Recovery from work‐related effort: A meta‐analysis

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2217
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Author: Arnold B. Bakker,Andrew A. Bennett,James G. Field
• Date: 01 March 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Recovery from work‐related effort: A meta‐analysis

Andrew A. Bennett

1

|Arnold B. Bakker

2

|James G. Field

3

1

Department of Management, Strome College

of Business, Old Dominion University, Norfolk,

Virginia, U.S.A.

2

Center of Excellence for Positive

Organizational Psychology, Erasmus

University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The

Netherlands

3

Department of Management, College of

Business and Economics, West Virginia

University, Morgantown, West Virginia, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Andrew A. Bennett, Department of

Management, Strome College of Business, Old

Dominion University, 2033 Constant Hall,

Norfolk, Virginia 23529, U.S.A.

Email: aabennet@odu.edu

Summary

This meta‐analytic study examines the antecedents and outcomes of four recovery experiences:

psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control. Using 299 effect sizes from 54

independent samples (N= 26,592), we extend theory by integrating recovery experiences into

the challenge–hindrance framework, creating a more comprehensive understanding of how both

after‐work recovery and work characteristics collectively relate to well‐being. The results of

meta‐analytic path estimates indicate that challenge demands have stronger negative

relationships with psychological detachment, relaxation, and control recovery experiences than

hindrance demands, and job resources have positive relationships with relaxation, mastery, and

control recovery experiences. Psychological detachment after work has a stronger negative

relationship with fatigue than relaxation or control experiences, whereas control experiences after

work have a stronger positive relationship with vigor than detachment or relaxation experiences.

Additionally, a temporally driven model with recovery experiences as a partial mediator explains

up to 62% more variance in outcomes (ΔR

2

= .12) beyond work characteristics models, implying

that both work characteristics and after‐work recovery play an important role in determining

employee well‐being.

KEYWORDS

challenge–hindrance framework, fatigue, meta‐analysis, recovery experiences, vigor

1|INTRODUCTION

Work requires energy and effort to accomplish required tasks. Both

work conditions and task demands can deplete psychological

resources (Meijman & Mulder, 1998). After expending energy over a

period, it is necessary to recover or replenish resources that were used

up at work (Zijlstra & Sonnentag, 2006). For many employees, the

recovery process occurs each day after work. This recovery process

plays a “crucial intervening role in the relationship between stressful

work characteristics on the one hand, and health, well‐being and

performance capability on the other hand”(Sonnentag & Geurts,

2009, p. 2). This study focuses on recovery experiences because “it is

not a specific activity per se that helps [one] to recover from job stress

but its underlying attributes”(Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007, p. 204). In

other words, recovery experiences are the mechanisms through which

recovery processes occur (Sonnentag & Geurts, 2009). In this way,

after‐work recovery experiences are considered a mediator between

work characteristics and well‐being outcomes (Kinnunen, Feldt,

Siltaloppi, & Sonnentag, 2011).

The four most researched recovery experiences are psychological

detachment, not thinking about work during nonwork time; relaxation,

having a low activation level; mastery, facing a positive challenge to

learn something new; and control, having a feeling of control over

nonwork time (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007). Although there has been

considerable research about recovery over the past two decades,

several major questions remain unanswered: How do recovery

experiences fit into recent work characteristic and employee well‐

being models? Is one recovery experience more effective for improving

individual well‐being? Does researching recovery experiences add to

our understanding of well‐being in a practically significant way beyond

work characteristics models? The current study aims to address these

unanswered questions as well as additional questions surrounding

after‐work recovery experiences.

The past three decades of employee well‐being research have

yielded important contributions to the understanding of how work

and nonwork experiences relate to individual well‐being. Lee and

Ashforth (1996) meta‐analyzed the relationship between work

characteristics and burnout, finding that work demands have the

strongest correlation with emotional exhaustion. Several years later,

the Job Demands–Resources model (JD‐R; Demerouti, Bakker,

Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001) proposed that job demands and job

resources are associated with burnout in different ways. Subsequent

Received: 27 March 2015 Revised: 18 June 2017 Accepted: 10 July 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2217

262 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2018;39:262–275.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job