stati sottoposti ad una procedura di Translation-Back translation. Uno studio pilota basato su un campione composto da 216 dipendenti pubblici ha verificato il potere discriminante degli item e valutato la loro comprensibilità. Di conseguenza, il numero degli item è stato ridotto a 62. Dopo essere stati sottoposti a randomizzazione, gli item sono stati somministrati ad un campione di 780 dipendenti pubblici e, attraverso una serie di analisi fattoriali, è stato ottenuto un modello a quattro dimensioni. Il risultato finale di questo studio è l’ Italian PSM Questionnaire, che è il primo questionario per la misura della PSM basato su un campione normativo italiano. L’Italian PSM Questionnaire prevede anche un metodo per verificare l'affidabilità delle risposte degli intervistati. La presente ricerca include l’analisi dei punteggi fattoriali del campione normativo. In conclusione, il questionario potrebbe essere utilizzato per le procedure di selezione, di gestione e di sviluppo dei dipendenti pubblici.
XXVII Ciclo
1976

The topic of the dissertation is knowledge combination that is key for innovation and the generation of new knowledge and for innovation. The dissertation comprises three chapters. In the first chapter, we longitudinally study the activity of a group of scientists and how they use metaphors to coordinate both disciplinary and multidisciplinary knowledge creation. In the second chapter, we show a method to identify concepts that bridge different disciplines through the analysis of textual networks. In the third chapter, we study how the structure of co-authorship network and the position of the articles in the literature affect their scientific impact.

La presente tesi teorica propone il MOPC index per misurare quanto i manager abbiano generato una comunità multinazionale di gestione aperta di un generico processo considerando congiuntamente l’affiliazione, la connettività interna, la forza e la multinazionalità. A tal fine ho impiegato il SAOM-Behavior valutando la collaborazione internazionale di processo ed annessa propensione come variabili multiple i cui valori e co-evoluzione dipendono dalla co-influenza tra le collaborazioni internazionali fasiche, tra le medesime e le rispettive propensioni fasiche e tra queste ultime. L’intensità relazionale dipende dal modello mentale condiviso, generatosi a livello di team internazionale, su una certa fase del processo mentre la propensione è funzione dell’orientamento e dell’attitudine alla collaborazione internazionale fasica. Il MOPC index è stato applicato alla comunità multinazionale di innovazione aperta e di gestione aperta introducendo due indici teorici: MOIC index e MOMC index. Infine ho teorizzato la catena del valore del manager (MVC) impiegando il processo innovativo e gestionale; considerando le collaborazioni internazionali sui due processi con annesse propensioni, si ho analizzato la collaborazione internazionale sulla MVC, la relativa propensione e la loro co-evoluzione. Cosi facendo, ho introdotto il MMC index per misurare la comunità multinazionale manageriale e, mediante questo, la multinazionalizzazione d’impresa da una prospettiva relazionale manageriale.
This thesis presents the theoretical MOPC index to measure how much the managers generate a multinational open process community by considering the affiliation, the internal connectivity, the strenghtness and the multinationality. I employed the SAOM-Behavior by evaluating the international process collaboration and the respective propensity as multiple variables whose value and co-evolution depend on the co-influence between the international collaborations phasic, between the same and the respective propensities phasic and between them. The intensity of these relationships depends on the International phasic team mental model sharing (TMMS) while the propensity’s one depends on the orientation and the attitude. Then the MOPC index has been applied to measure the multinational open innovation community and the multinational open management community by introducing the MOIC index and the MOMC index. Finally, I introduced the managerial value chain (MVC) as composed of the innovative and the management process. By integrating the international collaborations related to the two processes and their propensities It’s possible to measure the international MVC collaboration, the correlated propensity and their co-evolution. In doing so, I introduced the MMC index to determine the multinational managerial community’s degree and use it to evaluate the firm’s multinationalization by a managerial relational perspective.

