M.C.W. Peeters

• Ph.D
• Professor (Associate) at Utrecht University

To investigate the long-term relationships between work engagement, workaholism, work-to-family enrichment, and work-to-family conflict (WFC). We used structural equation modeling and the three-wave 7-year follow-up data of 1580 Finnish dentists to test our hypotheses. Work engagement and work-to-family enrichment mutually predicted each other, and...

Workaholism is commonly conceptualized as a compulsive inner drive to work excessively hard. This study investigates to what extent rigid personal beliefs—i.e., performance-based self-esteem (self-esteem that is contingent upon good performance) and an enough continuation rule (continuing with work until one feels one has done enough)—contribute to...

Boredom at work is a state of employee unwell-being that is characterized by relatively low arousal and high dissatisfaction. At present little is known about boredom at work. In order to facilitate future research, the current study introduces a brief self-report questionnaire that assesses boredom at work, the Dutch Boredom Scale (DUBS). We argue...

Due to their excessive drive to work hard, workaholics may face difficulties with recovering from work. The present study examines the role of negative emotions in recovery from work among a selected group of workaholics and nonworkaholics. Data were collected among 118 employees who completed a survey and participated in a 5-day diary study. Based...

This study focused on daily job crafting and explored its contextual determinants and one motivational outcome (i.e., work engagement). Job crafting was conceptualized as “seeking resources,” “seeking challenges,” and “reducing demands.” Participants were 95 employees from several organizations who completed a 5-day diary survey. As hypothesized, w...

There is increasing interest in sustainable employment throughout employees’ careers, which makes sustainable work environments more and more important. This study investigates key components of sustainable work systems (i.e., job demands and job resources) and their association with employee sustainable well-being and sustainable performance. Spec...

Many of today’s jobs require employees to “set their own goals, decide how hard they work to achieve that goal, and decide when the task is complete” (i.e., motivational demands). However, when and how such motivational demands influence employee outcomes remains unclear. Building on transactional stress theory, we develop a dual-pathway model in w...

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is defined as the corporate climate in relation to employees’ perceptions of organizational policies, procedures, and practices for the protection of employee psychosocial safety and well-being. The present study was based on the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation (DISC) Model and proposed that the interplay betwee...

The present study studied two prominent job stress models as predictors of employee vigor and employee sustainable performance. First, based on the matching principle of the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation (DISC) Model, we predicted that job resources moderate (i.e. strengthen) the linear relation of job demands with employee vigor and sustainab...

Using a 1-year longitudinal design, we examined the role of personal demands and personal resources in long-term health impairment and motivational processes among master students. Based on the job demands-resources theory and transactional model of stress, we hypothesized that students’ personal demands (i.e., irrational performance demands, awful...

Creativity, or the generation of novel and useful ideas or products, is widely viewed as the cornerstone of organizational innovation and success. However, high pressure to be creative may have mixed implications for employee creativity. In this article, we first systematically conceptualize the nature of the concept of creative performance pressur...

This article examines the consequences of implementing an automation technology (i.e., Robotic Process Automation; RPA) for work characteristics and employee well-being. Based on the job demands-resources framework we examined to what extent the utilization of RPA was related to job resources (i.e., autonomy and task variety) and a job demand (i.e....

The present study investigated the role of job/home resources in the relation between job/home demands and exhaustion, job satisfaction, work-home interference, and home-work interference during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explored the prevalence of job/home demands and resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examined whether working at different...

Researchers have long been interested in understanding how appraisals influence stressor–outcome relationships. Most studies in this area employ a variable‐centred approach, which ignores the possibility that there may be subpopulations of employees who differ in the combined use of challenge and hindrance appraisals. Building on transactional stre...

Burnout is a phenomenon that has received considerable research attention in the past 50 years. As such, there is advanced knowledge on its prevalence, conceptualization, predictors, and outcomes. Although the literature has advanced, research on burnout is still topical. Burnout originated in the seventies but remains a contemporary problem becaus...

