The Mediating Effects of Job Satisfaction and Propensity to Leave on Role Stress-Job Performance Relationships: Combining Meta-Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling

Abstract

This article combines meta-analysis with structural equation modeling to compare alternative models of the relationships among work stress, psychological mediators, and job performance. Specifically, the authors examined the mediating effects of job satisfaction and propensity to leave and their effect on the relationships between role ambiguity, role conflict, and job performance. The meta-analysis included both published and unpublished studies conducted over a period of 25 years, resulting in 113 independent samples with more than 22,000 individuals. As hypothesized, the structural model that best fit the meta-analytic estimates was the partial mediation model, in which stress is related to job performance both directly and indirectly through job satisfaction and propensity to leave and in which all path coefficients were reliably different from zero. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical contributions and implications for future stress-performance research. © 2008 American Psychological Association.