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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism through which stressors influence job crafting. Based on regulatory focus theory, this study explores the mediating role of work regulatory focus between the challenge-hindrance stressors and approach-avoidance job crafting and the moderating role of trait regulatory focus.

The authors collected survey data in a northwestern city of China from 578 employees working in the finance, real estate and IT industries. Results were analyzed using Mplus 7.

The results reveal that challenge stressors have a positive effect on both approach job crafting (i.e. increasing structural job resources, increasing social job resources and increasing challenging job demands) and avoidance job crafting (i.e. decreasing hindering job demands) via work promotion focus. On the other hand, hindrance stressors have a positive effect on only avoidance job crafting via work prevention focus. In addition, trait promotion focus accentuates the influence of challenge-hindrance stressors on work regulatory focus, as well as the indirect effect of challenge-hindrance stressors on approach-avoidance job crafting respectively. Trait prevention focus only weakens the influence of challenge stressors on work promotion focus.

This study unfolds how stressors relate to job crafting. However, the cross-sectional design may limit the causal inferences.

This study provides new insight into the relationship between stressors and job crafting by explicating the motivational mechanism and boundary conditions.

This article seeks to apply the challenge–hindrance conceptualization of demands to a model that relates stressors to emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. Supervisory support, a resource, is posited as a precursor to demands, and work–family conflict (WFC) and interpersonal conflict (IPC) at work are expected to mediate the demand–strain and job satisfaction relationships.

This cross‐sectional self‐report survey included a sample of 600 government employees in Canada.

In addition to directly influencing job satisfaction, supervisory support reduces strain and increases motivation by decreasing hindrances and interpersonal conflict. Also, although, challenge and hindrance demands are both positively associated with strain, task complexity is positively associated with job satisfaction, whereas role ambiguity and interpersonal conflict are negatively associated with job satisfaction. Furthermore, work–family conflict and interpersonal conflict fully mediate the effects of supervisory support, role conflict, and task complexity on strain, and they reduce the effects of ambiguity on strain. Thus, these factors have limited effects on strain by themselves; rather, they act on strain through emotional demands.

Some challenges have a strong connection with resources, yet also induce strain. Future models should incorporate the challenge‐hindrance approach to classifying demands and should examine challenge demands that motivate people to engage in stressful activities. Also, although work‐family conflict and interpersonal conflict at work concern different spheres, future research should incorporate both spheres and employ emotional demands as mediating variables.

Given that some challenges can be motivating yet stressful, the consequences of interventions can be difficult to forecast. Results point to the importance of carefully designing interventions and the role of WFC and IPC as potential levers in managing strain arising from complex jobs and other types of challenges.

This paper considers a unique model of demands, resources, and outcome variables that contributes to the knowledge about how to address stress.

Research on effort-reward “imbalance” (ERI) has gained popularity in the occupational health literature, and authors typically use effort-reward ratios (ERRs) to study this phenomenon. This article provides a methodological and theoretical critique of this literature and suggestions on how future research can better study joint effects of efforts and reward.

The authors conducted a simulation study, analyzed panel data and surveyed the literature on the theoretical and methodological basis of the “imbalance” concept.

The simulation study indicates that under many conditions the ERR captures main effects of effort and reward and that effects also depend on the scaling of the variables. The panel data showed that when main effects and the interactions of effort and reward are entered simultaneously in a regression predicting mental and physical health, the significant effect of the ERRs disappears. The literature review reveals that psychological theories include more elaborate theoretical ideas on joint effects of effort and reward.

The results suggest that moderated multiple regression analyses are better suited to detect a misfit between effort and reward than ERRs. The authors also suggest to use the term effort-reward fit in future research.

Methodologically and conceptually the authors showed that the ERR is not an appropriate approach because it confuses main effects with interaction effects. Furthermore, the concept of ERI is better substituted by a broader conceptualization of effort-reward fit that can be integrated with the existing literature on person-environment fit. Recommendations for future research are provided.

Increasing speed in many life domains is currently being discussed under the term “social acceleration” as a societal phenomenon which not only affects western societies, but may also lead to job demands arising from accelerated change. Demands such as work intensification and intensified learning and their changes over time may increase emotional exhaustion, but may also induce positive effects. The purpose of this paper is to examine how increases in demands arising from accelerated change affect employee well-being.

A total of 587 eldercare workers provided data on work intensification and intensified learning as well as on exhaustion and job satisfaction at two points in time.

Work intensification was negatively related to future job satisfaction and positively related to future emotional exhaustion, whereas intensified learning was positively associated with future job satisfaction and negatively with future emotional exhaustion.

Intensified demands represents a growing social as well as work-specific challenge which needs to be addressed by practitioners.

Using a longitudinal perspective this study is the first to examine the relationship of increases in work intensification and intensified learning with job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion at work.

