Abstract
Our research aimed at disentangling the underlying processes of the adverse relationship between regulatory job stressors and ego depletion. Specifically, we analyzed whether state anxiety and self-control effort would mediate the within-person relationships of time pressure, planning and decision-making, and emotional dissonance with ego depletion. In addition, we also tested potential attenuating effects of situational job autonomy on the adverse effects of regulatory job stressors on state anxiety, self-control effort, and ego depletion. Based on an experience sampling design, we gathered a sample of 97 eldercare workers who provided data on 721 experience-sampling occasions. Multilevel moderated serial mediation analyses revealed that time pressure and emotional dissonance, but not planning and decision-making, exerted significant serial indirect effects on ego depletion via state anxiety and self-control effort. Finally, we found conditional serial indirect effects of all three regulatory job stressors on ego depletion as a function of job autonomy. Theoretical implications for scholarly understanding of coping with regulatory job stressors are discussed.
Highlights
Nowadays, employees are increasingly required to work under tight deadlines, to make plans and decisions independently, and to display specific emotions at work (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Kubicek, Paškvan, & Korunka, 2015)
We proposed and examined indirect relationships via state anxiety and self-control effort in the within-person processes that underlie the relationships of regulatory job stressors with ego depletion
Drawing on action regulation theory (e.g. Frese & Zapf, 1994, Hacker, 2003), the self-control strength model (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) and cognitive appraisal theory (e.g., Lazarus, 1991), we proposed a serial process to explain how regulatory job stressors deplete employees' self-regulatory resources and how job autonomy might attenuate the adverse effects of regulatory job stressors
Summary
Employees are increasingly required to work under tight deadlines, to make plans and decisions independently, and to display specific emotions at work (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Kubicek, Paškvan, & Korunka, 2015). To meet such requirements, employees have to control and regulate their attention, behavior, and emotions. In cases of depleted self-regulatory resources, employees are less able to cope with requirements to self-regulate and experience feelings of exhaustion Such perceived states of a temporarily reduced capacity to regulate one's behavior, attention, and emotions reflect diminished resources and are referred to as ego depletion (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). From an action regulation perspective (e.g. Frese & Zapf, 1994, Hacker, 2003), some authors have argued that job stressors deplete employees' self-regulatory
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