Job Autonomy and Nurses Empowerment; The Mediating role of Job Crafting in Azad Kashmir’s Healthcare Sector

The nursing profession is increasingly affected by workload pressures, emotional issues, and resource difficulties. In this study, job autonomy positively related among nurse’s engagement and satisfaction at workplace. Along with this, job crafting act as an interlinking mechanism in this relationship. A self-administered structured survey with a sample comprising 286 nurses from public and private hospitals in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) was used to collect the empirical information. The findings suggested that job autonomy positively and significantly affects engagement and job satisfaction. Furthermore, job crafting partially mediates the relationship between job autonomy and job engagement and job satisfaction. This suggests that nurses with higher job autonomy are more inclined to change their tasks and interactions with the job proactively in order to engage with and be satisfied with the job. This study makes the following contributions to the research literature, it provides empirical evidence about a relatively under-studied setting, examining the mediator role of job crafting in the relationship between autonomy and positive outcomes at the workplace. The findings suggest that there should be an increased focus within healthcare organizations on creating nursing positions with a greater sense of autonomy as well as designing jobs proactively to promote sustainable engagement, job satisfaction and overall well-being of nurses working in those organizations.