Although the concept of employee sustainable performance has received considerable attention in the practitioner literature, academic research still lacks a clear conceptualization and empirical operationalization of this concept. Defining employee sustainable performance as a regulatory process in which an individual worker enduringly and efficien...

Previous research on the association between job characteristics and employee well-being has returned mixed results. In particular, the possible impact of individual appraisal of these job characteristics has not been well-acknowledged. To address this limitation, we drew on appraisal theory and examined: (a) how workers appraise particular job cha...

Although the challenge-hindrance stressor model (CHSM) proposes that work stressors can be clearly divided into challenge and hindrance stressors, there has been mixed support for the model and some researchers have called for moving away from the current CHSM to an appraisal-based approach. Thus, we conducted a comprehensive literature review to a...

Research shows that students experience substantial levels of burnout during their studies. This study explores the role of personal demands on students’ well-being. After providing a conceptualization of personal demands, we examined the role of personal demands in the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. Based on the Transactional Model of Stress,...

Technologische vernieuwingen volgen elkaar in snel tempo op met als gevolg dat werknemers steeds vaker te maken hebben met veranderingen in hun werkzaamheden. Omwille van het waarborgen van een stimulerende en gezonde werkomgeving is het van belang meer inzicht te krijgen in de manier waarop technologische vernieuwingen invloed hebben op de kwalite...

Voortschrijdende digitalisering en technologisering van werk kunnen stress oproepen. Dit samen met de vergrijzing van het personeelsbestand zet mogelijk de duurzame inzetbaarheid van het personeel onder druk. In een organisatie uit de technische sector is nagegaan in welke mate duurzame inzetbaarheid samenhangt met het ervaren van stress als gevolg...

Leadership is frequently related to important organizational outcomes such as follower engagement. However, to date we have little insight into the degree to which this relation is contingent upon (a) types of leadership style and (b) national culture. These two issues are addressed in a meta-analysis of 209 independent (257 effect sizes), mainly c...

Previous research on the association between job characteristics and employee well-being has returned mixed results. In particular, the possible impact of individual appraisal of these job characteristics has not been well-acknowledged. To address this limitation, we drew on appraisal theory and examined (a) how workers appraise particular job char...

Organisaties implementeren technologische innovaties doorgaans met als doel de efficiëntie van aangeboden diensten en werkprocessen te verbeteren en optimaliseren. Toch blijkt dat een technologische transitie lang niet altijd tot het beoogde resultaat leidt en zelfs kan resulteren in slechtere prestaties en een verminderd welzijn van werknemers. Di...

The present study is designed to test the effectiveness of two positive psychological micro-interventions (“use your resources” and “count your blessings”) aimed at improving the combination of work and family roles. Based on the Transactional Model of Stress (TMS), the Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory and the Work-Home Resources (WH-R) Model...

Procrastination at work has been examined relatively scarcely, partly due to the lack of a globally validated and context-specific workplace procrastination scale. This study investigates the psychometric characteristics of the Procrastination at Work Scale (PAWS) among 1,028 office employees from seven countries, namely, Croatia, the Czech Republi...

Background and objectives: Many job stress models assume that all workers experience a particular job demand in the same way – an assumption that may or may not be warranted and that has rarely been tested. Building on appraisal theory, we explore (a) how individuals appraise particular job demands (i.e., as a challenge or as a hindrance) and (b) h...

In view of the aging and dejuvenation of the working population and the expected shortages in employees’ skills in the future, it is of utmost importance to focus on older workers’ employability in order to prolong their working life until, or even beyond, their official retirement age. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the relati...

This study examined the work outcomes of 81 individuals with a physical, cognitive, or psychological disability who worked at a sheltered workshop and filled out a total of 309 weekly questionnaires on 4 or 5 consecutive weeks. In line with the job demands–resources model, multilevel analyses showed that exhaustion was higher as participants experi...

