Empowerment and role stress in the human interface between the firm and its markets

Frontline employees constitute one of the key interfaces that service organisations have with their markets. Many strategies to enhance the ability of these employees to satisfy the needs of customers have been proposed. Amongst these, empowering employees has been suggested to enhance the customer orientation of the firm and consequently its effectiveness in serving the market. However, the impact of empowerment in service organisations remains somewhat contentious. This paper examines the role of empowerments an organisational service strategy and identifies its consequences for role stress, job satisfaction and the willingness of service employees to serve their customers.

The role of emotional labour and role stress on burnout and psychological strain in high contact service employees

This study examines the relationships between job demands (in the form of role stressors and emotional management) and employee burnout amongst high contact service employees. Employees in customer facing roles are frequently required to manage overwhelming, conflicting or ambiguous demands, which they may feel ill-equipped to handle. Simultaneously, they must manage the emotions they display towards customers, suppressing some, and expressing others, be they genuine or contrived. If the in-role effort required of employees exceeds their inherent capacity to cope, burnout may result. Burnout, in turn, can have serious detrimental consequences for the psychological well being of employees. We find that both emotional management and role stressors impact burnout. We also confirm that burnout predicts psychological strain. In line with the Job Demands and Resources Model, we examine the mitigating impact of perceived support on these relationships but do not find a significant mitigating impact.

Emotional Intelligence and Organisational Role Stress — A study among managers in selected industrial organisations in Kerala

Emotional intelligence is very important in organisations and the ability to manage feelings and handle stress is an important aspect of El. Even though a number of studies have been done to prove that E1 is related to organisationally relevant variables like leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction, performance, career success etc., and the theoretical grounding for emotional intelligence-stress-relationship seems sound, only a few studies have been done to establish this linkage. This study is an attempt to measure emotional intelligence and organisational role stress of managers working in industrial organisations and to examine the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Organisational Role Stress. It also attempts to explore the influence of personal and occupational variables viz., age, education, gender, marital status, experience, department, type of organisation and designation on emotional intelligence. The investigator has also examined the difference in the level of role stress experienced by junior, middle and senior-level managers. The main objective of the study is to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and organisational role stress.

Masculine gender role stress and the pursuit of muscularity.

The relationship between masculine gender role stress and body change was examined in 129 men, aged between 18 and 40 years (M = 24.38; SD = 6.04), who completed the Masculine Gender Role Stress scale (MGRS), the Drive for Muscularity Scale, the Eating Disorder Inventory, and the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire. Significant relationships were observed between MGRS and drive for muscularity and, to a lesser extent, drive for thinness and disordered eating symptomatology. These relationships were mediated by body dissatisfaction, and several of the relationships were positively moderated by self-reported affective problems and personal ineffectiveness. Although interpretation of the results is limited by the cross-sectional design employed, the results are consistent with the proposition that a fear of deviating from the masculine gender role, particularly in men who feel ineffective and who have difficulty controlling and accessing their emotions, is related to concern with, and pursuit of, muscularity and leanness.

Role Stress and Job Outcomes in Public Accounting: Have the Gender Experiences Converged?

Using data collected from professionals in a large U.S. national public accounting firm, we explored gender differences in perceived levels of role stress and job outcomes as well as the effects of a healthy lifestyle as a coping mechanism for role stress, burnout and related job outcomes. Our large sample size (1,681) and equal participation by women (49.7%) and men (50.3%) allowed us to analyze the causal relationships of these variables using a previously tested multi-disciplinary research model (Jones, Norman, & Wier, 2010). We found that women and men perceive similar levels of role stress as defined by role ambiguity and role overload, and that women perceive less role conflict. Men and women perceive similar levels of job satisfaction and job performance. Contrary to earlier studies, women do not report higher levels of turnover intentions. Results show that efforts of the public accounting firms over the past decade may be somewhat successful in reducing the levels of role stress and turnover intentions among women. Another plausible explanation could be that an expansionist theory of gender, work and family (Barnett & Hyde, 2001) may now be responsible for improved well-being of females to the point where the genders have converged in their experience of role stress and job outcomes in public accounting.

