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We review the literature on stress in organizational settings and, based on a model of job insecurity and emotional intelligence by Jordan, Ashkanasy and Härtel (2002), present a new model where affective responses associated with stress mediate the impact of workplace stressors on individual and organizational performance outcomes. Consistent with Jordan et al., emotional intelligence is a key moderating variable. In our model, however, the components of emotional intelligence are incorporated into the process of stress appraisal and coping. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of these theoretical developments for understanding emotional and behavioral responses to workplace.

COVID-19 has galvanized educational institutions to rapidly adopt technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment where students are required to use and manage a diverse set of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Using the Transactional Theory of Stress, the authors investigate the impact of a TEL environment on students' stress, cognitive appraisal and coping. The authors also explore how the TEL environment impacts students' learning satisfaction and performance.

A survey using Qualtrics was developed to collect the data from 275 undergraduate students. The authors used the Partial Least Squares (PLS) through SmartPLS for instrument validation and testing of the structural model. The reflective-formative model was applied as the measures used to evaluate the first-order constructs are unidimensional, and the second-order construct has a formative measurement.

Students experienced technology-related stress due to ICT use. The negative appraisal such as harm and threat leads to emotion-focused coping among students, while the constructive appraisal such as positive and challenge leads to problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping was found to negatively impact learning satisfaction, while problem-focused coping was found to positively impact satisfaction. The authors also found that students with a higher level of experience with online and hybrid classes, higher confidence in computer usage and lower anxiety are better equipped to deal with technostress.

This study provides the first comprehensive technostress model in the IS literature that uses formative modeling to explain technostress creators and inhibitors and emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping, as was intended by the Transactional Theory of Stress. The result allows for rethinking TEL environment by drawing attention to strategies that can reduce technological complexity and uncertainty. For future research, it may be helpful to perform a longitudinal or experimental study to obtain rigorous causal inference.

There is limited research on the impact of technostress in the field of higher education. Also, technostress has been used inconsistently in Information Systems research, with the majority of research focusing on technostress creators and inhibitors only. This research incorporates all the constructs of the original theory adding new knowledge to the IS literature about the nature and causes of stress created by the use of technology.

Although scholarly inquiry into entrepreneurial stress has existed for nearly 40 years, little is known about how events drive stress responses in entrepreneurs, and how entrepreneur coping responses impact their well-being, relationships, and venture performance. In response to these deficiencies, the authors propose a stress events theory (SET) which they apply to an entrepreneurial context. The authors begin by providing a brief review of existing literature on entrepreneurial stress, which highlights unique stressors and events that entrepreneurs encounter. The authors then introduce event systems theory as developed by Morgeson, Mitchell, and Liu (2015). From this foundation, the authors develop SET, which describes how entrepreneurs react to particular event characteristics (novelty, disruptiveness, criticality, and duration). Additionally, the authors propose that how entrepreneurs interpret events drives coping choices, and that the accuracy of these coping choices subsequently differentiates the quality of entrepreneur well-being, interpersonal relationships, and venture-related consequences. The authors conclude with a discussion of contributions and areas of future research using our proposed theory.

Based on cognitive appraisal theory of stress, this study develops an integrated model to examine the double-edged sword effect and boundary conditions of the impact of organizational crisis on employee behavior.

This study collected 672 employees’ data through three stages of longitudinal follow-up. Hierarchical regression analysis and SPSS macro process were used to test the hypotheses.

The paper finds that organizational crisis induces unethical pro-organizational behavior through enhanced job insecurity and foster taking charge by stimulating career calling. Employee resilience negatively moderates the relationship between organizational crisis and job insecurity as well as the indirect effects of organizational crisis on unethical pro-organizational behavior through job insecurity. Conversely, it positively moderates the association between organizational crisis and career calling and the indirect effects on taking charge through career calling.

This study not only expands the research on the mechanisms of organizational crisis' effects on employees' behaviors but also provides practical guidance for corporate managers on how to respond to organizational crisis.

