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The coevolution of emotional job demands and work-based social ties and their effect on performance

Parker, Andrew; Waldstrøm, Christian; Shah, Neha Parikh

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Authors

Christian Waldstrøm

Neha Parikh Shah



Abstract

In this paper, we build upon the buffering hypothesis within the job demands-resources (JD-R) framework to develop a coevolutionary explanation to untangle the process by which emotional job demands, work-based social networks, and employee performance are associated over time. We integrate ideas from the social contagion and social network dynamics literatures to support our coevolutionary theory. To test our theory, we collected longitudinal data at three time points from 135 employees in a customer-facing R&D department. We employ a stochastic actor-orientated model that allows the simultaneous modeling of changes in work-based social network ties, emotional job demands, and employee performance. We find a social contagion effect whereby employees are more at risk of an increase in their emotional job demands, the more reciprocal work-based social relationships they have with colleagues who have high emotional job demands. In addition, individuals with high emotional job demands change their networks in two notable ways: they have a positive tendency for having work-based social ties, i.e., sociability; and for ties with others with high emotional job demands, i.e., homophily. However, despite the unintended consequence of these network tendencies making employees more susceptible to the contagion effect of emotional job demands, we also find support for the buffering hypothesis. The negative effect of high emotional job demands on performance is lower for employees who have more work-based social ties.

Citation

Parker, A., Waldstrøm, C., & Shah, N. P. (2023). The coevolution of emotional job demands and work-based social ties and their effect on performance. Journal of Management, 49(5), 1601-1632. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063221087636

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 25, 2022
Publication Date 2023-05
Deposit Date Mar 3, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of Management
Print ISSN 0149-2063
Electronic ISSN 1557-1211
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 49
Issue 5
Pages 1601-1632
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063221087636
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1215998

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Copyright Statement
This contribution has been accepted for publication in Journal of Management.





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