While there have been significant changes in the world of work, one element that has been consistently present is the quest for meaningful work. Due to the variety of individual and organizational level benefits of meaningful work, researchers have explored the mechanisms by which it can be achieved within organizational settings. But work can be liminal and precarious, and it increasingly occurs outside the structures and boundaries of an organization. Consequently, the search for its meaningful work does not only comprise meaningfulness at work, but also the search for meaningful work itself. In the paper, we explore how meaningful work is not only obtained but also maintained by drawing from two parallel—though independently developed—research streams: job crafting and proactive career behaviors. We generate new theory on job crafting to understand the interactions between job crafting behaviors that aim at meaningfulness and those that aim at professionalization. We explore the boundary conditions of when these two kinds of crafting behavior complement each other and when they are in tension. Finally, we introduce the construct of integrative job crafting—meta-crafting behaviors that involve changing the cognitive, task, and relational boundaries of other job crafting behaviors—to capture the ways that individuals proactively manage and resolve these tensions.
