A structural model of workload, job attitudes, stress, and turnover intentions

Abstract

A structural model of workload, job attitudes, stress, and turnover intentions Employee turnover is a topic of importance to any organization and has been the subject a large amount of research organizational research.Keller (1984) describes a number of reasons for employee turnover, including role performance and absenteeism.Additionally, turnover has been supported as an important factor in influencing an organization's bottom line (Keller, 1984).Hypothesizing stress as a mediating variable, this research evaluates a path model of turnover in which workload, perceived organizational support, and engagement are considered to be antecedent variables.Stress has become a major staple of behavioral research in the workplace (Gellis & Kim, 2004).Workplace stress has generally been studied in three ways -as a stimulus, as a response, or through a stimulus-response interaction (Jex, Beehr, & Roberts, 1992).As a stimulus, stress relates to the work environment and its affect on an employee.Using the stimulus approach, the work environment is considered to be the actual object causing stress.A second approach to defining stress in organizational research is the response approach.This approach evaluates stress as an employee's affective reaction to elements of the workplace and work environment.The final approach to assessing stress within the organization is through the stimulus-response approach.The stimulus-response approach assumes that stress results from the dynamic interaction between the work environment and workplace affects.Jex, Beehr, and Roberts (1992) provide an example of an employee who quits due to an increased workload.In this example, the stimulus would be the increased workload and the response, employee's turnover.The stimulusresponse would be defined as the interaction between the increased workload and turnover.For the purpose of this study the stimulus-response approach will be used in the current research study.Workload refers to the amount of work that is allocated to an employee to do.A number of researchers have supported a positive relationship between workload and stress (Jex, et al., 1992).MacDonald (2003) studies the role of workload on stress and fatigue and found they were significantly related .Smith & Bourke (1992) also identified a significant and positive relationship between workload and perceived work-related stress.Further, Glaser, Tatum, Nebeker, Sorenson, and Aiello (1999) found that stress served an intermediate role between workload and important organizational outcomes such as performance.Considering the research showing significant relationships between workload and stress and stress and turnover, this research assumes that stress will play a mediation role between workload and turnover intentions.However, other employee perceptions are also likely to be related to stress levels including perceived organizational support (POS) and engagement.Perceived organizational support is a concept developed by Eisenberger and his colleagues (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986).POS is grounded in exchange theory that assumes that both the organization and employees have specific, informal workplace expectations (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002).Coyle-Shapiro and Conway (2005), Eisenberger, Cummings, Armeli, &Lynch (1997), andRhoades and Eisenberger (1992) specify voluntary enticements such as organizational rewards and benefits as well as the legal, moral, and financial obligations of organizational policies, norms, and culture as important determinants of the organizational as supportive.When these expectations are honored by the organization, it is more likely that the members of the organization will have positive attitudes and cognitions regarding the organization as supportive and respond with higher levels of emotional-relational and/or tangible resources (Coyle-Shapiro & Conway, 2005).POS is conceptually similar to

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