Occupational role stress is associated with higher cortisol reactivity to acute stress

We investigated whether occupational role stress is associated with differential levels of the stress hormone cortisol in response to acute psychosocial stress. Forty-three medication-free nonsmoking men aged between 22 and 65 years (mean ± SEM: 44.5 ± 2) underwent an acute standardized psychosocial stress task combining public speaking and mental arithmetic in front of an audience. We assessed occupational role stress in terms of role conflict and role ambiguity (combined into a measure of role uncertainty) as well as further work characteristics and psychological control variables including time pressure, overcommitment, perfectionism, and stress appraisal. Moreover, we repeatedly measured salivary cortisol and blood pressure levels before and after stress exposure, and several times up to 60 min thereafter. Higher role uncertainty was associated with a more pronounced cortisol stress reactivity (p = .016), even when controlling for the full set of potential confounders (p < .001). Blood pressure stress reactivity was not associated with role uncertainty. Our findings suggest that occupational role stress in terms of role uncertainty acts as a background stressor that is associated with increased HPA-axis reactivity to acute stress. This finding may represent a potential mechanism regarding how occupational role stress may precipitate adverse health outcomes.

The role of emotional labour and role stress on burnout and psychological strain in high contact service employees

This study examines the relationships between job demands (in the form of role stressors and emotional management) and employee burnout amongst high contact service employees. Employees in customer facing roles are frequently required to manage overwhelming, conflicting or ambiguous demands, which they may feel ill-equipped to handle. Simultaneously, they must manage the emotions they display towards customers, suppressing some, and expressing others, be they genuine or contrived. If the in-role effort required of employees exceeds their inherent capacity to cope, burnout may result. Burnout, in turn, can have serious detrimental consequences for the psychological well being of employees. We find that both emotional management and role stressors impact burnout. We also confirm that burnout predicts psychological strain. In line with the Job Demands and Resources Model, we examine the mitigating impact of perceived support on these relationships but do not find a significant mitigating impact.

Revisiting the role stress-commitment relationship:can managerial interventions help?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating influences of empowerment and professional development on role stress-commitment relationships, while examining and confirming the effects of role stress on organisational commitment. Design/methodology/approach: The results are drawn from a cross-sectional survey of 184 front-line employees (FLEs) from a travel service organization. Multiple and moderated regression analyses were employed to test the hypothesised direct and interaction effects. Findings: The results show that role stressors influence affective organizational commitment in FLEs negatively. Role ambiguity did not, unexpectedly, influence continuance commitment positively, but role conflict did. Professional development and empowerment are important management tools that can be used to combat the detrimental effect of role stress on organizational commitment. The paper finds empowerment to be particularly useful in combating the dysfunctional effects of role ambiguity on affective commitment, while professional development is a key tool that helps to combat the dysfunctional effects of role conflict on affective and continuance commitment. However, there are caveats associated with the implementation of these management tools. Practical implications: It is important for management to understand role stress from the FLE perspective, and strategically use intervention tools to help moderate the effects of role stress on organizational commitment components. Originality/value: This study adds further support to the literature that role ambiguity and role conflict should be studied as distinct components of role stress because treating role stress as a single construct may result in suboptimal outcomes for managers, and misleading findings for researchers. In this context, the paper contributes to literature by investigating the moderating impact of empowerment and professional development on the role stress-affective commitment/continuance commitment relationships. The findings suggest that different managerial strategies are required to combat the effect of each of these role stressors on the affective and continuance components of commitment respectively. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Role Stress, Emotional Exhaustion, and Job Satisfaction in the Hotel Industry: The Moderating Role of Supervisory Support

The purpose of this study is to investigate supervisory support as a moderator of the effects of role conflict and role ambiguity on emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. This study also examines the moderating role of supervisory support on the relationship between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. Data were collected from a sample of frontline hotel employees in Northern Cyprus. The aforementioned relationships were tested based on hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results demonstrate that supervisory support mitigates the impact of role conflict on emotional exhaustion and further reveal that supervisory support reduces the effect of emotional exhaustion on job satisfaction. There is no empirical support for the rest of the hypothesized relationships. Implications of the empirical results are discussed, and future research directions are offered.