Sayings like “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life” epitomize Western society’s emphasis on both the importance and assumed positive nature of passion for work. Although research has linked passion and increased well-being, growing anecdotal evidence suggests the potential for negative individual outcomes of work passion, including decreased well-being and increased stress and burnout. In the present chapter, the authors integrate the Dualistic Model of Passion (which consists of harmonious and obsessive passion), identity theory, and identity threat to describe the paradox of passion, in which individuals overidentify with the target of their passion (i.e., work), resulting in the “too much of a good thing” effect driven by excess passion of either type. The authors thus provide a novel theoretical lens through which to examine the different reactions that individuals may enact in response to threats to passion-related identities, including how these responses might differentially impact well-being, stress, and burnout. The authors conclude by offering future directions for research on the paradox of passion.

Surprisingly, most studies have failed to demonstrate a strong correlation between organizational constraints (conditions at work that make doing a job difficult) and job performance. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the view that constraints are a direct barrier on performance and take an alternative approach whereby constraints have an indirect effect via decreased motivation and increased workload. Further, differential effects of various constraints are examined.

Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 660 engineers licensed in the state of Florida using a single online survey.

Qualitative results showed that the most commonly experienced constraints were from coworkers and organizational rules and procedures. Constraints identified as having a greater detrimental effect on motivation are from the supervisor, and organizational rules and procedures. Quantitative results supported an indirect effects model that includes an indirect path via motivation, and a path via workload, which had a curvilinear component.

This is one of few studies to explain the relationship between constraints and performance, rather than simply estimate it. The use of mixed methods allows us to gain an in-depth understanding of constraints, and the convergence of findings across the methods increases confidence in this study’s results.

Drawing from both the transactional theory of stress and the conservation of resources theory, this paper sets out to investigate the role of demand-specific challenge and hindrance appraisal of emotional demands, as well as time pressure and perceived goal progress within the challenge–hindrance framework.

For this research, 91 employees provided daily diary data for one working week. Focusing on within-persons effects, multilevel moderated mediation models using multilevel path analyses were applied.

Both emotional demands and time pressure exert positive effects on work engagement when people expect resource gain (challenge appraisal), independent of actual resource gain (achievement). Furthermore, results show that goal progress buffers negative effects of perceived blocked resource gain (hindrance appraisal) on both emotional and motivational well-being.

This research proposes an extension and refinement of the challenge–hindrance stressor framework to explain health-impairing and motivational processes of emotional demands and time pressure, combining reasoning from both appraisal and resource theory perspectives. The study identifies demand-specific challenge and hindrance appraisals as mediators linking demands to emotional and motivational well-being, emphasizing the influence of goal progress as a resource on these relations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between challenge-hindrance stressors and employees’ career initiative while incorporating the mediating role of positive affect and the moderating role of job autonomy.

Five proposed hypotheses were tested using path analysis with two waves of data collected from 136 part-time MBA students.

The findings show that challenge stressors indirectly facilitate career initiative, whereas hindrance stressors indirectly inhibit career initiative, both with positive affect as mediators. Job autonomy enhances the direct relationship between positive affect and career initiative, as well as the indirect relationships among challenge/hindrance stressors, positive affect and career initiative.

The study brings a new perspective to understanding why an employee conducts career initiative, thereby widening the scope of the antecedents of career initiative. The study discloses positive affect as the mediator that transmits the opposite effects from challenge-hindrance stressors to career initiative. It also identifies job autonomy as an important boundary condition for positive affect to exert its influence on career initiative, as well as challenge-hindrance stressors that influence career initiative via positive affect.

Shifting to OLSL classes during the pandemic can bring learners ambivalent experiences: negative, positive or both appraisals toward the technologies. However, few studies have examined how ambivalent experiences can influence students' learning behaviors, specifically cyberslacking and active participation. Using the challenge-hindrance stressor framework, this study investigates the impact of challenge and hindrance appraisals on these learning behaviors.

This study uses a mixed methods approach to answer research questions. An interview was conducted to identify the key components of ambivalent appraisals, and a survey was conducted to empirically examine the impact of challenge and hindrance appraisals on learners' behaviors in online live streaming learning (OLSL) contexts. The data of 675 university students were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study found that hindrance appraisal leads to cyberslacking while challenge appraisal leads to active participation, but it can also cause cyberslacking. Social presence has a double-edged effect, acting as both a facilitator and inhibitor, strengthening the effect of hindrance appraisal on cyberslacking and the impact of challenge appraisal on active participation.

Prior studies have primarily focused on the negative side (techno-distress) of technology appraisals. This study simultaneously examines the positive side, techno-eustress, on learners' behaviors in OLSL contexts, and explores the moderating effects of social presence. This study contributes to the technostress and technology adaptation literature by revealing how technology-induced ambivalent appraisals impact behavioral responses. It offers important theoretical and practical implications for education tool designers.