Societal individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance as cultural moderators of relationships between job resources and strain

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2253
• Author: Haiyan Zhang,Seulki Jang,Tammy D. Allen,Winny Shen
• Date: 01 May 2018
• Published date: 01 May 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Societal individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance

as cultural moderators of relationships between job resources

and strain

Seulki Jang

1

|Winny Shen

2

|Tammy D. Allen

1

|Haiyan Zhang

3

1

University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida,

U.S.A.

2

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario,

Canada

3

Smarter Workforce Institute, IBM,

Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Seulki Jang, University of South Florida,

Tampa, Florida, U.S.A.

Email: seulki@mail.usf.edu

Funding information

Social Sciences and Humanities Research

Council of Canada, Grant/Award Number:

435‐2016‐0696

Summary

The job demands–resources model is a dominant theoretical framework that describes the

influence of job demands and job resources on employee strain. Recent research has highlighted

that the effects of job demands on strain vary across cultures, but similar work has not explored

whether this is true for job resources. Given that societal characteristics can influence individuals'

cognitive structures and, to a lesser extent, values in a culture, we address this gap in the litera-

ture and argue that individuals' strain in reaction to job resources may differ across cultures.

Specifically, we theorize that the societal cultural dimensions of individualism–collectivism and

uncertainty avoidance shape individual‐level job resource–strain relationships, as they dictate

which types of resources (i.e., individual vs. group preference‐oriented and uncertainty‐reducing

vs. not) are more likely to be valued, used, or effective in combating strain within a culture.

Results revealed that societal individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance indepen-

dently moderated the relationships between certain job resources (i.e., job control, participation

in decision making, and clear goals and performance feedback) and strain (i.e., job satisfaction

and turnover intentions). This study expands our understanding of the cross‐cultural specificity

versus generalizability of the job demands–resources model.

KEYWORDS

culture, cross‐cultural management, individualism–collectivism, job resources, job satisfaction,

multilevel modeling, turnover intentions, uncertaintyavoidance

1|INTRODUCTION

Despite its widespread adoption, limited research relative to the

immense popularity of the job demands–resource (JD‐R) model

(Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001) has examined

whether culture moderates relations within this model. Recent

research finds that cross‐national variation in individualism–collectiv-

ism moderates individual‐level job demands–strain relations (e.g., Yang

et al., 2012). However, extant cross‐cultural research has focused on

job demands and has neglected the other key determinant of strain—

job resources. Further, it is currently unclear whether various job

resources are equivalent indicators of a latent “job resource”construct

or whether they are distinct factors (e.g., Luchman & Gonzalez‐

Morales, 2013). Thus, this study contributes to the literature by exam-

ining cross‐national differences in the relationship between various job

resources (i.e., job control, participation in decision making [PDM],

clear goals and performance feedback, and social support) and

employee strain (i.e., job satisfaction and turnover intentions) to

uncover whether the moderating effects of culture are similar for job

resource–strain relations with previously uncovered job demand–

strain relations as well as clarifying the circumstances under which dif-

ferent job resources predict strain similarly versus differently.

Societal values have been posited to affect individual‐level rela-

tionships within a culture due to their strong influence on individuals'

cognitive structures and their more modest influence on individuals'

personal values (Peterson & Barreto, 2014). Specifically, we argue that

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided

the original work is properly cited.

© 2017 The Authors Journal of Organizational Behavior Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Received: 8 April 2016 Revised: 15 October 2017 Accepted: 8 November 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2253

J Organ Behav. 2018;39:507–524. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 507

societal individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance may

influence individual‐level job resource–strain relationships in a culture.

The rationale is that societal individualism–collectivism and uncer-

tainty avoidance may either influence the importance of resources

generally (i.e., resources have a stronger impact on reducing strain in

more stressful, individualistic cultures and higher uncertainty avoid-

ance cultures) or may affect the value, use, or effectiveness of specific

types of resources (i.e., individual vs. group preference‐oriented,

greater impact of uncertainty‐reducing resources) in combating strain

within a culture, leading to stronger job resource–strain relationships

for certain job resources in specific cultural contexts (see Figure 1 for

graphical summary).

1.1 |The job demands–resources model

The JD‐R model, which evolved from the job demands–control model

(Karasek, 1979) and the job demands–control–support model (John-

son & Hall, 1988), has been a dominant model in the occupational

health and well‐being literature that explains how workplace factors

influence employee physical and psychological strain (Demerouti

et al., 2001). In these models, job demands refer to physical, social,

or organizational aspects of the work environment that require con-

tinued efforts and are associated with physiological or psychological

costs (e.g., workload and role ambiguity), whereas job resources refer

to physical, psychological, organizational, or social factors of the job

that can help employees meet work goals, protect against job

demands, and enable personal development (e.g., social support and

control; Demerouti et al., 2001). Originally, Karasek (1979) argued

that high job control should buffer against the negative effects of

high job demands. However, empirical support for this proposition

has been inconsistent (e.g., de Lange, Taris, Kompier, Houtman, &

Bongers, 2003; Van der Doef & Maes, 1999). Thus, in the current

study, we focus on the main effects of job resources on employee

strain.

Job demands are consistently and positively related to employee

strain, whereas job resources are consistently and negatively related

to employee strain—the negative physical, psychological, or behavioral

symptoms driven by high levels of stressors (e.g., Crawford, LePine, &

Rich, 2010; Podsakoff, LePine, & LePine, 2007). Researchers have

generally used the term strain fairly broadly. As examples,

operationalizations of strain have included indicators of physical health

(e.g., cardiovascular disease; Johnson & Hall, 1988), mental health (e.g.,

depression; Hakanen, Schaufeli, & Ahola, 2008), job attitudes (e.g., job

satisfaction; Xie, 1996), and turnover intentions (e.g., Korunka,

Kubicek, Schaufeli, & Hoonakker, 2009).

1.1.1 |Existing cross‐cultural research on the job

demands–resources model

Although a large number of studies linking job demands or job

resources and employee strain have been conducted in both U.S. and

non‐U.S. contexts (for a review, see Chang & Spector, 2011), relatively

few studies have directly examined the moderating influence of

societal cultural dimensions on these relationships because most

cross‐cultural studies only include two or three countries or cultures.

Therefore, in our review that follows, we focus on larger scale cross‐

national studies that imputed cultural dimensions scores to more

directly examine the moderating effect of cultural variables on rela-

tionships within the JD‐R model.

Three studies have examined cultural moderators of relationships

between job demands and employee strain (i.e., Spector et al., 2004;

Spector et al., 2007; Yang et al., 2012), and one study has examined

cultural moderators of relationships between a job resource and

employee strain (Masuda et al., 2012). Spector et al. (2004) found that

the relationship between the job demand of work hours and work‐to‐

family conflict was stronger in Anglo than in Asian and Latin American

country clusters. Spector et al. (2007) found that the relationship

between work‐to‐family conflict and job satisfaction and turnover

intentions, respectively, was stronger for the Anglo country cluster

relative to the Latin American, Eastern European, and East Asian coun-

try clusters, which are all higher on collectivism. Similarly, in a study

based on 24 nations, Yang et al. (2012) found that cultural differences

in individualism–collectivism moderated the relationship between job

FIGURE 1 A graphical summary of the current study

508 JANG ET AL.