Ulrich Leicht-Deobald

Work-related social support modulates effects of early life stress on limbic reactivity during stress

Early life stress (ELS) affects stress- reactivity via limbic brain regions implicated such as hippocampus and amygdala. Social support is a major protective factor against ELS effects, while subjects with ELS experience reportedly perceive less of it in their daily life. The workplace, where most adults spend a substantial amount of time in their daily lives, might serve as a major resource for social support. Since previous data demonstrated that social support attenuates stress reactivity, we here used a psychosocial stress task to test the hypothesis that work-related social support modulates the effects of ELS. Results show decreased amygdala reactivity during stress in ELS subjects who report high levels of work- related social support, thereby indicating a signature for reduced stress reactivity. However, this effect was only observable on the neural, but not on the behavioral level, since social support had no buffering effect regarding the subjective experience of stress in daily life as well as regarding feelings of uncontrollability induced by the stress task. Accordingly, our data suggest that subjects with ELS experiences might benefit from interventions targeted at lowering their subjective stress levels by helping them to better perceive the availability of social support in their daily lives.

A Moderated Mediation Model of Team Boundary Activities, Team Emotional Energy, and Team Innovation.

Past research on team boundary work has focused on a “cold,” information-exchange perspective to explain why boundary activities affect team innovation. Although the theory is widely accepted, empirical studies on the actual mechanism are scant and produce inconsistent results. Drawing from Interaction Ritual Theory (Collins, 2004), we propose a “warm,” affective perspective that emphasizes team emotional energy – a shared feeling of enthusiasm among team members – as a mechanism linking boundary work and team innovation. Moreover, we examine a theory-driven contextual factor –team role overload – that modifies the hypothesized mediated relationship. Based on field data from four different sources of 89 automotive research and development teams (comprising 724 employees, 89 direct supervisors and 18 managers), we found that both team boundary-spanning and boundary-buffering activities are associated with higher levels of team emotional energy, which, in turn, are related to greater levels of team innovation. Moreover, the mediated relationship of boundary-buffering activities, team emotional energy and team innovation is moderated by team role overload, such that the mediated relationship is stronger when team role overload is higher. Our study contributes to the literature by broadening our understanding of why boundary work is effective and when it matters most.