Emotional exhaustion and job performance: The moderating roles of distributive justice and positive affect

Onne Janssen*, Catherine K. Lam, Xu Huang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

177 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In a field study among 241 shop assistants and their 59 supervisors in fashion chain stores in Mainland China and Hong Kong, we found a negative relationship between emotional exhaustion and four indicators of job performance (overall performance, emotional display, OCB-O, and OCB-I) when employees perceived high levels of distributive justice in the exchange relationship with the organization, whereas emotional exhaustion was unrelated to any of these performance types when employees perceived low levels of distributive justice. In addition, this negative two-way interaction effect of emotional exhaustion by distributive justice on job performance was buffered when employees were high on positive affect and intensified when they were low on positive affect. We used the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the attribution model of justice, and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions to clarify and discuss the moderating roles of distributive justice and positive affect in the relationship between emotional exhaustion and job performance.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)787-809
Number of pages23
JournalJournal of Organizational Behavior
Volume31
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2010

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