Job Challenges and Hindrances| Testing a Differentiated Model of Job Demands and Their Relation to Resources, Burnout, and Engagement

• Main Author: Gomoll, Andrew
• Language: EN
• Published: Alliant International University 2018
• Subjects: Psychology|Occupational psychology|Organizational behavior
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10824106

<p> Work engagement and burnout have been researched extensively through the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) stress framework; however, there are still relationships within the model that are not fully understood. Historically, job demands have been considered to be one homogenous group having similar relationships with resources, burnout and engagement. Researchers have found that job demands have been consistently positively related to burnout, and job resources have been positively related to engagement. Associations between job demands and engagement have been shown to be positive, negative, non-existent, as well as curvilinear (Bailey, Madden, Alfes, &amp; Fletcher, 2015). However, job demands may be differentiated into challenges, which may actually be less harmful for workers, and hindrances, which may account for the majority of the negative association with burnout. Although a small amount of primary research has investigated demands differentiated into challenges and hindrances with samples outside of the U.S., no studies to date have investigated the relationship between challenge and hindrance demands with burnout and work engagement with a sample of employees in the U.S. Additionally, very little research has studied the interaction effects within a differentiated demands model on burnout and work engagement. In this study, a moderated hierarchical regression analysis was used to explore the relationships among challenge demands, hindrance demands, resources, burnout, and engagement with a sample of knowledge workers in the U.S. sourced through the Amazon Mechanical Turk system. Overall, hindrance demands were found to be positively related to burnout and negatively related to engagement. Challenge demands were not significantly related to burnout but were positively related to engagement. The interactive effects of job resources were only observed for the hindrance demand relationships. The differentiated model of job demands may provide a clearer understanding of the different mitigating and boosting relationships between challenges, hindrances, and resources. The results of this study suggest that for executives who wish to increase the positive outcomes associated with well-being, they may want to focus on reducing hindrance demands and increase access to resources across their organizations. Further implications for practice and research will be discussed.</p><p>