This study examines relationships among high-performance work systems (HPWS), job control, employee anxiety, role overload, and turnover intentions. Building on theory that challenges the rhetoric versus reality of HPWS, the authors explore a potential "dark side" of HPWS that suggests that HPWS, which are aimed at creating a competitive advantage for organizations, do so at the expense of workers, thus resulting in negative consequences for individual employees. However, the authors argue that these consequences may be tempered when HPWS are also implemented with a sufficient amount of job control, or discretion given to employees in determining how to implement job responsibilities. The authors draw on job demands-control theory and the stress literatures to hypothesize moderated-mediation relationships relating the interaction of HPWS utilization and job control to anxiety and role overload, with subsequent effects on turnover intentions. The authors examine these relationships in a multilevel sample of 1,592 government workers nested in 87 departments from the country of Wales. Results support their hypotheses, which highlight several negative consequences when HPWS are implemented with low levels of job control. They discuss their findings in light of the critique in the literature

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Job crafting theory purports that the consequences of revising one's work role can be simultaneously beneficial and detrimental. Previous research, however, has almost exclusively emphasized the beneficial outcomes of job crafting. In the current study, we proposed dysfunctional consequences of crafting for performance-related outcomes in the form of a U-shaped relationship between job crafting and performance effectiveness (managerial ratings of job proficiency and peer ratings of citizenship behavior). We further predicted that elements of the task context (autonomy and ambiguity) and the social context (interdependence and social support) moderate these curvilinear relationships. Consistent with previous research, job crafting displayed positive and linear effects on work-related attitudes (job satisfaction and affective commitment). Consistent with our predictions, moderate levels of crafting were associated with dysfunctional performance-related outcomes and features of work context either exacerbated or dissipated these dysfunctional consequences of job crafting for individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record

Given increased interest in whether targets' behaviors at work are related to their victimization, we investigated employees' job performance level as a precipitating factor for being victimized by peers in one's work group. Drawing on rational choice theory and the victim precipitation model, we argue that perpetrators take into consideration the risks of aggressing against particular targets, such that high performers tend to experience covert forms of victimization from peers, whereas low performers tend to experience overt forms of victimization. We further contend that the motivation to punish performance deviants will be higher when performance differentials are salient, such that the effects of job performance on covert and overt victimization will be exacerbated by group performance polarization, yet mitigated when the target has high equity sensitivity (benevolence). Finally, we investigate whether victimization is associated with future performance impairments. Results from data collected at 3 time points from 576 individuals in 62 work groups largely support the proposed model. The findings suggest that job performance is a precipitating factor to covert victimization for high performers and overt victimization for low performers in the workplace with implications for subsequent performance.

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