Does Work Stress Lead to Office Clutter, and How? Mediating Influences of Emotional Exhaustion and Indecision

Abstract

Despite popular articles and books, researchers have failed to examine how office clutter emerges and potential mediators underlying clutter in personal workspaces. We hypothesized that workers whose jobs require them to deal with a heavy volume of work at a rapid pace would be more likely to experience job strain (i.e., emotional exhaustion), which, in turn, depletes their energy and makes workers more likely to delay decisions. Decisional procrastination (indecision) was expected to increase office clutter, which itself is a physical stressor. Data from an Internet survey with 290 U.S. office workers recruited through Prolific Academic supported the hypotheses. This study is the first to examine clutter as a physical stressor in the workplace. A greater understanding of the factors that promote office clutter might help organizations and workers address sources of workspace conditions and personal habits that impede productivity and well-being.

Office Clutter: Comparing Lower and Upper-Level Employees on Work-related Criteria

“…Furthermore, participants reported that office clutter was significantly negatively related to their satisfaction/pleasure from work and significantly positively related to a risk for burnout/tension from work. These results are consistent with previous studies exploring clutters impact on employee productivity (Roster & Ferrari, 2020a;2020b). In addition, we compared employees based on their status within an organization, comparing those in higher or leadership positions with associate or lower level positions.…”

“…If clutter might influence a person's general well-being, then it may be possible that office clutter affects work outcomes. Recently, Roster and Ferrari (2020b) reported that office clutter results in emotional exhaustion among workers, especially if they are persons with indecisive tendencies. Emotional exhaustion depleted energy and made decisional delays more likely.…”

Does a workload influence the performance of bank employees?

“…Meanwhile moderating effect of social support between employee's workload and their organizational outcome cannot be ignored. Some other studies have also provided theoretical and empirical contribution from the context of workload and performance (Alsuraykh et al 2018;Avanzi et al, 2018;Baeriswyl et al, 2017;Gaillard, 2017;Ho, 2018;Huyghebaert et al, 2018;Miller et al, 2018;Prasad et al, 2018;Roster & Ferrari, 2019). Based on these arguments, the researcher concludes with the following research hypotheses; H1: Work load has a significant positive effect on employee performance.…”

Work Stress Hampering Employee Performance During COVID-19: Is Safety Culture Needed?

“…At the same time, the work stress may harm the thinking processes of employees and hinder their new practices’ adopting capacity. This slows down their pace of work, thus hampering their AP ( Roster and Ferrari, 2019 ).…”