Safe but drained – investigating reciprocal relationships between defensive decision making and exhaustion in a cross-lagged panel study
基于492名员工的三波纵向数据，发现情绪耗竭会持续增加后续的防御性决策，而防御性决策对情绪耗竭的预测作用不显著，揭示了耗竭与防御性决策间的恶性循环。
Although the organizational antecedents and consequences of defensive decision-making are well studied, the potentially detrimental effects on the decision-makers themselves have thus far been overlooked. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we propose reciprocal associations between defensive decision-making and emotional exhaustion. Using data from 492 employees who participated in a longitudinal study with three measurement points, we found that defensive decision-making was not consistently related to subsequent increases in emotional exhaustion, but that emotional exhaustion consistently increased subsequent defensive decision-making. Moreover, emotional exhaustion at an earlier point indirectly predicted emotional exhaustion at a later point via more defensive decision-making, whereas the reverse indirect path was not supported. Our results emphasize the importance of considering employees’ well-being to prevent the emergence of a vicious circle between emotional exhaustion and defensive decision-making, thus contributing to the literature on self-protection at work and workplace stress.