All or Worse Outcomes: Evaluating the Indirect Effects of Meaningful Work and Job Anxiety on Turnover Intentions

EasyChair Preprint no. 8689

Abstract

Job Anxiety impacts workers viscerally when the stress of one's job exceeds their coping resources. Considering that these negative perceptions of work elements dramatically impact turnover intentions for the workforce, the need to understand what can lower turnover ideation would substantially help both organizations and the workers they employ. With the support of the literature surrounding meaningful work, we sampled general workers in the United States (n =219) to determine if meaningful work components have the potential to lower turnover intention. Using structural equation modeling, we evaluated how the three components of meaningful work (positive work meaning, meaning-making, and greater good motivations) moderated the relationships between job anxiety on turnover intention in our participants. Our findings suggest that positive work meaning moderated the relationship between job anxiety and turnover intention. However, further analysis revealed job anxiety amplifies at low and moderate levels of positive work meaning. Our findings indicate that job anxiety will compound if one does not have high positive work meaning. We discuss how our results add to the literature of meaningful work, give suggestions for future research based on our limitations, and provide managerial implications.

Keyphrases: job anxiety, job stress, meaningful work, positive work meaning, turnover intention

@Booklet{EasyChair:8689,
  author = {Matthew Aplin-Houtz and Jo Pang and Sean Leahy and Emily Lane and Sarah Willey},
  title = {All or Worse Outcomes: Evaluating the Indirect Effects of Meaningful Work and Job Anxiety on Turnover Intentions},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 8689},

  year = {EasyChair, 2022}}