직무수행 과정에서 지각된 정서적 안녕(Affective Well-Being)이 직무요구-자원 모형에서 수행하는 역할에 대한 실증연구

An Empirical Study on the Role of Job-Related Affective Well-Being in the Context of Job Demand-Resources Model

본 연구에서는 직무수행 과정에서 사원들이 경험하는 정서적 안녕에 영향을 미치는 선행 요인은 무엇이며, 또 이러한 정서적 안녕이 자신의 조직에 대해 갖는태도 면에는 어떠한 영향을 미치는 지를 ‘직무요구-자원 모형’의 맥락에서 실증해 보고 있다. 그간 ‘직무요구-자원 모형’을 활용하여 다양한 직무특성들과 조직구성원의 심리적 안녕간의 관계를 분석한 연구가 많이 제기되어 왔다. 하지만, 이들 연구는 대부분 직무소진 등 부정적인 차원의 심리적 안녕 변수를 결과변수로 많이 활용해 온 특징이 있다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 최근 긍정적 조직행동 논의에서 많은 관심을 끌고 있는 긍정적 정서 개념의 중요성에 착안하여, 긍정적인 차원의 심리적 안녕 변수인 사원들의 정서적 안녕 변수를 ‘직무요구-자원 모형’의 맥락에 도입해 봄으로써 그간의 연구를 보완해 보고자 시도하고 있다. 고객접점에서 근무하는 서비스직 사원 158명을 대상으로 한 설문조사 결과, 다음과 같은 분석결과를 확인할 수 있었다. 먼저, 양적인 차원의 직무요구인 업무부하는 서비스직 사원들이 직무수행과정에서 경험하는 정서적 안녕에 매우 부정적인 영향을 미치는 것을 확인하였다. 반면, 직무자율성, 분배공정성과 상호작용공정성 등 일련의 직무자원 요인들은 공히정서적 안녕과 정(+)의 영향관계에 있음이 확인되었다. 또 정서적 안녕은 조직몰입과 정(+)의 영향관계, 그리고 이직의 향과는 부(-)의 영향관계를 나타내었다. 아울러, 정서적 안녕은 업무부하로 인해 사원들이 이직의향을 갖게 되는 과정을 완전 매개하며, 분배 및 상호작용공정성 등 직무자원 요인이 조직몰입과 이직의향에 미치는 영향을 부분 매개한다는 사실이 확인되었다. 이러한 분석결과가 시사해 주는 경영관리적 함의와 향후 연구과제들이 함께 토론되었다.

During past three decades, many studies which were based on the Job Demand-Control model or the Job Demands-Resources model, have shown that various job characteristics can have a profound impact on employee well-being. But the vast majority of previous studies have been restricted to a limited set of predictor variables, and have focused on negative outcome variables, including job burnout, ill health, and repetitive strain, etc. Recently, a group of positive psychologists has given special attention on the positive aspects of people, contending that an individual's positive experiences and effects are likely to have an impact not only on their personal lives but also on their work lives. On the basis of these arguments, the field of organizational behavior has started to embrace the positive psychology movement, developing a positive approach to organizational behavior: Positive Organizational Behavior(POB). Besides, the following empirical studies have continuously reported that positive effect and positive psychological well-being of employees are positively related with various types of job attitudes and performance, including job satisfaction, creativity, problem solving, organizational commitment and so forth. On the basis of these theoretical backgrounds, this study aims to investigate several possible job demand/resource variables in order to extend the Job Demands-Resources model, and to introduce the positive psychological indicator of employee well-being as an outcome variable to address the void in the previous job demands-resources researches. To achieve these research purposes, two demanding aspects of service job(e.g. workload, surface acting) and three kinds of job resources(e.g. job autonomy, distributive and interactional justice) were incorporated to build a research model of this study. This research also introduced job-related affective well-being of service employee which represents their job-related affective experiences. The scale of job-related affective well-being that is used in this study has some differences in contrast to the more commonly used attitudinal and/or affective scales. First of all, it measures pure job-related effect as opposed to belief-oriented or attitude-based scales generally used in job satisfaction researches. Second, it measures context-specific effect, in this case, specific affective states experienced in response to job conditions. In this respect, this is in contrast to scales such as PANAS that were developed to assess context-free emotions or emotional dispositions. In addition, a few attitudinal variables such as organizational commitment and turnover intention are also included in the research model as dependent variables. So, one of the aims of this study is to replicate the Job Demands-Resources model using the customer-contact employees to whom emotional labor becomes a prevalent component of their jobs. Another main research question of this study is to explore the possible mediating role that job-related affective well-being of service employee may play in the relationships between the job demand/resource variables and organizational attitudes such as organizational commitment and turnover intention. A total of 158 employees in Korean service firms participated in the study. Results showed that workload as a quantitative job demand was negatively related to job-related affective well-being of service employee, whereas three job resources influenced positively to it. But the buffering hypothesis of job resources was not supported. An employee's affective well-being was positively related to the organizational commitment, whereas it was negatively related to their intention to quit. Further, affective well-being at work mediated the relationship between workload and turnover intention of service employees.