Marcus James Fila

Illegitimate Tasks as an Impediment to Job Satisfaction and Intrinsic Motivation: Moderated Mediation Effects of Gender and Effort-Reward Imbalance

The current work examines a contemporary workplace stressor that has only recently been introduced into the literature: illegitimate tasks. Illegitimate tasks are work tasks that violate identity role norms about what can reasonably be expected from an employee in a given position. Although illegitimate tasks have been linked to employee well-being in past work, we know little about the potential explanatory mechanisms linking illegitimate tasks to work-relevant negative psychological states. Using a sample of 213 US-based employees of mixed occupations and a cross-sectional design, the present study examines job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation as outcomes of illegitimate tasks. Additionally, we examine perception of effort-reward imbalance (ERI) as a potential mediating mechanism through which illegitimate tasks relate to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation, highlighting a possible pathway by which these relationships are functioning. Finally, we explore gender as a socially constructed variable that could contribute to variation in responses to illegitimate tasks and moderate the mediated link between illegitimate tasks and outcomes. Results indicated that illegitimate tasks were significantly related to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation both directly and indirectly through perceptions of ERI in the predicted directions. Moreover, a moderated-mediation effect was found such that male workers reacted more than female workers to illegitimate tasks through the mechanism of perceived ERI.

Stress and Cancer Risk: The Possible Role of Work Stress

Despite widespread public belief that stress may lead to cancer, research on this relationship remains inconclusive. However, recent work points to the possibility that hostile naturalistic settings may contribute to cancer risk. Within organizational research, work stress is thought to be one of the greatest sources of psychological stress in people’s lives and is increasingly becoming a modern-day pandemic. Thus, this paper outlines the nature of stress, including how excessive and chronic stress negatively affects human health and may possibly lead to cancer; argues that a causal link between stress and cancer may exist, despite being frequently overlooked due to ethical and practical research difficulties; and presents an industrial/organizational psychologist’s viewpoint of workplace stress by outlining two prominent models used in the social sciences. Finally, the author suggests that future collaboration between experimental cancer researchers and workplace psychologists may help further address the possible link between work stress and cancer.