Date of Award
8-2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
Committee Member
Marissa L Shuffler, Committee Chair
Committee Member
Thomas W Britt
Committee Member
Fred S Switzer, III
Committee Member
Donald W Wiper
Abstract
The job demands-resources (JD-R) model is one of the most popular in occupational health psychology but it often overlooks a key group: leaders. This study applies this framework to leaders in healthcare, considering how challenge and hindrance demands and resources via their unit's perceptions of teamwork impact the affective states of the leader. This study also considers meaningful work, rather than engagement, as the motivational process as it is highly relevant in healthcare. Many JD-R models also include how the motivational and health impairment processes influence performance; this study considers the leader's rating of their unit's performance, accounting for the JDR's effects on both the unit's performance and their leader's rating of it.
Using path analysis from multi-source data with 738 leaders, the results suggest that, when controlling for healthcare leaders' resilience and their occupational stress, challenge demands have a significant and positively effect on hindrance demands, the job resource – unit's perception of teamwork, and the leader's perception of meaningful work. Hindrance demands had a significant, positive relationship with emotional exhaustion and significant negative relationship with meaningful work with meaningful work being significantly, negatively related to emotional exhaustion and having a significant, positive relationship with the leader's rating of the unit's performance; all other proposed relationships were non-significant.
Overall, this study provides an important insight into the JDR model in terms of healthcare leaders. It also contributes by considering the unit's perception of teamwork a resource for the leader and using meaningful work as the motivational process. Finally, this study also considers how leader affective states (i.e., emotional exhaustion, meaningful work) impact their perceptions of their unit's performance, rather than their own, as a particularly relevant outcome for both leaders and the healthcare environment.
Recommended Citation
Savage, Nastassia Marie, "The Job Demands-Resources Model: Understanding the Impact of Job Characteristics on Healthcare Leaders" (2019). All Dissertations. 2465.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/2465