La presente tesi teorica propone il MOPC index per misurare quanto i manager abbiano generato una comunità multinazionale di gestione aperta di un generico processo considerando congiuntamente l’affiliazione, la connettività interna, la forza e la multinazionalità. A tal fine ho impiegato il SAOM-Behavior valutando la collaborazione internazionale di processo ed annessa propensione come variabili multiple i cui valori e co-evoluzione dipendono dalla co-influenza tra le collaborazioni internazionali fasiche, tra le medesime e le rispettive propensioni fasiche e tra queste ultime. L’intensità relazionale dipende dal modello mentale condiviso, generatosi a livello di team internazionale, su una certa fase del processo mentre la propensione è funzione dell’orientamento e dell’attitudine alla collaborazione internazionale fasica. Il MOPC index è stato applicato alla comunità multinazionale di innovazione aperta e di gestione aperta introducendo due indici teorici: MOIC index e MOMC index. Infine ho teorizzato la catena del valore del manager (MVC) impiegando il processo innovativo e gestionale; considerando le collaborazioni internazionali sui due processi con annesse propensioni, si ho analizzato la collaborazione internazionale sulla MVC, la relativa propensione e la loro co-evoluzione. Cosi facendo, ho introdotto il MMC index per misurare la comunità multinazionale manageriale e, mediante questo, la multinazionalizzazione d’impresa da una prospettiva relazionale manageriale.
This thesis presents the theoretical MOPC index to measure how much the managers generate a multinational open process community by considering the affiliation, the internal connectivity, the strenghtness and the multinationality. I employed the SAOM-Behavior by evaluating the international process collaboration and the respective propensity as multiple variables whose value and co-evolution depend on the co-influence between the international collaborations phasic, between the same and the respective propensities phasic and between them. The intensity of these relationships depends on the International phasic team mental model sharing (TMMS) while the propensity’s one depends on the orientation and the attitude. Then the MOPC index has been applied to measure the multinational open innovation community and the multinational open management community by introducing the MOIC index and the MOMC index. Finally, I introduced the managerial value chain (MVC) as composed of the innovative and the management process. By integrating the international collaborations related to the two processes and their propensities It’s possible to measure the international MVC collaboration, the correlated propensity and their co-evolution. In doing so, I introduced the MMC index to determine the multinational managerial community’s degree and use it to evaluate the firm’s multinationalization by a managerial relational perspective.

Questa tesi assume ad oggetto il problema della conoscenza e della sua organizzazione dal punto di vista cognitivo (Anderson, 1978; Ausubel, 1968; Bianchi & Savardi, 2005; Bozzi, 1989; 2002; Ehrenfels, 1890; Fodor, 1975; 1983; Johnson-Laird, 1983; Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1929; Kosslyn, 1983; Massironi, 1998; Meinong, 1904; Michotte, 1954; Neisser, 1989; Paivio, 1971; 1986; Palmer, 1978; Pessa & Penna, 1994; 2004; Tversky, 1977; Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972; Wertheimer, 1923), focalizzandosi sul costrutto di mappa concettuale (Novak, 1998; Novak & Gowin, 1984; Novak & Musonda, 1991). Il contesto della ricerca è quello di un percorso blended di apprendimento universitario (S.S.I.S. del Veneto) sui temi della psicologia generale, svoltosi presso l’Università di Verona. La tesi si colloca all’interno del dibattito sulla definizione della conoscenza (Anderson, 1978; Johnson-Laird, 1983; Kosslyn, 1975; 1994; Paivio, 1971; Pylyshyn, 1981; Shepard, 1967), sollevando due importanti questioni: 1 –l’isomorfismo tra l’architettura del sistema rappresentazionale delle conoscenze delle mappe concettuali e il come gli individui effettivamente organizzino le conoscenze; 2 – il peso specifico assunto dai codici di elaborazione non-verbale e verbale, nelle fasi di costruzione e uso delle mappe concettuali. Il contenuto della tesi nelle sue parti teorica e sperimentale ruota attorno alle seguenti domande centrali: “che cos’è la conoscenza”, e “come viene acquisita, rappresentata, utilizzata” (Pessa & Penna, 1994, p. 8), ritenute fondamentali tanto dalle scienze cognitive (cit. 1994; 2004), quanto dalla filosofia della scienza (Blandino, 1972; Cambiano, 2004; Oldroyd, 1986), la cui genesi è rintracciabile già nelle teorie filosofiche della conoscenza di Platone (ed. 1966; 1971) e di Aristotele (ed. 1973; 1984; 1990; 1992; 1996). L’ipotesi principale della tesi coincide con la verifica sperimentale di un modello cognitivo di organizzazione delle conoscenze, che mostra il processo di elaborazione di materiale conoscitivo sul tema della psicologia generale nella forma di mappa concettuale, e che si assume generalizzabile ai saperi in genere.
Non Disponibile

