The impact of COVID-19 stress on nurses’ organizational deviance: A moderated mediation model

Abstract

The outbreak and rapid spread of the COVID-19 in December 2019 (Iqbal Z, Aslam MZ, Aslam T, Ashraf R, Kashif M, Nasir H, Register J, 2020, 13, 208–30) has brought great work pressure to nurses on the frontline of the fight against the virus, which is very likely to lead to work deviant behaviors, therefore, how to effectively manage nurses to inhibit their organizational deviance in the context of an emergency public health crisis has a high research value. A questionnaire was administered to 319 Chinese in-service nurses, and SPSS and AMOS software were used to conduct correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis to statistically test the hypotheses of the developed model. COVID-19 stress can significantly positively predict nurses’ organizational deviance. The relationship between the two variables is mediated by job satisfaction. Furthermore, perceived organizational support(POS) demonstrates a dual moderating function in our framework: it not only influences the relationship between CST and employee job satisfaction, but also affects the extent to which satisfaction mediates subsequent organizational outcomes. COVID-19 stress is an important psychological factor influencing nurses’ organizational deviance. The government and relevant organizations are supposed to take the psychological stress of such primary medical staff seriously, provide more supportive resources and take various measures to reduce COVID-19 stress to help individuals cope with the COVID-19 crisis.