Uncovering the Relationship Between Employee Emotions and Occupational Well-Being During Economic Crises

Abstract

The impact of several organizational and employee-related factors on the occupational well-being of employees has been well acknowledged. However, there is a lack of comprehensive research that examines these causal relationships within a unified structural model, particularly in the context of an economic crisis. Thus, the originality of this study lies in the examination of the effect of economic crises on work-related attitudes and occupational well-being of employees. In other words, this study addresses the current research gap by constructing a comprehensive research model, integrating key aspects that significantly impact employee well-being. The proposed and tested new research model incorporates 5 factors and 15 subfactors. The final sample, comprising 297 valid questionnaires, was filled in by employees and line managers. One crucial conclusion that contributes to the existing literature is that the negative consequences of the crisis did not severely affect employees’ emotional health. Nevertheless, occupational well-being is directly affected by employees’ attitudes and their (negative) emotional state. On the other hand, positive emotions affect occupational well-being indirectly. Overall, the general model can explain 36% of employee behaviour related parameter variance and 37% of occupational well-being variance, while the detailed model can explain 64% of employee behaviour parameter variance, 39% of burnout variance, 38% of depersonalization variance, and 14% of personal achievement variance. This article is structured around five main sections, namely introduction, theoretical framework and hypotheses, research methodology, data analysis and results and conclusions, followed by managerial implications.