U. of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business, United States
This study employed a meta-analytic approach to investigate the affective mechanisms underlying the relationship between work stressors and job performance (i.e., task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and counterproductive behaviors). Specifically, the results confirmed our hypotheses that hindrance stressors and interpersonal stressors are negatively related to positive affect and positively related to negative affect, whereas challenge stressors are positively related to both positive affect and negative affect. Path analyses also supported the mediating role of positive and negative affect in the stressor-job performance relationship. Specifically, both hindrance and interpersonal stressors have a negative indirect effect on task performance and OCBs and a positive indirect effect on CWBs through positive affect, whereas challenge stressors have a positive indirect effect on task performance and OCBs and a negative indirect effect on CWBs through positive affect. All three types of stressors have a negative indirect effect on task performance and a positive indirect effect on CWBs through negative affect. That being said, challenge stressors did not correlate with emotional ambivalence (i.e., the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotional orientations toward a person, object, task, goal, or idea). Instead, hindrance stressors and interpersonal stressors were found to be positively associated with emotional ambivalence.
