Worktime control and work stress: the moderating effect of self-comparisons and social comparisons
研究工作时间控制对工作压力的影响，发现工作时间控制能减轻压力，且员工过去的工作时间控制会调节这一关系，但同事的工作时间控制没有调节作用。
Perceived work-related stress has increased notably in recent years, reducing individuals’ well-being and increasing organizations’ and economies’ costs. This study focuses on worktime control as a key approach to reducing work stress, as the extant research on its effects reports inconsistent results. The study argues that comparisons play a major role in how work stress, conceptualized as effort-reward imbalance, occurs. Ordinary least squares is used to test hypotheses with a sample of 1721 employees from Germany to determine whether employees’ prior worktime control and employees’ referents’ worktime control affect the relationship between worktime control and work stress. Results show that (1) worktime control is negatively associated with the experience of work stress, (2) employees’ prior worktime control moderates the relationship between worktime control and work stress, and (3) there is no moderating effect of employees’ referents’ worktime control. The results are discussed in light of gift-exchange theory and related empirical findings.