All employees need job resources – Testing the Job Demands–Resources Theory among employees with either high or low working memory and fluid intelligence

Abstract

Background: The Job Demands-Resources Theory (JD-R) is one of the most influential theoretical frameworks for explaining work engagement. The JD-R postulates the existence of a health impairment process in which job demands lead to strain, and of a motivational process in which job resources lead to work engagement. Although cognitive functions are among the most important characteristics of employees related to job, still little is known about its moderating role in JD-R processes; hence in this study we make a novel attempt to test the invariance of JD-R propositions among employees at different levels of cognitive functioning. Material and Methods: A group of 383 multioccupational employees completed a set of questionnaires measuring job resource: co-worker support, supervisor support, performance feedback; job demands: emotional demands, occupational constraints, work-home interferences; Utrecht Work Engagement Scale; Oldenburg Burnout Inventory along with 2 working memory and 3 fluid intelligence tests. Results: The multigroup invariance analysis with latent variables revealed that both the health impairment process and the motivational process as postulated by JD-R are invariant across groups of employees with either high or low levels of fluid intelligence and working memory capacity. Conclusions: This result provides the first piece of evidence for JD-R robustness among employees at different levels of cognitive functioning. Our findings counterintuitively suggest that employees with high cognitive functioning are not more resistant to job demands than employees with low cognitive functioning and that in order to be work-engaged they need job resources, no less than their colleagues with low cognitive functioning.

Unequal Associations between Educational Attainment and Occupational Stress across Racial and Ethnic Groups

“…Such demands may be higher, and the provided support may be lower, in the occupations that AAs enter. In these jobs, the individuals perceive lower control over life and feel overburdened [25,26]. The dual job market theory argues that AAs and Hispanics enter second-tier jobs that are determined by a high workload, high stress, low benefits, and minimal pay.…”

Evidências de Validade da Escala Indicadores das Características do Ambiente Organizacional (ICAO)

“…Ademais, para a ICAO-35 e ICAO-25, encontrou-se que os recursos do trabalho se relacionaram positivamente entre si (controle, papel, mudança, apoio social dos colegas e apoio social supervisor), assim como demanda e assédio moral também estiveram positivamente associadas. Es-ses resultados vão de encontro a estudos anteriores, onde recursos referentes à organização, ao grupo de trabalho e organização da tarefa se relacionaram de maneira positiva, como também diferentes demandas do trabalho se associam positivamente entre si (Airila et al, 2014;Kulikowski & Orzechowski, 2018). As relações positivas entre os recursos corroboram que ambientes com maior disponibilidade de recursos podem promover o processo motivacional (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017;Schaufeli & Taris, 2014).…”

Working memory and fluid intelligence as predictors of work engagement—Testing preliminary models

“…In Study 2, as was the case in Study 1, participants completed a symmetry span task and answered a set of additional questions measuring job burnout, job autonomy, and job demands; analysis of this additional data goes beyond the scope of this article and is not reported here. This data will be used in separated paper investigating a possible moderating role of cognitive functioning for motivational and health impairment process proposed by the JD‐R theory (Kulikowski & Orzechowski, ). Descriptive statistics, reliabilities, and correlations between measures used in Study 2 are shown in Table .…”