Psychological capital as moderator of organizational change demands on nursing stress

Healthcare organizations in all OECD countries have continued to undergo change. These changes have been found to have a negative effect on work engagement of nursing staff. While the extent to which nursing staff dealt with these changes has been documented in the literature, little is known of how they utilized their personal resources to deal with the consequences of these changes. This study will address this gap by integrating the Job Demands-Resources theoretical perspective with Positive Psychology, in particular, psychological capital (PsyCap). PsyCap is operationalized as a source of personal resources. Data were collected from 401 nurses from Australia and analyses were undertaken using Partial Least Squares modelling and moderation analysis. Two types of changes on the nursing work were identified. There was an increase in changes to the work environment of nursing. These changes, included increasing administrative workload and the amount of work, resulted in more job demands and job resources. On the other hand, another type of changes relate to reduction to training and management support, which resulted in less job demands. Nurses with more job demands utilized more job resources to address these increasing demands. We found PsyCap to be a crucial source of personal resources that has a moderating effect on the negative effects of job demands and role stress. PsyCap and job resources were both critical in enhancing the work engagement of nurses, as they encountered changes to nursing work. These findings provided empirical support for a positive psychological perspective of understanding nursing engagement.

Socio-emotional and operational demands on service employees

Enacting appropriate behaviors often requires service employees to suppress genuine emotions and/or express other emotions, genuine or contrived. Managing emotions to act in a socially appropriate manner constitutes a form of labor: emotional labor. If labor demands exceed the resources of the employee, burnout arises, with negative consequences for overall psychological well-being and job performance. Similarly, task related activities engender role stress, which can also lead to burnout. Both task related role demands and socio-emotional demands are likely to be omnipresent in interpersonal interactions in service settings. Accordingly, this study sets out to investigate the simultaneous impact of these job demands on burnout in front line service professionals. Based on survey data collected from allied health service workers, the study findings strongly suggest that both socio-emotional demands and task related role demands are significant determinants of workplace stress and that their simultaneous effects on employee burnout can be large.

Public sector change, person-organization fit, and work attitudes : a mediation model

Organizational change is a typical phenomenon within public sector agencies in OECD countries. An increasing number of studies in the literature examine the implementation of change and its resulting impact on the work attitudes of public sector employees; however, little is known about the extent to which change management processes impact on employees’ work attitudes. This study aims to address this issue by developing a path model underpinned by change management and public service motivation literature. The path model was tested on a sample of 308 managerial and non-managerial public sector employees from the U.S. The results provide further empirical evidence on the types of change initiatives on nursing work and change management processes being implemented. Public sector agencies in the sample implemented a variety of change initiatives such as downsizing, delayering and empowerment. Employees reported two change management processes: the provision of change-related information and participation in change decision making. While the results indicate that change produces change-induced stressors, change information tends to reduce stressors and, subsequently, role stress. The results also indicate that change management processes are associated with higher levels of public service motivation, which is in turn connected to higher levels of person–organization fit. Person–organization fit was found to partially mediate the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction in the context of change.

应激源，缓冲因素及其关系——中美大学生应激的跨文化研究

Questionnaire of Stressors, which was constructed earlier, and Resilience Factor Scale were applied on 252 Chinese University students and 207 American University students. Reliability and validity tests were applied on the data. Results are as following: 1. Cronbach α coefficient of both scales were tested and showed good results. Construction validity of them was also tested by applying Factor Analysis on the data. The results are good. 2. Stressors of University students consist of three factors, named Survival Anxiety, Social Anxiety, and Role Stress. Resilience Factors consist of Social Support and Self-Efficacy. They affected each other. Significant correlation was found among those five factors. 3. Significant differences were found between Chinese sample and American sample in the scores of most items of the two scales.