Are you interested in examining how team members proactively shape their jobs? Do you wonder how team members and leaders can motivate each other to engage in (team) job crafting? Have you (almost) completed a Master's degree (e.g., psychology, business, HRM, or a related field) and are you looking for an exciting opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research? Then please consider applying for this PhD position.

Job description
The Work and Organizational Psychology team at the Department of Psychology, Education & Child Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam is looking for a PhD candidate to strengthen the team. We are looking for a PhD candidate to join a new research project on team job crafting led by Dr. Melissa Twemlow, Dr. Jan Pletzer, and Prof. dr. Arnold Bakker. This 4-year PhD project aims to investigate how team members and leaders empower each other to collectively craft engaging jobs.

Job crafting refers to employees’ proactive behaviors to shape their jobs to better fit their skills, interests, and abilities. Like individual employees, teams may also collectively craft their work, yet research on the interrelation between effective individual and team job crafting remains limited. As employees increasingly work in teams, whereby work is often highly interdependent, the impact and consequences of job crafting for others in the team can no longer be neglected.

We are especially interested in uncovering the empowering or even contagious impact that team crafting can potentially have on the crafting efforts of individual team members, and vice versa. For example, how can individuals motivate fellow team members to also craft their jobs, such that not only the individual but also the team feels more engaged at work? Also, can successful team crafting empower individual team members to further craft their own jobs around the crafted teamwork?

In other words, this PhD project aims to examine the cross-over effects of individual-level and team-level job crafting and its impact on work engagement and other outcomes. Furthermore, we aim to study how both empowering team members and leaders encourage (team) job crafting and (team) strengths use toward making the team (members) more engaged. For this project, you will be working on conducting several studies among teams and their members as part of your dissertation, with a variety of methods ranging from diary studies to surveys and interviews.

Tasks and responsibilities:

• Conducting studies on team job crafting leading to research papers which form the basis of your PhD dissertation;
• Contributing to the publication of research findings in scientific peer-reviewed journals;
• Presenting the studies at (inter)national conferences;
• Contributing to the teaching activities (10%) of the department and the opportunity to develop your teaching skills (BKO).

• You (almost) hold a university (research) master’s degree with excellent grades in psychology, HRM, business, organization studies, or a related field;
• You have a strong interest in doing research in general and on the topic of team job crafting in particular;
• You have a good understanding of and experience with quantitative research methods, and have an affinity with designing studies;
• You have a proactive research orientation and good organizational skills;
• You are highly analytical, eager, and can work independently;
• You have excellent communication and (academic) writing skills in English; being able to speak and write in Dutch is desirable but not essential.

We offer you an internationally oriented and varied job in an enthusiastic team, with excellent working conditions in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU).

The start date of this position is April 2024 and you will be based at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) in Rotterdam. The position is for 0.8 - 1 fte. The salary starts with € 2.770 gross per month on a full-time basis in your first year and ends up with € 3.539 gross per month on a full-time basis (38 hours) in the fourth year, in accordance with scale P of the CAO-NU. In total, the PhD contract is for four years. You start with a contract for one year and depending on good performance this will be continued with a contract for the other three years. In case of a 0.8 fte contract, the period will become five years.

Everything else we offer you, you can find below!

• Everything you need for a good work-life balanceOpens external: the option to work from home in consultation with your manager, 41 days of paid leave with a 40 hour contract, 8% holiday pay and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus, and a significant discount on a subscription for our on-campus sports centreOpens external!
• Sustainable, inclusive and diverse work environmentOpens external with an open culture, where you can be yourself and we pay attention to each other and to the world around us. Make the most of our bicycle budget, or join networks such as Young@EUROpens external, FAMEOpens external, QuEUR, or Young Erasmus Academy.
• Time and space for your development in the broadest sense: development days and a personal career budgetOpens external, foreign exchange opportunities with most costs paid by EUR, and free access to our university libraryOpens external.
• Good pension with ABPOpens external that EUR contributes 2/3rds towards, discounts on various collective insurancesOpens external with Zilveren Kruis Achmea, Loyalis, and Allianz, and compensation for travel, working from home and home internet use.
• Are you currently combining your job with parenthood, or do you want to do so in the future? EUR offers partially paid parental leave and fully paid additional birth leave for partnersOpens external, and our campus features a daycareOpens external.
• Moving to the Netherlands for your job with EUR? Then you may be eligible for the 30%-rulingOpens external if you meet the requirements of the Belastingdienst (Dutch tax agency), and with our Dual Career ProgrammeOpens external we will also help your partner find the right job for them.

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) is an internationally oriented university with a strong social orientation in its education and research, as expressed in our mission ‘Creating positive societal impact’. EUR is home to 3.700 academics and professionals and almost 33.000 students from more than 140 countries. Everything we do, we do under the credo The Erasmian Way – Making Minds Matter. We’re global citizens, connecting, entrepreneurial, open-minded, and socially involved. These Erasmian Values function as our internal compass and create EUR’s distinctive and recognizable profile. From these values, with a broad perspective and with an eye for diversity, different backgrounds and opinions, our employees work closely together to solve societal challenges from the dynamic and cosmopolitan city of Rotterdam. Thanks to the high quality and positive societal impact of our research and education, EUR can compete with the top European universities. www.eur.nl.

Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB)
The Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences is home to a vast diversity of scientific disciplines: public administration, pedagogical sciences, psychology and sociology. In addition, the Erasmus University College, IHS, and two research institutes RISBO and DRIFT are linked to the faculty. This also reflects in the content of the (international) bachelor's and master's programs and in research. Our activities are always focused on people and society. At the ESSB fundamental, internationally oriented research is of paramount importance. In addition, social research for professionals, policy makers, and the society is part of our research activities. ESSB offers a stimulating research environment where major national and international research grants are received. Appealing guest researchers and ambitious PhD candidates come along to conduct their research. Our education is small-scale and works with innovative forms of education. Both the Dutch and English programs are highly ranked by students and alumni. ESSB is home to over 4000 students and more than 400 staff-members. The different disciplines are supported by the Faculty Office (for more information, please visit www.eur.nl/essb).

Team Work and Organizational Psychology

As a team, we aim to leverage and unite all members' unique strengths in our teaching, research, and wider impact to contribute to a world of work that fosters the potential and well-being of all employees to create healthy productive organizations. We are a diverse and multi-disciplinary team, where each member brings a unique set of skills, expertise, and academic interests. This key strength allows our team to approach tasks and challenges in a multifaceted way and cover the full breadth and complexity of the work and organizational psychology domain in our teaching, research, and impact.

We are united in our striving to collectively provide high quality contributions to our field across all three pillars of work and organizational psychology: work psychology, organizational psychology, and personnel psychology. We do this from a positive psychology perspective: Using a psychological lens focused on the employee, we aim to leverage the strengths of individual employees to foster employee well-being and performance.

Department of Psychology, Education & Child Studies (DPECS)
More information about the education of DPECS can be found here: https://www.eur.nl/en/essb/education/find-your-study