Enacting job demands and resources: Exploring processes and links with individual outcomes

Abstract

Recent approaches to worker stress aim to model how job characteristics and workers' responses to them combine to influence worker wellbeing. We build on Daniels' (Hum Relat 59(3):267-290. doi: 10.1177/0018726706064171, 2006) notion of enacted job characteristics to enhance understanding of the processes that shape workers' experiences and behaviour on the job, in interaction with job characteristics and the work environment. In doing so, we offer a more nuanced picture of the pathways proposed by the Job-Demands Resources model to link job characteristics to worker exhaustion and engagement. We illustrate our arguments using examples of interview material gathered from qualitative interviews with retail workers. We conclude by offering new predictions and directions for research that flow from our advanced understanding of enactment, as integrated within the JD-R model.