International Journal of Stress Management

Leadership and role stressors as departmental level predictors of workplace bullying.
Environmental conditions have long been assumed to create climates that can encourage workplace bullying. Although several studies have supported this assumption, the vast majority have applied the individual as the unit of both measurement and analysis. We argue, however, that the appropriate level of inference regarding environmental conditions is the work-group. In a large sample of some 10,000 employees distributed across 685 departments, we tested the hypothesis that leadership practices and the presence of role stressors will predict the incidence of bullying within departments. The results showed leadership practices and role conflict to predict bullying at the departmental level, while role ambiguity did not when taking into account the effects of the other predictors. The robustness of the findings was demonstrated after excluding responses of targets of bullying, still showing leadership practices and role conflict as potent predictors of bullying, supporting the assumption that bullying will be prevalent within unfavorable working environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychosocial safety climate, work conditions, and emotions in the workplace: A Malaysian population-based work stress study.
We integrated psychosocial safety climate (PSC) with the job demands and resources (JD-R; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) framework to examine the impact of both job demands and job resources at work on employee depression, anger, and engagement. PSC refers to a climate for the protection of employee psychological health and safety. As PSC theoretically influences the working environment, we hypothesized that PSC would have an indirect effect on specific negative emotions (e.g., anger, depression) via job demands and an indirect effect on positive emotion (e.g., engagement) through job resources. We used a population-based sample consisting of 269 public and private employees from the State of Selangor, Malaysia. Overall, results using structural equation modeling showed that PSC negatively related to job demands and positively related to job resources. In mediated paths, job demands carried the effect of PSC on anger and depression, whereas job resources carried the effect of PSC on engagement. We also showed that job demands related negatively to engagement, and that the effect was carried by anger and depression. Using multigroup analysis, we found that the model was invariant within both the public and private sectors. These findings suggest that JD-R theory may be expanded to include PSC as an antecedent, and that the PSC model is largely valid in an Eastern, Muslim, developing economy setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychological capital as a moderator between emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction among school teachers in China.
In this study, we examined the relationship between emotional labor and burnout as well as job satisfaction. Besides, we also explored whether psychological capital (PsyCap) moderated the emotional labor-burnout or job satisfaction associations. In total, 264 full-time Chinese school teachers in China were recruited. Results showed that PsyCap was related to emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction in the hypothesized direction. Furthermore, PsyCap moderated the association between emotional labor and the outcome variables. For instance, positive association between surface acting on depersonalization as well as negative association with job satisfaction was weaker when PsyCap was high. In addition, positive association between deep acting and job satisfaction was further reinforced among participants with high PsyCap but not among participants with low PsyCap. Finally, the relationships of PsyCap with depersonalization as well as job satisfaction were more salient among employees who reported infrequent use of expression of naturally felt emotion. Limitations and implications of the study were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)
Modeling the experience of psychological health at work: The role of personal resources, social-organizational resources, and job demands.
This study tested a model of psychological health in the workplace. Psychological health is conceptualized as an integrative variable covering both positive (well-being) and negative (distress) health symptoms. Based on complementary theories and scientific evidence, three categories of psychological health predictors were identified and organized in an integrated model: job demands, social–organizational resources (supportive climate, procedural and distributive justice), and personal resources (optimism and resilience). The model hypothesized direct and indirect effects of predictors on psychological health through the satisfaction of individuals' basic needs and based on predictors' interplay. Structural equation modeling performed on cross-sectional data collected from 391 teachers lent support to the hypothesized model. Results suggested that personal resources exert important direct and indirect influences on psychological health through multiple mediators. Research implications and study limitations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)
What differentiates success from strain: The moderating effects of self-efficacy.
The present study aims at examining the moderating effects of self-efficacy on the stressor-strain relationships among Chinese employees. A self-administered survey method was used to collect data from 310 full-time employees across all regions in Taiwan. We found that interpersonal conflict and lack of autonomy as stressors were associated negatively with job satisfaction. Job performance was found to be associated negatively with lack of autonomy, but positively with workload. Regarding moderating effects, self-efficacy exacerbated a negative impact of lack of autonomy on job satisfaction but buffered a negative impact of lack of autonomy on job performance. Thus, the present study for the first time revealed that self-efficacy functioned as a double-edged sword in the work stress context of a Confucian Chinese society, contrary to what may be inferred from Western theoretical perspectives. In addition, this study also examined job performance as a strain variable which has rarely been studied in work stress research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)

International Journal of Stress Management - Vol 18, Iss 4