This study examines whether specific (matching) combinations of demands and resources exist in the prediction of both positive and negative outcomes (i.e., vitality and fatigue) in a university context. In addition, we test the Demand-Induced Strain Compensation (DISC) Model’s key principles in this context to study its relevance, validity, and gen...

The majority of job redesign initiatives follow a ‘top-down’ approach, in which management optimizes job demands and resources to obtain successful organizational outcomes. However, these approaches are not always effective. Little is known about the effectiveness of interventions, where employees proactively optimize their work environment in orde...

Vitality at work is an important factor for organizations to build a healthier, more engaged, sustainable, and productive workforce. The organizational and societal relevance of vitality at work is high, particularly with regard to an aging and more diverse workforce. This Special Issue focusses on what might be called sustainable performance at wo...

Authenticity at work refers to the extent to which a worker feels in touch with their true self while at work. At first sight this concept seems to overlap with the concept of person-environment (P-E) fit, that is, the degree to which an individual experiences good fit with their work environment. Drawing on a sample of 867 Dutch gifted workers, st...

Occupational research often emphasizes the importance of workplace characteristics for understanding job stress and employee well-being, but the role of personal characteristics and having a good match with the job is mostly neglected. We explored how job crafting and feelings of being authentic at work were related to work engagement, work engagem...

The present study aims to unravel the relationships between job demands and resources, occupational turnover intention, and occupational turnover. To do so, we tested a model wherein associations between nurses’ age, tenure in profession and tenure with present employer (experience in the profession), job demands (emotional demands, work-home inter...

Job crafting refers to the proactive actions employees take to redesign their jobs in order to get a better fit with their competencies, expectations, and wishes. So far, little is known about job crafting's underlying mechanisms. In this study, we examine how two different states of affective well-being (workaholism and work engagement) relate to...

Zooming into reduction‐oriented job crafting among employees, next to minimizing demands (i.e., making a job less strenuous), we introduced optimizing demands (i.e., simplifying the job and making work processes more efficient) and suggested that optimizing demands should be positively related to work engagement, whereas minimizing demands negative...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a mandatory transition to New Ways of Working (NWW) on employees’ job demands (i.e., mental demands, workload, and task ambiguity), job resources (i.e., autonomy, supervisor support, coworker support, and possibilities for development), and their levels of burnout and work engageme...

Is het mogelijk om werknemers te trainen in het 'sleutelen aan hun baan' en er zo aan bij te dragen dat men met meer plezier naar het werk gaat? Deze vraag staat centraal in dit artikel. Er wordt ver-slag gedaan van een quasi-experimentele veldstudie naar de effecten van een job crafting interventie gericht op het verhogen van de arbeidsmotivatie v...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between work engagement and multiple dimensions of employee performance, as mediated by open-mindedness. Design/Methodology/Approach Survey data were obtained from 186 employees of a food processing plant and the findings were cross-validated in an independent convenience sample...

We used and integrated the circumplex model of affect (Russell, 1980) and the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1998) to hypothesize how various types of employee well-being, which can be differentiated on theoretical grounds (i.e., work engagement, job satisfaction, burnout, and workaholism), may differently predict various job crafting b...

PurposeTraditionally, employee well-being has been considered as resulting from decent working conditions arranged by the organization. Much less is known about whether employees themselves can make self-initiated changes to their work, i.e., craft their jobs, in order to stay well, even in highly demanding work situations. The aim of this study wa...

An abundance of research shows the benefits of participation in volunteer work for individuals, employers and the society as a whole. However, relatively little is known about the precursors of volunteer work. In this study, we aim to fill this gap by investigating to what extent work-related well-being can function as a driver of volunteer work. M...

Using multiwave survey data collected among 251 financial sales professionals, we tested whether involuntarily working more from home (teleworking) was related to higher time-based and strain-based work-to-family conflict (WFC). Employees' boundary management strategy (integration vs. segmentation) and work–family balance self-efficacy were conside...