The following insights are available to organizations and managers: first, this study confirms that organizational crisis can be perceived as threatening stressors that create job insecurity, which in turn leads to pro-organizational unethical behavior. Therefore, managers in organizational crisis should focus on stress regulation and guidance, pay timely attention to changes in the mindset of employees to reduce job insecurity, and strictly prohibit unethical pro-organizational behavior. They should promptly calm and control the atmosphere of panic and anxiety in the organization, do a good job of coordinating the division of labor, reduce personnel conflicts and contradictions, create a good organizational climate and reduce employees' sense of stress and negative perceptions of organizational crisis, thus reducing job insecurity and being able to meet the challenges in a better state. Secondly, this study confirms that employees also perceive organizational crisis as challenges and develop career calling, which in turn inspires proactive change behaviors. This suggests that managers in organizational crisis should promote the positive perception of organizational crisis as challenge, stimulate the career calling of employees in organizational crisis and call on and encourage employees to actively adopt taking charge. Therefore, managers should promptly give employees work affirmation, rewards and punishments, enhance the sense of participation and intrinsic motivation of subordinates, improve self-efficacy and self-confidence levels, effectively reduce the negative perception of organizational crisis, awaken positive psychological energy within individuals, increase their sense of belonging to the organization and thus, increase employees' awareness of the positive challenges of organizational crisis, stimulate employees' career calling through positive and optimistic beneficial pressure drive them to lead the corresponding changes in the crisis. Finally, this study confirms that employees' own resilience can change the double-edged sword effect of organizational crisis. Employees with high resilience are more likely to see organizational crisis as challenge and are thus more likely to develop career calling and are more inclined to initiate change, while employees with low resilience are more likely to see organizational crisis as threat, are more negatively affected by them, develop greater job insecurity and are, thus, more inclined to commit unethical pro-organizational behaviors. This reflects the fact that organizations should constantly cultivate employees' resilience and enhance their cognitive toughness at the same time. For instance, the organization can regularly use promotional lectures and scenarios to help leaders and employees establish corporate ethics, strengthen moral beliefs and correctly understand the nature of unethical affinity behavior. Managers should encourage and advocate positive and correct behaviors such as overcoming difficulties, positive innovation and positive suggestions to promote the sustainable and healthy development of the organization.

The results of this study can increase the organization’s understanding of the negative effects of crisis, help the organization take measures to manage and guide the employees in organizational crisis, more effective and targeted functional changes within the organization, reduce stress damage and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of crisis management. It is also beneficial to improve competitiveness and foresight in the organization’s industry and enhance organizations and employees’ resilience.

This study explores the double-edged sword effect of organizational crisis on employees’ behavior from the perspective of the cognitive appraisal theory of stress, which theoretically opens up a new research perspective, enriches the research in the fields of organizational crisis and taking charge, pro-organizational unethical behavior relationship and practically provides theoretical guidance for enterprises and managers on how to effectively respond to organizational crisis from the employees, which is of great practical significance.

This chapter aims to (1) examine the effect of full-time employees’ STARA awareness on innovative work behavioural intentions in US casual dining restaurants; (2) investigate the mediating roles of employees’ challenge–hindrance appraisals of STARA awareness on the relationship between their STARA awareness and innovative work behavioural intentions; (3) compare the group differences between management employees and non-management employees; and (4) provide recommendations for the casual dining restaurants.

This chapter employed an online survey to collect data from 609 full-time employees in US casual dining restaurants, including 306 management employees and 303 non-management employees. Partial least squares–structural equation modelling was applied for data analysis. The results reveal that the high levels of employees’ STARA awareness raise innovative work behavioural intentions through the mediations of challenge appraisal of STARA awareness.

The proposed conceptual framework and empirical findings in this chapter enrich the literature of cognitive appraisal theory, transactional model and stress, two-dimensional stressor framework, and person-environment fit theory. Employees’ challenge appraisal of STARA awareness makes the job insecurity stressor to drive innovative work behavioural intentions. As STARA adoption deepens in casual dining restaurants, managers need to be aware of full-time employees’ stress and psychological responses towards STARA adoption. Restaurants are suggested to provide employees with adequate resources and support to help employees’ professional competency growth. The capable employees will appraise the job insecurity stressor induced by STARA adoption as an opportunity and be motivated to perform innovatively in the workplace. The casual dining restaurants may enjoy a competitive advantage in the market through value-added innovative activities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how stress appraisals (i.e. cognitive evaluations) influence entrepreneurial outcomes like expected financial well-being, life satisfaction, business growth and exit intentions.

