The moderating role of work pressure on the relationships between emotional demands and tension, exhaustion, and work engagement: an experience sampling study among nurses

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating role of state work pressure (conceived as a hindrance demand) on the relationships between situational emotional demands (conceived as a challenge demand) and tension, emotional exhaustion and work engagement within nursing while considering job resources as covariates. Ninety-seven nurses from two German hospitals provided 1026 measurements. Multilevel analyses indicated a significant Work Pressure × Emotional Demands interaction for emotional exhaustion, with high situational work pressure exacerbating the positive association between state emotional demands and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, work pressure moderated the relationship between emotional demands and vigour: state emotional demands related negatively to vigour only when work pressure was higher than usual, while the relationship was non-significant when work pressure was lower than usual. For dedication, similar results were obtained: state emotional demands were negatively associated with dedication only when combined with high situational work pressure; with low situational work pressure, state emotional demands did not relate to dedication. Contributing to the job demands-resources literature, this study shows that there are stress-exacerbating and stress-buffering interactions between different job demands from a within-subject perspective. However, we did not find positive relationships between challenge demands and work engagement, even in the case of low situational hindrances, indicating that there are conditions for the functioning of job demands as a challenge beyond hindrances.