Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide, Volume III, Work and Wellbeing

Chapter 3

Job Demands–Resources Theory

Arnold B. Bakker

Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Evangelia Demerouti

Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Introduction

Why do some employees burn out or get bored by their work, whereas others are so enthusiastic about their work that time seems to fly? The question of what causes job stress and what motivates people has received a lot of research attention during the past five decades. Job design theory has played an important role in this respect. “Job design” was originally defined as the set of opportunities and constraints structured into assigned tasks and responsibilities that affect how an employee accomplishes and experiences work (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Thus, job design scholars tried to unravel which job characteristics make people feel satisfied with their job, and motivated to reach organizational goals. Nowadays, job design is defined more broadly as “encapsulating the processes and outcomes of how work is structured, organized, experienced, and enacted” (Grant, Fried, & Juillerat, 2010, p. 418). According to Grant and his colleagues, this broader definition opens the door for dynamic, emergent roles as opposed to merely emphasizing static job descriptions composed of fixed tasks assigned by management (see also, Parker, Wall, & Cordery, 2001).

In this chapter, we discuss job demands–resources (JD-R) theory, which represents an extension of the job demands–resources ...