Job demands, control and support: Meta-analyzing moderator effects of gender, nationality, and occupation

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Abstract

The job demands-control (-support) model (JDC(S)) remains one of the most influential to HR-related issues of work stress, organizational behavior, and job design. However, despite over 37 years of research, the first meta-analysis of the model was conducted only recently. It examined interrelationships between the model's three workplace characteristics: demand, control and support in order to better understand how employees view relationships between these prominent work dimensions. A rather surprising result was the near-zero demand-control relationship, which was found to be moderated by gender. The current analysis extends our understanding of DCS interrelationships to include examination of nationality and occupation as additional moderating variables. We also build on the initial review by extending moderator analysis to relationships between demand-control-support dimensions and job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion — the two most examined psychological outcomes in primary studies. The present meta-analysis narrows the field of studies to 141 studies (N(Individuals) = 145,424) of Karasek's model which include these outcomes. Our findings show additional patterns of gender moderation, including moderation of the demands-job satisfaction relationship. Additionally, both nationality and occupation moderate every DCS interrelationship, and relationship with job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in some way. Our results offer new understanding as to the boundaries of these relationships, and the JDC(S) model; and invite further theory building and meta-analytic investigation.

Section snippets

Meta-analytic research of the JDC(S) model

Despite its enduring contribution to work stress research, attention has only recently turned to cumulative (e.g., meta-analytic) research of the model. This is an important transition because accumulating and aggregating JDC(S) studies can advance the theory by contributing information about the magnitude and stability of the propositions as well as the limitations of the theory. Given the aforementioned hypotheses of the model, meta-analytic investigation of the buffer hypothesis would be

Job demands, control, and support

Job demands constitute physical, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require physical or mental effort. These include work pacing/time pressure, exacting task requirements, and overall workload demands (De Jonge & Dormann, 2006). Most employees seek homeostasis with their work environment in order to facilitate manageable work (Griffin & Clarke, 2011). Thus, a central tenet of the JDC(S) model is that moderate demands maximizes employee well-being through optimal levels of

Method

We used Hunter and Schmidt's (2004) method of meta-analysis. This involved estimating true population correlations among variables by taking the weighted average of correlations from published and unpublished primary studies between the demand, control, and where applicable, support dimensions of the model, and job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. True population correlations were estimated by applying weights that account for sampling and measurement error in both the predictor and the

Results

Table 1, Table 2, Table 6, Table 8 include the number of correlations (k), total sample size (N), sample weighted (i.e., “bare bones” meta-analysis; Hunter & Schmidt, 2004) average correlation (r̅), sample weighted average correlation corrected for unreliability (rC), the 80% credibility interval around the corrected average correlation, and the 95% confidence interval around the average, uncorrected correlation, for the primary analysis, and moderator analyses of gender, nationality, and

Discussion

The JDC(S) model is prominent within the human resources field given its importance to issues of work stress, organizational behavior, and job design. Examinations of the JDC(S) model span three continents and 15 countries, with over forty different occupations represented across 300 + studies throughout the last 37 years. Following an initial review of research (Luchman & González-Morales, 2013), we examined gender, nationality, and occupation as moderators of DCS interrelationships, given

Conclusion

The JDC(S) model has been a mainstay of work stress and organizational literature for over 35 years. It is one of the most researched models in work stress history, and has a presence which spans the scholarly globe, not only in organizational research, but research in areas of physiology and medicine. Despite its ongoing popularity, the model has repeatedly received criticism for its simplicity, openness to multiple operationalizations of its dimensions, subjective measurement of supposedly

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    A list of the studies meta-analyzed is available upon request.

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