9. Individual Strategies

Question 1

Risk of developing burnout

Answer 1

When employees are confronted with high job demands and are provided with inadequate resources

Question 2

Individual strategies

Answer 2

Represent methods or plans that people choose to achieve a goal or solve a problem

Question 3

Categories of strategies

Answer 3

1) Strategies that individuals use to deal directly with diminished resources
2) Strategies that individuals apply to change their job characteristics such that the job is less demanding and more motivating
3) Strategies that individuals use to manage the interplay between the work and non-work domains

Question 4

Strategies that individuals use to deal directly with diminished resources

Answer 4

1) Some target the individual’s relationship to the job (coping, selection, optimization with compensation, humor)
2) Others focus on strengthening the individual’s internal resources (recovery)

Question 5

Strategies that individuals use to manage the interplay between the work and non-work domains

Answer 5

As inter-role conflict represents a situation that increases the risk of burnout, inter-role management represents strategies that individuals may use to avoid or deal with inter-role conflict

Question 6

Diminished resources in burnout

Answer 6

In terms of ability and willingness to invest effort into work tasks

Question 7

Burnout (Hobfoll): A result of the lack of resource gain following significant resource investment of time and energy

Answer 7

Investing their resources differently and maybe more effectively may protect them against (further) resource loss, help them recover from loss, and even gain new resources (a gain cycle might develop)

Question 8

Coping

Answer 8

Changing cognitive and behavioral efforts developed for managing the specific external and/or internal demands judged as exceeding or surpassing the individual’s own resources

Question 9

Three methods of coping

Answer 9

1) Active-cognitive
2) Active-behavioral
3) Avoidance

Question 10

Active-cognitive coping

Answer 10

The management of the appraisal of stressful events such that they are less stressful

Question 11

Active-behavioral coping

Answer 11

The observable efforts aimed at managing a stressful situation

Question 12

Avoidance

Answer 12

The refusal to face a problematic or stressful situation

Question 13

Objectives of coping

Answer 13

1) Problem-focused

2) Emotion-focused

Question 14

Problem-focused coping

Answer 14

Attempt to respond directly to the stressful situation

Question 15

Emotion-focused coping

Answer 15

Attempt to moderate the emotional response to stressful events

Question 16

Emotional exhaustion or depersonalization produces

Answer 16

Withdrawal tendencies (avoidance coping, low job involvement, and desire to quit)

Question 17

Personal accomplishment produces

Answer 17

Positive self-efficacy (active coping and favorable work attitudes)

Question 18

Workers with a high sense of depersonalization (irritability, and negative, cold and impersonal attitudes toward users) refrain from initiating either problem-focused or emotion-focused strategies

Answer 18

The lack of significant correlations between depersonalization and any of the coping strategies, is because depersonalization may be the last resource to use when coping strategies don’t seem to work any longer

Question 19

Strategies oriented to the problem are much more effective for coping with stressful situations than those directed to the emotion and to avoidance

Answer 19

The effectiveness depends on effective control of the potential stressors of the environment and individual emotions.

Persistent use of problem-focus coping strategies when there are few possibilities of controlling and/or changing the environmental stressors may exacerbate the undesirable effects of work stress

Question 20

Flexibility in using coping strategies

Answer 20

Coping oriented to the problem would be adaptive in controllable situations

Coping oriented to avoidance would be adaptive in situations that are difficult to control

Question 21

Humor

Answer 21

Engagement in humorous activities can be expected to result in decreased fatigue and burnout, increased recovery, and higher subsequent work engagement

Question 22

Types of humor

Answer 22

1) Self-enhancing humor
2) Affiliative humor
3) Self-defeating humor
4) Aggressive humor

Question 23

Recovery from work

Answer 23

Occurs after strain when the stressor is no longer present.

Refers to the process during which an individual’s functioning returns to its pre-stressor level and in which strain is reduced

Question 24

When the stress-related acute load reactions prolong or re-occur during after-work hours recovery is incomplete

Answer 24

The worker will start the next working period while being in a suboptimal condition, and will have to invest compensatory effort in order to perform adequately at work

Question 25

Recovery strategies

Answer 25

1) Psychological detachment
2) Relaxation
3) Social activities

Question 26

Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC)

Answer 26

Specifies strategies that individuals may use to keep optimal functioning even when their time and energetic resources are diminished

Question 27

Management strategies of SOC

Answer 27

1) Selecting the goals to pursue
2) Optimizing and using goal-relevant means
3) Using compensatory means to maintain goal attainment when previously employed resources are no longer available or blocked

Question 28

Results: Compensation is the most successful strategy

Answer 28

1) Using different external resources (the help of others or technology)
2) Increasing one efforts
3) Learning new skills

Question 29

Job crafting

Answer 29

Is the search for meaning and for a motivating and healthy work environment

Question 30

Job crafting represents actions employees take to alter

Answer 30

1) Task boundaries of a job: type or number of activities
2) Cognitive task boundaries of a job: how one sees the job
3) Relational boundaries of a job: whom one interacts with at work

Question 31

Job characteristics

Answer 31

1) Hindering job demands: require physical and psychological effort
2) Challenging job demands: have the potential to promote employee growth and development
3) Job resources: functional for achieving work goals

Question 32

Job crafting refers to

Answer 32

Voluntary self-initiated employee behaviors targeted to:

1) Seeking resources
2) Seeking challenges
3) Reducing hindering demands

Question 33

Positive implications of seeking challenges

Answer 33

Proactive work orientation are self-efficacious and protect from the adverse effects of a demanding work environment

Question 34

Vicious cycle

Answer 34

Employees who attempted to reduce their demands reported higher exhaustion, a state that led to further decreasing demands

Question 35

Segregation or Segmentation hypothesis

Answer 35

There is no relationship between “work” and “non work”

Question 36

Border theory

Answer 36

Proposes that each person’s role takes place in different domains that are separated by physical, temporal, or psychological borders

Question 37

Work-family conflict

Answer 37

A form of inter-role conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect.

Participation in the family role is made more difficult by virtue of participation in the work role, and vice versa.

Question 38

The role scarcity hypothesis explains negative spillover or conflict.

Answer 38

People possess limited and fixed amounts of resources (time and energy). Managing multiple roles (employee, spouse, parent) is problematic as they draw on the same, scarce resources.

Question 39

Conclusion inter-role management: Employees manage to create boundaries between the work and non-work domains

Answer 39

It helps them detach from work and avoid the diminishment of energy and thus restrict the negative impact of the job