Dynamics of Empowering Leadership & Job Crafting Among Generation Z Civil Servants: Examining The Moderating Role Of Coworker Social Support In The Public Transportation Sector

The ongoing generational transition within Indonesia's public civil service—particularly at the Transportation Human Resources Development Agency (BPSDM Perkomunikasi), Ministry of Transportation—has positioned Generation Z civil servants at the forefront of administrative reform. Characterized by high demands for task autonomy, horizontal transparency, and purposeful job engagement, these young professionals frequently confront institutional frictions within rigid, hierarchically stratified Weberian bureaucracies. This study aims to examine the empirical impact of empowering leadership on proactive job crafting behaviors among Generation Z public servants, while rigorously evaluating the moderating role of coworker social support as a crucial relational boundary condition. Anchored in the integrated frameworks of Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory and Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory, an explanatory cross-sectional investigation was conducted surveying 150 Generation Z civil servants purposively sampled across BPSDM Perhub. Psychometrically validated scales were administered, and potential Common Method Bias was empirically constrained and verified via Harman's Single Factor Test (31.4% single-factor variance < 50%). Inferential hypothesis testing was executed through mean-centered Moderated Regression Analysis (MRA) and simple slopes decomposition using R Studio (version 4.3+). The empirical findings demonstrate that empowering leadership exerts a statistically significant positive effect on job crafting (? = 0.362, t = 5.328, p < 0.001), indicating that authority delegation and coaching cultivate proactive adjustments in structural and social resources. Furthermore, the interaction term yields a positive and statistically significant moderating effect (? = 0.246, t = 2.417, p = 0.017), generating an incremental variance contribution (?R² = 0.023, F-change = 6.34, p = 0.013; total R² = 0.471). Simple slopes analysis reveals that the positive influence of empowering leadership on job crafting expands substantially under high coworker social support (+1 SD, b = 0.455, p < 0.001) relative to low coworker support conditions (-1 SD, b = 0.227, p = 0.006). These results corroborate that coworker support serves as an indispensable psychological safety net that multiplies the potential of leadership empowerment in overcoming bureaucratic inertia. Practically, this research highlights the necessity for administrative training bodies to incorporate participative and coaching competencies—aligned with the global SHRM-BASK framework—while deliberately fostering cooperative workplace climates to enhance public sector agility and strategic connectivity.