Citation

Konze AK, Rivkin W, Schmidt KH. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017; 14(12): e14121608.

Affiliation

Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors at the Technical University Dortmund, 44139 Dortmund, Germany. schmidtkh@ifado.de.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph14121608

PMID

29261116

Abstract

Previous meta-analytic findings have provided ambiguous evidence on job control as a buffering moderator of the adverse impact of job demands on psychological well-being. To disentangle these mixed findings, we examine the moderating effect of job control on the adverse effects of quantitative workload and emotional dissonance as distinct work-related demands on emotional exhaustion over time. Drawing on the job demands-control model, the limited strength model of self-control, and the matching principle we propose that job control can facilitate coping with work-related demands but at the same time may also require employees' self-control. Consequently, we argue that job control buffers the adverse effects of quantitative workload while it reinforces the adverse effects of emotional dissonance, which also necessitates self-control. We examine the proposed relations among employees from an energy supplying company (N = 139) in a cross-lagged panel study with a six-month time lag. Our results demonstrate a mix of causal and reciprocal effects of job characteristics on emotional exhaustion over time. Furthermore, as suggested, our data provides evidence for contrasting moderating effects of job control. That is, job control buffers the adverse effects of quantitative workload while it reinforces the adverse effects of emotional dissonance on emotional exhaustion.

Language: en

Keywords

cross-lagged panel; emotional dissonance; emotional exhaustion; job control; job demands-control model; quantitative workload