مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Nowadays, employees are increasingly required to work under tight deadlines, to make plans and decisions independently, and to display specific emotions at work (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Kubicek, Paškvan, & Korunka, 2015). To meet such requirements, employees have to control and regulate their attention, behavior, and emotions. A large body of evidence shows that such requirements to regulate oneself act as sources of work stress which tax and deplete limited self-regulatory resources (e.g. Alarcon, 2011, Schmidt & Diestel, 2015). In cases of depleted self-regulatory resources, employees are less able to cope with requirements to self-regulate and experience feelings of exhaustion. Such perceived states of a temporarily reduced capacity to regulate one’s behavior, attention, and emotions reflect diminished resources and are referred to as ego depletion (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000).

In order to explain the effects of job stressors on employees’ ego depletion, scholars have delineated different theoretical frameworks that expatiate upon underlying cognitive and emotional processes. On the one hand, from an action regulation perspective (e.g. Frese & Zapf, 1994, Hacker, 2003), some authors have argued that job stressors deplete employees’ self-regulatory resources through overtaxing processes of goal-directed action regulation. Following from the model of self-control strength (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000), overtaxing goal-directed action regulation becomes manifest in high volitional self-control effort (Schmidt & Diestel, 2015). On the other hand, from a cognitive appraisal perspective (e.g., Lazarus, 1991), job stressors may deplete employees’ self-regulatory resources by first triggering dysfunctional appraisal processes which cause emotions such as state anxiety. Coping with anxiety requires effort in volitional self-control and thus may explain the resource depletion (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007). In sum, action regulation theory predicts that job stressors translate themselves into ego depletion by requiring high levels of self-control effort, whereas cognitive appraisal theory suggests that state anxiety mediates the relation of job stressors to self-control effort and ego depletion.

Although several studies have provided some support for the first theoretical explanation derived from action regulation theory (e.g., Diestel & Schmidt, 2012), scholarly understanding of the underlying psychological processes that determine the adverse effects of regulatory job stressors on ego depletion is largely limited in at least three ways. First, while some authors have proposed that certain job stressors (e.g., emotional dissonance in Diestel, Rivkin, & Schmidt, 2015, p. 810) put high demands on volitional self-control, thus far self-control processes have only been found to mediate the effects of workload on job strain (Diestel & Schmidt, 2012). Thus, we do not know whether self-control processes may also explain the deleterious effects of other regulatory job stressors. Second, most studies are primarily based on interindividual designs, which neglect the substantial withinperson fluctuations of regulatory job stressors, emotions, self-control effort, and associated states of ego depletion (Kühnel, Sonnentag, & Bledow, 2012; Rivkin, Diestel, & Schmidt, 2015a). Moreover, all aforementioned theories propose psychological processes and mechanisms that emerge immediately and can therefore only be validly analyzed using an experience sampling design (Fisher & To, 2012). Third, past research has failed to examine other relevant processes that can be derived from the cognitive appraisal perspective and may explain why regulatory stressors cause employees to engage in self-control effort. Thus, scholarly knowledge on the effects of regulatory job stressors on states of ego depletion may benefit from a more integrative conceptual view that clearly differentiates between regulatory job stressors, elicited emotions, self-control processes, and resource depletion. In light of these issues, our research aims at contributing to the literature in four ways. First, in testing the positive relationships of regulatory job stressors with ego depletion, we focus on three different regulatory job stressors which should cause employees to control and regulate their attention, behavior, and/or emotions: time pressure, planning and decision-making, and emotional dissonance. In doing so, we provide support for the notion that, despite their conceptual differences, all three regulatory job stressors exert their immediate adverse influences on employees’ self-regulatory resources through the same mechanisms. Second, drawing on an experience sampling design, we analyze mediating variables, which explain the link of regulatory job stressors to ego depletion, with a design adequate for the proposed immediate within-person effects. Third, based on an integration of action regulation theory, cognitive appraisal theory, and the self-control strength model, we develop a serial mediation model to reveal how exactly regulatory job stressors contribute to resource depletion. By examining both state anxiety and self-control effort as serial mediators in the positive relationships of regulatory job stressors with ego depletion, we are able to integrate diverse explanatory mechanisms derived from theories with different conceptual foci. Fourth, our study also aims at clarifying the processes of how situational job autonomy facilitates coping with regulatory job stressors. Although both action regulation theory and cognitive appraisal theory argue that situational job autonomy should attenuate the adverse effects of regulatory job stressors, both theories postulate different mechanisms to explain its attenuating effects.