Driving Change-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Public Sector: The Roles of Empowering Leadership and Job Autonomy through Job Crafting

This study aims to examine how empowering leadership and job autonomy influence change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (CO-OCB) through the mediating role of job crafting. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) framework, this research proposes that leadership and autonomy function as critical job resources that stimulate proactive behavioral change among employees. A quantitative approach was employed using survey data collected from 1,022 employees in a public financial organization undergoing structural and digital reform. Data were analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM). The results show that empowering leadership and job autonomy have significant positive effects on job crafting. In turn, job crafting significantly enhances CO-OCB, highlighting its central role as a behavioral mechanism through which employees contribute to organizational change. Mediation analysis confirms that job crafting significantly mediates the relationship between both antecedents and CO-OCB. These findings contribute to the literature by emphasizing the role of proactive work redesign in translating contextual resources into change-oriented behavior, particularly in the public sector. Practically, organizations are encouraged to strengthen empowering leadership and provide meaningful autonomy to support employee-driven transformation.