Ready for change? A longitudinal examination of challenge stressors in the context of organizational change

In an effort to coalesce current occupational stress and organizational change research, the present article examines the lagged effects of challenge stressors on employee strain and well-being using panel data from two different studies. Guided by the theoretical assumptions underlying the challenge-hindrance stressor framework, we assumed that time pressure and concentration demands are challenge stressors for employees who are not confronted with significant personal or organizational change. Data from a first study (N = 394) showed that both stressors had positive lagged effects on professional efficacy but not on emotional exhaustion. By contrast, we expected that the effects on professional efficacy are lower for employees facing change. Given that organizational change requires high resource investment, we hypothesized that stressor effects depend on constraints for successful coping. Therefore, ambiguity intolerance and procrastination were considered to be moderators. Using a time-lagged quasi-experimental design (change group: N = 140; control group: N = 257), data showed that challenge stressors had positive effects on emotional exhaustion in both groups, but only positive effects on professional efficacy in the control group. Moderator analyses for the change group revealed that time pressure and concentration demands had positive effects on professional efficacy when employees were high in ambiguity tolerance and low in procrastination and negative effects when employees were low in ambiguity tolerance and high in procrastination. Overall, we provide support for the positive effects of challenge stressors over time and emphasize the role of coping capabilities in the context of organizational change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).