Using a sample of 268 production employees, this study extended research on R. Karasek's (1979) demands-control model of stress in 2 ways. First, results show that R. Karasek's proposed interaction between demands and control when predicting strain occurred only for more proactive employees. This 3-way interaction helps reconcile previous inconsistent findings about the interaction between demands and control when predicting strain. Second, the study extends research by investigating the demands-control interaction and the moderating influence of proactive personality in relation to learning-oriented outcomes (perceived mastery, role breadth self-efficacy, and production ownership). There were no 3-way interactions among the variables when predicting these learning-oriented outcomes, but all were important predictors. These results show (a) that demands and control can influence learning as proposed in the dynamic version of the demands-control model and (b) that proactive personality plays an important moderating role.

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This longitudinal study investigates differences in perceived work characteristics and job strain as a function of employment status. The study examines the effects of a change from involuntary temporary to permanent status (N= 75) compared to staying permanent (N= 257), as well as comparing temporary contract and permanent contract employees at Time 1 and a second‐wave comparison that included new temporary contract employees (N= 92) and new permanent contract employees (N= 34). Results suggest that temporary employment status is associated with negative and positive consequences. On the negative side, temporary status reduced perceptions of job security and participative decision making, which had deleterious effects on job strain. On the other hand, temporary employees had fewer strain‐inducing role demands (in particular, lower role overload). The net effect was that temporary employees had lower job strain, which analyses suggested was due to indirect effects of the lower role demands.

This paper is the first to explore the impact of culture on the acceptability of workplace bullying and to do so across a wide range of countries. Physically intimidating bullying is less acceptable than work related bullying both within groups of similar cultures and globally. Cultures with high performance orientation find bullying to be more acceptable while those with high future orientation find bullying to be less acceptable. A high humane orientation is associated with finding work related bullying to be less acceptable. Confucian Asia finds work-related bullying to be more acceptable than the Anglo, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa country clusters and finds physically intimidating bullying to be more acceptable than the Anglo and Latin America country clusters. The differences in the acceptability of bullying with respect to these cultures are partially explained in terms of cultural dimensions.

Call centers can be considered as lean service systems, with leanness being described in terms of both dialog scripting and performance monitoring. Using data from a sample of 823 call handlers from 36 call centers, these lean characteristics are examined in relation to the prediction of call handler job-related strain. Moreover, the extent to which this relationship can be accounted for by work design characteristics are examined. Findings confirm that employees who experience greater dialog scripting and more intensive performance monitoring show higher levels of strain. These relationships are fully mediated by work design. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the impact of lean working practices on employee health.