Job demands-resources theory in times of crises: New propositions

Abstract

This theoretical paper presents an extended Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) theory aimed at understanding how organizations and their employees can best deal with COVID-19 and other crises in the workplace. The crisis showed that job characteristics alone are insufficient to explain employee health and motivation, i.e., the two focal outcomes of the JD-R theory. Rather, demands and resources of the individual, the family, the job and the organization interact with each other to predict outcomes. Moreover, next to individual regulatory strategies also the regulatory strategies of the family, the leader and organization/team are suggested to modify the impact of demands and resources on outcomes. This was possible by integrating the crisis management literature in JD-R theory. Viewing the crisis from a job design perspective helped us to introduce several new and testable propositions that specify how employee well-being and functioning are impacted by crises and turbulent times.