This daily diary study among 55 dyads of co-workers working within the same unit examined the crossover of expansive job crafting which, framed within the Job-Demands Resources Model, consists of two distinct behaviours: seeking challenges and seeking resources. We hypothesized that seeking resources and seeking challenges are transferred from one...

Purpose – Previous research has demonstrated strong relations between work characteristics (e.g. job demands and job resources) and work outcomes such as work performance and work engagement. So far, little attention has been given to the role of authenticity (i.e. employees’ ability to experience their true selves) in these relations. The purpose...

This quasi-experimental field study examines the effects of an intervention designed to boost job resources, affective well-being, and self-efficacy via job crafting behaviour. Employees (n = 39) in a Dutch police district received a 1-day training, after which they worked towards self-set crafting goals for a period of 4 weeks. The intervention co...

Deze studie heeft als doel de relaties te onderzoeken tussen werkgerelateerde tem-porele focus (d.w.z. gerichtheid op het professionele heden, verleden of de toe-komst) en de motivatie van oudere werknemers om aan het werk te blijven tot aan de pensioensleeftijd. Hierbij veronderstellen we dat doeloriëntatie de relatie tussen temporele focus en pen...

Goal orientations and temporal focus of older workers: What is the relation with retirement intentions? Goal orientations and temporal focus of older workers: What is the relation with retirement intentions? The aim of this study was to increase our insight into what motivates older employees to stay active on the labour market. For this we examine...

Introduction: This study examined the associations between work-related irrational cognitions and workaholism. For this purpose, a 16-item work-related irrational beliefs questionnaire (WIB-Q) was developed. Methods: Employees (n = 913) completed an online survey that included, besides the irrational cognitions scale, measures of negative affect...

In search of the differences between workaholism and work engagement In search of the differences between workaholism and work engagement Employees may have different motives to work hard. Both in research and practice, the interest in work engagement, a particular form of intrinsic motivation to work hard, is increasing. However, at first glance w...

Work-family conflict and enrichment are experiences that occur daily and have substantial consequences for employees, their families, and the organizations that employ them. The aim of the current review is to make a link between life and career stage, work and family conditions, and the work-family interface. The basic proposition is that life sta...

Purpose - Drawing from the job characteristics model and the job demands-resources model, this study aims to examine the associations of resources (i.e. feedback, autonomy, and variety) with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and employability. Design/methodology/approach - Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling on data from 611...

A study on the relationship between employability and the retirement intentions of older workers A study on the relationship between employability and the retirement intentions of older workers Gedrag & Organisatie, volume 24, November 2011, nr. 4, pp. 374-391.Very recently, it has been decided that the retirement age in the Netherlands will increa...

Very recently, it has been decided that the retirement age in the Netherlands will increase to 66 in 2020. Therefore, it is more and more important to understand what motivates older employees to work until their pension age (as opposed to quitting the workforce prematurely). In this study, among 151 Dutch employees of 45 years and older, the centr...

Although the relationship between job characteristics, work–home interference (WHI) and work-related well-being has been researched in Western societies, this relationship has not often been tested in non-Western societies such as South Africa and among low-wage non-professional workers, like construction workers. The aim of this study was to test...

Purpose – This study aims at disentangling the different underlying motivations that drive workaholic and engaged employees to work excessively hard. The Mood as Input (MAI) model serves as an explanatory framework. The MAI model assumes that, dependent on the stop rule used, a different mood state may lead to persistence. When individuals evaluate...

Workaholism Workaholism Work addiction or workaholism is defined as the uncontrollable need to work excessively hard. Based on this definition, the DUWAS (Dutch Workaholism Scale) is introduced, a brief two-dimensional self-report instrument that includes two correlated subscales of five items each: Working Excessively (WE) and Working Compulsively...

