Chapter 6

Question 1

What are the different natures of demands?

Answer 1

• Physical demands
• Cognitive demands
• Emotional demands
• Motivational demands

Question 2

What is the difference between challenge demands and hindrance demands?

Answer 2

Both demands can be seen as stressors, however challenge demands are also viewed as potentially rewarding work experiences that may create opportunity for personal growth. Hindrance demands, are viewed as obstacles to personal growth.

Question 3

How can challenge demands lead to negative effects?

Answer 3

The rewards associated with successful mastery of challenge demands may well induce people to ignore the negative aspects, thus being successful heading towards burnout or a heart attack in the long run.

Question 4

Describe the action regulation theory

Answer 4

To deal with a type of demands a worker needs cognitive activity. Through these cognitive activities, we regulate our actions. Our actions are regulated by internal activities -> mental models or image. Through these mental models, people develop plans or actions programs for carrying out specific actions.

Question 5

What is the ‘test-operate-test-exit’ unit?

Answer 5

The repeated cycle of monitoring (testing) and acting (operating) in the action regulation theory. The mental representation of the goals and of ways to reach them serves as a standard for monitoring and interpreting feedback.

Question 6

What are the stages an action process has to go through? (The sequential aspect)

Answer 6

• One must have a goal
• One has to monitor the environment with regard to the possibilities for pursuing the goal
• One must develop an action plan/several options for such a plan
• One has to decide on a particular plan from available plans
• One must execute the plan and monitor plan implementation

Question 7

What are the two hierarchical aspects of the action regulation theory?

Answer 7

• Humans are able to act in a very flexible manner and even simple and repetitive acts are never the same. Higher-order elements (call a customer) trigger more elementary acts (find out her number). Hence, one can imagine actions as a hierarchy of functional units.
• The idea of psychological automatization or routinization. The more we have routinized a certain type of action, the fewer cognitive resources are required to execute it.

Question 8

A well-developed hierarchical regulation of activities makes us very efficient and very flexible. However, sometimes errors can result, how?

Answer 8

If someone has a routinized response to a certain situation, the same response may be triggered by a situation that is similar to this situation. This response may not be appropriate.

Question 9

In the action regulation theory there are 3 different levels of regulation (how do we act towards demands). Which levels of regulation are there?

Answer 9

• Automatic mode
• Knowledge based mode
• Intellectual mode

Question 10

Definition of physical demands

Answer 10

Any kind of environmental demand, such as physical, chemical or biological factors, that impacts on workers, but also refers to aspects such as dealing with heavy weights, working in unusual body positions and carrying out unusual movements. (falls into the domain of ergonomics)

Question 11

Definition of cognitive demands

Answer 11

Refers to information processing. We need to perceive information, deal with it and use it for making decisions.

Question 12

Linked to the cognitive demands is the working memory, what happens if this working memory is used too much/too little?

Answer 12

People tend to revert to strategies that reduce cognitive demands by simplification. E.g., overusing routine strategies or neglecting information that seems secondary.

Question 13

Definition of quantitative overload

Answer 13

Means that you have too much to do, which usually goes along with time pressure

Question 14

Definition of qualitative overload

Answer 14

Involves complex tasks that are too difficult to carry out. It taxes or exceeds a person’s skills to deal with one’s work tasks.

Question 15

Definition of qualitative underload

Answer 15

Implies that carrying out work tasks does not require substantial requirements of conscious thinking and planning, which leads to boredom.

Question 16

Definition of quantitative underload

Answer 16

Means there is too little to do, which is usually associated with boredom.

Question 17

Definition of role expectations

Answer 17

What an employee is expected to do in order to complete a particular job. These expectations can differ depending on which role or task you are working on at a given time.

Question 18

Explain the role stress concept

Answer 18

The concept is based on the idea that members of an organization often take one one or more roles in it.
Each of these roles is tied to a set of goals that you would need to work towards in order to complete your work successfully.

Question 19

Which role demands can lead to higher job strain?

Answer 19

• Role conflict; job demands that compete or conflict with each other
• Role ambiguity; job demands are unclear
• Role overload; job demands that exceed an employee’s ability to complete work successfully

Question 20

Name the different types of role conflict that arise if there are different contradicting expectations of one or more persons

Answer 20

• Intra-sender conflict; a supervisor who gives inconsistent instructions
• Inter-sender conflict; two supervisors giving conflicting instructions
• Role-role conflict; if there are different roles that partly contradict
• Person-role conflict; when employees are required to do things they do not really want to do

Question 21

Explain the concept of role ambiguity

Answer 21

Unclear what is actually expected to fulfill the work role. E.g., being not sure what is expected by the supervisor. Happens often in situations of change.

Question 22

In the context of the action regulation theory there are certain demands that make it difficult to reach goals. What are these 3 type of demands?

Answer 22

• Regulation obstacles; events/conditions that are directly related to the task at hand and make it harder or even impossible to pursue a goal and to regulate an action -> interruptions and potentially avoidable conditions
• Regulation uncertainty; one does not know how to achieve a certain goal (role ambiguity and role conflict)
• Overtaxing regulation; too much information has to be kept and processed in the working memory at the same time

Question 23

Definition of ‘display rules’

Answer 23

Rules which prescribe what kind of emotions have to be shown in a service interaction

Question 24

Definition of ‘emotion work’

Answer 24

Psychological processes necessary to regulate organizationally desired emotions as part of one’s job

Question 25

What are the two key aspects of emotion work?

Answer 25

• Emotional work requirements

- Emotion work process

Question 26

Which part of emotion work requirements is the most stressful?

Answer 26

Having to show emotions that one is not feeling in a particular situation -> dissonant emotional demands

Question 27

What is the emotion work process?

Answer 27

Employees regulation their emotions to bring them in line with the emotions that are required by the organization

Question 28

Name the 4 methods to deal with emotions in the emotion work process

Answer 28

• Surface acting; inner feelings remain unchanged (smiling at guest)
• Deep acting; influences inner feelings (trying to understand an angry guest)
• Automatic emotion regulation; required emotions correspond to automatically elicited emotions (nurse feeling empathy for patient)
• Emotion deviation; employee not showing the expected emotions.

Question 29

Explain how displaying negative emotions and dissonant emotional demands share properties of hindrance demands?

Answer 29

Negative emotions and dissonant emotional demands are positively related to psychological strain and negatively related to JS and performance.

Question 30

Explain how displaying positive emotions or sympathy and sensitivity requirements share properties of challenge demands?

Answer 30

They often show a positive association with psychological strain, however also frequently with JS and performance. This happens when automatic emotion regulation or deep acting can be used.