Coping With Conflict: Examining the Influence of PSM on Perceptions of Workplace Stressors

• Author: Edmund C. Stazyk,Emily Neuhoff,Allysha Kochenour,Randall S. Davis
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X18820096
• Date: 01 September 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X18820096

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2020, Vol. 40(3) 405 –425

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X18820096

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Article

Coping With Conflict:

Examining the Influence

of PSM on Perceptions of

Workplace Stressors

Randall S. Davis1, Edmund C. Stazyk2,

Allysha Kochenour1, and Emily Neuhoff1

Abstract

While the presence and degree of workplace stress poses a significant problem for

organizations in all sectors, scholarship frequently acknowledges that responses to

workplace stress vary significantly across individuals. However, public sector human

resource management (HRM) research, relative to generic HRM research, invests

comparatively less attention toward understanding individual differences in response

to perceived stressors. We employ the relational model of stress developed by

Matteson and Ivancevich and Lazarus to examine how one dispositional characteristic

commonly examined in public sector HRM research, public service motivation (PSM),

influences the stress process. Results obtained using data from the 2010 U.S. Merit

Principles Survey reveal that individuals with higher than average PSM experience

more pronounced negative emotions when they perceive heightened workplace

conflict, which subsequently increases their intent to separate from the organization.

Keywords

job stress, public service motivation, job satisfaction, turnover/organizational mobility,

labor relations

Introduction

Although not widely examined in public sector human resource management (HRM)

scholarship, occupational stress represents a significant problem for organizations.

Researchers often characterize occupational stress as a workplace epidemic that

1Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA

2University at Albany, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Randall S. Davis, Department of Political Science, Southern Illinois University, 1000 Faner Drive, Mail

Code 4501, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA.

Email: rsdavis@siu.edu

820096ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X18820096Review of Public Personnel AdministrationDavis et al.

research-article2018

406 Review of Public Personnel Administration 40(3)

degrades the physical and psychological health of employees (Cavanaugh, Boswell,

Roehling, & Boudreau, 2000; Dawson, O’Brien, & Beehr, 2016; Matteson &

Ivancevich, 1987). In addition to the health-related drawbacks employees experience

as a result of occupational stress, estimates suggest that its deleterious side effects may

cost organizations up to US$300 billion per year resulting from lost productivity

(Cynkar, 2007; Dawson et al., 2016). Given that the psychological and physiological

by-products of the stress process compromise both employee health and organiza-

tional performance (Lazarus, 2000; Matteson & Ivancevich, 1987; Spector & Fox,

2002, 2005), public sector HRM scholarship can benefit from cultivating strategies

designed to remediate the more damaging outcomes of occupational stress.

Unfortunately, attempts by public sector HRM scholars to build strategies for effec-

tively addressing workplace stress confront three interrelated challenges. First, the

term stress represents one of the most misunderstood concepts in organizational stud-

ies. According to Matteson and Ivancevich (1987), “[t]he word stress means so many

things to so many different people that it has been described as the most imprecise in

the scientific dictionary” (p. 9). Second, adequately understanding the stress process

requires analyses of complex combinations of situational characteristics, individual

dispositional differences, and one’s behavioral responses to their perceptions (Lazarus,

2000; Matteson & Ivancevich, 1987). Finally, generic expectations regarding how

individuals appraise and respond to the situations they confront may not apply to every

work context. As such, scholarship must identify those salient elements of work with

an increased likelihood of initiating the stress process to best understand the relation-

ship between stress and other important work outcomes (Fairbrother & Warn, 2003).

Our article seeks to address these three challenges in an effort to contribute to a

more comprehensive understanding of how individuals respond to perceived stressors

in public sector work environments. First, we seek to clarify the meaning of work

stress in the public sector by drawing from transactional—or process—models devel-

oped in psychology and organization behavior (Lazarus, 2000; Matteson & Ivancevich,

1987; Spector & Fox, 2002, 2005). The transactional approach views stress as “an

adaptive response, moderated by individual differences, that is a consequence of any

action, situation, or event that places demands upon a person” (Matteson & Ivancevich,

1987, p. 10). We then slightly modify this definition based on subsequent work and

employ the definition throughout the remainder article to broadly examine differences

across individuals as they navigate the stress process.

Next, with respect to the second challenge, we explore the following question:

What intra-individual characteristics common in public sector work environments

moderate how employees appraise work situations? Occupational stress researchers

often coalesce around the assertion that broad categories of personality differences,

such as dispositional hardiness or locus of control, provide a common cognitive lens

that influence how individuals appraise external demands (Matteson & Ivancevich,

1987, see especially chap. 5; Spector & Fox, 2002, p. 274). Yet, more narrow intra-

individual differences common in public work contexts may also influence the stress

process. One individual characteristic frequently studied in public HRM research,

public service motivation (PSM), may offer some insight into how employees respond