Workaholism Work addiction or workaholism is defined as the uncontrollable need to work excessively hard. Based on this definition, the DUWAS (Dutch Workaholism Scale) is introduced, a brief two-dimensional self-report instrument that includes two correlated subscales of five items each: Working Excessively (WE) and Working Compulsively (WC). Using...

Although workaholics and work engaged employees both work long hours, they seem to have a different underlying motivation to do so. The mood as input model might offer an explanation for the difference in work persistence of these employees. This model suggests that the interplay of mood and "persistence rules" (enough and enjoyment rules) may lead...

In this study, we combined the Job Demands-Resources model and Conservation of Resources theory with work-family enrichment (WFE) literature, using the Resource–Gain–Development perspective in particular, in order to (1) investigate the motivating and wellness-promoting role of job and home resources in predicting enrichment in work and family lead...

The aim of the present study was to examine how job and home demands are related to psychological distress in a sample of Japanese working parents with preschool children (n=196). We expected that job and home demands are partially related to psychological distress through work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC), respectivel...

Middelbaar opgeleide jongeren vormen een belangrijke groep in Nederland, maar er is weinig bekend over hun loopbaanontwikkeling en inzetbaarheid. Dit artikel presenteert de resultaten van een interviewstudie, bedoeld om meer inzicht te genereren ten behoeve van ondersteuning van deze doelgroep.

Purpose The paper's aim is to introduce the interactive acculturation model (IAM) of Bourhis et al. to predict how disconcordance in acculturation orientations between host community and immigrant workers relates to the quality of intergroup work‐relations. Design/methodology/approach The sample consisted of 141 host community (Dutch) and 41 non‐w...

Many people invest a great amount of time and effort in their work. ...

A positive approach to work and health: an introduction to the theme A positive approach to work and health: an introduction to the theme I. Houkes, P. Verdonk & M. Peeters, Gedrag & Organisatie, volume 22, November 2009, nr. 4, pp. 309-315. The guest editors introduce the theme of this special issue on 'a positive approach on work and health' and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether work‐family (WF) interference functions as an explaining mechanism in the link between work‐family culture and well‐being, hereby distinguishing between a negative and a positive process. The negative, energy depleting process initiates from a hindrance work‐family culture and ends up to bur...

The guest editors introduce the theme of this special issue on 'a positive approach on work and health' and briefly describe the various contributions to this issue.

Studies of work and family issues have used predominately between-subject cross-sectional designs. While some researchers have called for more longitudinal studies, others have suggested that a more strategic way forward for the field is the use of daily diary studies (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992). This study explores different types of interfer...

Purpose This study aims to investigate the crossover specificity of team‐level stressors to individual‐level work‐family conflict. Design/methodology/approach The paper takes the form of a multilevel analyses with data from 428 employees of a Dutch municipality working in 49 teams. Findings The results indicate the expected crossover specificity...

Background: Most studies of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) are criticized for overreliance on single-source self-reports. This study attempts to triangulate on behaviors and perceptions of the work environment by linking job incumbent self-report with coworker report of the job incumbent's behaviors. Theoretical framework is the Demand-Indu...

Today's organizations are becoming more and more ethnically diverse. It is important to understand what constitutes the well-being of ethnic minority employees. This study explored the extent to which acculturation orientations (assimilation, integration, separation, and marginalization) were related to the well-being of 79 ethnic minority and 124...

Het brede thema arbeid en gezondheid staat al lange tijd in het middelpunt van de belangstelling. In de afgelopen decennia heeft echter een verschuiving plaatsgevonden in het denken over arbeid en gezondheid, namelijk van een negatieve insteek – het voorkómen van ongezondheid – naar een meer positieve benadering of psychologie: het bevorderen van d...

Purpose – The article's aim is to introduce the papers contained in this special issue of the Journal of Managerial Psychology. Design/methodology/approach – Specifically the present article starts by discussing the meaning of the factor age and by considering who is actually termed an older worker. Next, the consequences of cognitive, physical an...