This study uses a mixed-methods approach to provide methodological triangulation by analyzing data from two independent samples (qualitative data from 100 entrepreneurs in Study 1; quantitative regression analysis of a sample of 142 entrepreneurs in Study 2).

Results from the qualitative exploration (Study 1) show that entrepreneurs appraised venture-related stressors differently as a challenge, threat or hindrance. The quantitative study (Study 2) found that challenge stress appraisals were positively related to expected financial well-being and expected life satisfaction, threat stress appraisals were negatively related to expected financial well-being and positively related to business exit intentions, and hindrance stress appraisals were positively related to expected business growth and negatively related to business exit intentions.

Most entrepreneurship research focuses on stressors rather than appraisals of the stressor. Drawing upon the transactional theory of stress that explains how stress appraisals are an important consideration for understanding the stress process, these two studies showed that stress appraisals differ for each entrepreneur (Study 1) and that stress appraisals explain more variance in many entrepreneurial outcomes than stressors (Study 2).

This study aims to examine distinct influences of two dimension job stress on job satisfaction and the moderating effects of guanxi-oriented attitude on the relationship between job stress and job satisfaction under cognitive appraisal theory and transactional theory.

In this study, surveys are conducted among state-owned younger bank employees. The author uses the scale of job challenge stress and hindrance stress developed among Chinese younger bank employees to measure the two dimension job stress. After demonstrating guanxi-relative concepts, the moderating effects of guanxi-oriented attitude are examined in this study.

The results demonstrate that guanxi-oriented attitude does not significantly moderate the influence of challenge stress on job satisfaction, while it significantly moderates the noxious influence of hindrance stress on job satisfaction. Theoretical contributions are also discussed.

First, this study suggests specific procedures to conduct hierarchical regression analysis and confirms the effects by parameters. It also proposes and summarizes specific procedures on how to calculate regression equations and draw regression lines to check the interaction received from the hierarchical regression analysis visually. Second, based on cognitive appraisal theory, guanxi-oriented attitude, a Chinese indigenous cognitive concept, was verified in this study. According to the importance of guanxi in Chinese society, the paper shows that employees who value guanxi more will buffer the noxious effects of job stress. Trainings and counseling should be designed to regulate the normal guanxi-oriented-related cognition.

The purpose of this study is to explore a balanced understanding of the relationship between perceived occupational stigma and social workers’ proactive behaviors in China. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory, this study explored the mediating role of threat and challenge appraisals, as well as the moderating role of trait resilience.

Data were collected using a time-lagged research design. The hypotheses were examined using a sample of 338 social workers in China.

Perceived occupational stigma is appraised as both a challenge and a threat simultaneously. Challenge appraisal positively mediated perceived occupational stigma and proactive behavior, whereas threat appraisal negatively mediated this relationship. Trait resilience moderated the effect of threat appraisal, suggesting that perceived occupational stigma was appraised as a threat when trait resilience was lower (rather than higher), which then reduced social workers’ proactive behaviors.

This study enriches the literature on perceived occupational stigma by identifying the relationship and mechanism of perceived occupational stigma-proactive behaviors and a boundary condition from the theoretical perspective of cognitive appraisals. It demonstrates both the positive and negative aspects of perceived occupational stigma as appraised by social workers in relation to an important workplace outcome of proactive behaviors. In addition, it offers a fresh approach by exploring perceived occupational stigma from the perspective of social workers.

Based on the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior through two different paths: bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation. Besides, the moderating effects of bystander uncertainty tolerance on the two paths are also explored.

In this study, 438 employees and their direct leaders from eight Chinese companies were surveyed in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software.

Peer abusive supervision leads bystanders to develop assertive impression management motivation and, thus, to exhibit more proactive behaviors. At the same time, peer abusive supervision also causes bystanders to develop defensive impression management motivation, which reduces the frequency of performing proactive behaviors. In addition, this study finds that bystander uncertainty tolerance plays a moderating role in influencing bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation in response to peer abusive supervision.

Starting from the bystander perspective, this study verifies the double-edged sword effect of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior as well as the mechanism of differentiated effects through cognitive appraisal, which broadens the scope of the research on abusive supervision, and deepens the academic understanding and development of the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress. At the same time, it also provides new ideas for organizations to reduce the negative effects of workplace abusive behavior.