Effects of social support on professors’ work stress

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how various types of workplace social support from different support sources interact with occupational stressors to predict the psychological well‐being of university professors.

Design/method/approach

A total of 99 full‐time professors participated via an online or paper questionnaire.

Findings

Using moderated hierarchical multiple regressions, the results support the hypotheses that the effects of occupational stressors on professors’ psychological well‐being vary depending on the level of perceived workplace social support. However, although workplace social support buffered the effects of some occupational stressors (i.e. work overload), social support exacerbated the adverse effects of others (i.e. decision‐making ambiguity).

Research limitations/implications

The dichotomous effects of social support suggest that the impact of social support may be moderated by another variable, such as perceived control over the stressor at hand. The present findings echo calls for further refinements to models of social support to examine how individuals’ situational appraisals shape the variable interactive effects of stressors and social support on individuals’ health and well‐being.

Originality/value

This study provides new insight into academic work stress by systematically examining the effects of workplace social support on professors’ work stress experience. This study also extends our current understanding of the relationships among stressors, strains, and social support by providing empirical evidence that workplace social support is neither consistently beneficial nor a unidimensional construct.

Citation

Moeller, C. and Chung‐Yan, G.A. (2013), "Effects of social support on professors’ work stress", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 188-202. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513541311306431