Department of Evolutionary, Educational, Social Psychology and Methodology, Universitat Jaume I, 12071 Castellón de la Plana, Spain.
Department of Human Sciences, European University of Rome, Via degli Aldobrandeschi, 190, 00163 Rome, Italy.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 May 15;18(10):5265. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18105265.
Economic stress has been recognized as a major threat to the well-being and performance of workers, especially during times of global economic crisis. An interesting and relatively unexplored research topic concerns the associations between economic stress and employee job outcomes such as innovative behaviors, indispensable for business survival. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between economic stress, absenteeism and innovation. We considered both a direct and a mediation hypothesis and hypothesized that economic stress can have a negative influence on innovation directly and indirectly through increased absenteeism. A cross-sectional study was performed during 2018 and 2019 in an Italian food factory. A sample of 578 employees completed the Stress Questionnaire, the Janssen's nine-item scale and a single-item regarding absenteeism. All relationships are supported by empirical data. As expected, the results indicated that economic stress is negatively related to innovation and positively related to absenteeism, which, in turn, plays a mediating role in the relationship between economic stress and innovative behavior. Herewith, those employees with higher levels of economic stress show higher levels of absenteeism contributing at the same time to a decrease in innovative behaviors. These findings show the importance of economic stress in understanding individual work outcomes and highlight the need to promote adequate intervention programs.
经济压力已被视为工人福祉和工作表现的主要威胁，尤其是在全球经济危机时期。一个有趣且相对未被充分探索的研究课题涉及经济压力与员工工作成果（如创新行为）之间的关系，这些成果对企业的生存至关重要。本研究旨在探讨经济压力、旷工与创新之间的关系。我们考虑了直接和中介假设，并假设经济压力可以通过增加旷工直接和间接地对创新产生负面影响。2018 年至 2019 年期间，在一家意大利食品厂进行了一项横断面研究。578 名员工完成了压力问卷、詹森的九项量表和一项关于旷工的单项调查。所有关系都得到了实证数据的支持。正如预期的那样，结果表明经济压力与创新呈负相关，与旷工呈正相关，旷工在经济压力与创新行为之间的关系中起着中介作用。那些经济压力较高的员工旷工率更高，同时也导致创新行为减少。这些发现表明了经济压力在理解个人工作成果方面的重要性，并强调了需要促进适当的干预计划。