One of the most significant current discussions in work and organisational psychology centres on the ways in which employees can face and adapt to growing levels of uncertainty and complexity in the workplace. In this regard, the construct of job crafting has gain momentum, as it designates a set of employees’ proactive behaviours balancing the job characteristics to allow optimal functioning in dynamic work environments. Despite a common agreement on the nature of job crafting as a bottom-up, self-initiated work redesign behaviour, construct clarification is still needed to advance knowledge on its nomological network. Against this background, this dissertation aimed at deepening knowledge on the structure and behavioural features of job crafting, in order to further investigate the role of employees’ psychosocial beliefs in driving such proactive behaviours, and whether and how intervention initiatives can be used to support them. To reach these aims, we present one theoretical chapter and three empirical contributions, conducted with different research designs. Chapter 2 presents a systematic literature review on the scales developed to measure job crafting and three empirical studies (i.e., cross-sectional, three-wave, and weekly diary) aimed at investigating the validity of a four-dimensional, hierarchical conceptualisation of behavioural job crafting. Our conceptualisation integrates the dimension of optimising job demands as a constituting domain of job crafting and accounts for the hierarchical features that reflect or form an overall job crafting construct. Results showed that a four-factor solution fitted the data well at both the within- and between-level of analysis. Also, these dimensions were relatively stable over time. Moreover, our results provide initial evidence suggesting that overall job crafting may be more strongly characterised by effortful actions to expand the work characteristics rather than to reduce them. In Chapter 3, we adopt a dynamic perspective to the theory of planned behaviour as an overarching theoretical framework allowing us to understand how personal and social beliefs drive behavioural job crafting over time. Assuming a bi-directional perspective, we further propose that previous engagement in job crafting serves to shape the drivers of job crafting behaviours. Results suggest that modelling and initiatives providing employees with the tools and techniques to craft their jobs are critical to stimulating virtuous cycles for job crafting to flourish in the work environment. Chapter 4 and 5 present a theoretical contribution and an intervention study on how the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) can serve to design job crafting interventions that are likely to be effective to support job crafting and subsequent flow at work because they target the psychosocial mechanisms underlying behaviour formation. Results from our quasi-experimental study show that the intervention was effective in supporting participants’ higher intentions to engage in job crafting compared to the control group, and in promoting weekly flow at work, which eventually prompted subsequent job crafting. Weekly initial and changing intentions were, in turn, both related to post-measures of job crafting. This dissertation contributes to the literature on job crafting and behaviour formation. In our studies, we explored and provided evidence on the role of different behavioural strategies in defining an overall conceptualisation of job crafting. Moreover, we investigated the psychosocial boundaries and processes that contribute to the formation of such a set of behaviours. The validity of such a framework to explain the roles of the antecedents of job crafting then served us to design and test an intervention initiative, which proved be effective to support employees’ behavioural tendencies towards the development of work environments that are auto-generative of resources.