Can High Levels of Hindrance Demands Increase the Worker’s Intellectual Response?

Francisco G Martín-Martín,Katarzyna Durniat,Juan Manuel Llopis-Marín,Pedro A Díaz-Fúnez,Caroline Limbert,Miguel Ángel Mañas-Rodríguez,Carmen María Salvador-Ferrer

doi:10.3390/su14053107

Abstract

Job demands are factors that are associated with a physical and psychological cost when it comes to coping with them, but which can also positively affect the motivational process. Demands such as overload, defined as an excessive workload, have not presented positive results in any of the studies that have related it to employee engagement. The present study aims to delve into the possible positive effect of this demand on the intellectual bonding of employees. It is hypothesized that: (a) Initially, the increase in the perception of work overload will show a negative influence on the intellectual engagement of the employees; but (b) high perceptions of overload will change this effect, producing an increase in the intellectual dimension of engagement. The sample is made up of 706 employees of a Spanish multinational company. The results support this asymmetric curvilinear influence. The level of intellectual engagement is significantly reduced when the role overload increases from the lower values of the scale. However, upon reaching high levels of role overload, the intellectual engagement response begins to grow. These results challenge the conceptualization of overload as only negative and opens the door to consider that the positive response to a demand can also occur at high levels of it.

Highlights

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralGlobalization and technological progress have generated great changes in the context of work, assuming an increase in job demands [1]
Regarding the evidence of convergent validity, we found significant positive correlations between the items that make up the role overload scale
The same occurs with the items that make up the intellectual engagement variable, all of them show significant values between 0.76 and 0.91

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralGlobalization and technological progress have generated great changes in the context of work, assuming an increase in job demands [1]. Various studies have coincided in pointing out the work overload as the demand with the greatest negative consequences at the economic level, its effects being equivalent to the loss of 3.5% of the Gross Domestic. In this context, it could be said that the perception of being overloaded has become one of the most important work limitations today [3,4]. Research has repeatedly associated the perception of role overload with negative effects for employees, such as sleep disturbances, the development of emotional disorders, and the deterioration of physical health [7]. This job demand has with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

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