Purpose – The article's aim is to introduce the papers contained in this special issue of the Journal of Managerial Psychology. Design/methodology/approach – Specifically the present article starts by discussing the meaning of the factor age and by considering who is actually termed an older worker. Next, the consequences of cognitive, physical and...

Working life has been the subject of great change in recent years with contemporary conditions generally providing increased opportunities and autonomy for individuals. But these benefits can coincide with greater demands and responsibilities, increasing the pressure to work outside of traditional working hours and so creating conflict between work...

Research on emotional labour in health care work has not yet revealed under what conditions emotional job demands have an impact on employee health and well-being. There is a need for more theory to unveil the black box of emotional labour processes. To test the moderating role of matching (i.e. emotional) and non-matching (i.e. cognitive) job reso...

In the present study, we examine crossover - the transmission of stress and strain from one spouse to another - in a sample of 78 information technology (IT) professionals and their working spouses. This research places crossover within the role theory framework via work-home interference (WHI) and home-work interference (HWI). The research design...

samenvatting Wanneer ik dit voorwoord schrijf, is de schoolvakantie net afgelopen. Vergaderingen, besprekingen en andere afspraken worden weer gepland en vastgelegd in mijn agenda. Zo ook een vergadering voor de 21e Standby Dag, met als thema ‘Jong geleerd, Oud gedaan’. Het programma van deze dag op zaterdag 24 november is bijgevoegd bij deze Stand...

In this quasi-experimental study among staff of 29 oncology wards, the authors evaluated the effects of a team-based burnout intervention program combining a staff support group with a participatory action research approach. Nine wards were randomly selected to participate in the program. Before the program started (Time 1), directly after the prog...

Emotion work and positive work outcomes: The role of specific job resources Emotion work and positive work outcomes: The role of specific job resources J. de Jonge, M.C.W. Peeters & P.M. Le Blanc, Gedrag & Organisatie, Volume 19, November 2006, nr. 4, pp. 345-367 This cross-sectional study among 826 health care workers examined the association betw...

Werk speelt een centrale rol in het leven van veel mensen. Steeds meer mensen vinden het echter ook belangrijk om voldoende tijd te hebben voor de zorg voor elkaar en anderen, en ook het hebben van vrije tijd is voor velen een groot goed. Het vinden van een juiste balans tussen werk en privé is dan ook voor veel mensen een lastige zaak. De invloed...

Dit hoofdstuk gaat over de relatie tussen werk en gezondheid van een specifieke groep werknemers: allochtonen. Hoewel goede cijfers ontbreken, zijn er voldoende aanwijzingen om te stellen dat deze groep met meer arbeidsgerelateerde gezondheidsproblemen kampt dan autochtone werknemers. Bovendien zijn de oorzaken en uitingsvormen van deze problemen b...

In contemporary society, work and home represent the two most significant domains in the life of a working individual. Changes in family structures and technological changes (e.g. mobile phones and portable computers) that enable job tasks to be performed in a variety of locations have blurred the boundaries between work and home. This all suggests...

The aim of the present study was to make a clear distinction between work and home domains in the explanation of burnout. First, a 3-factor structure of job and home demands was hypothesized, consisting of quantitative demands, emotional demands, and mental demands. Next, a model was tested that delineates how demands in both life domains are relat...

Zowel politieke als demografische ontwikkelingen hebben ertoe geleid dat het vraag-stuk van de oudere werknemer (weer) op de wetenschappelijke agenda staat. Arbeids-organisaties zullen in de nabije toekomst in toenemende mate te maken krijgen met oudere werknemers. In deze inleiding op het themanummer besteden we aandacht aan een viertal vragen die...

This study among 115 US and 260 Dutch nurses and nurse assistants tested a theoretically derived model of specific relationships between work characteristics and two theoretically distinct outcomes (i.e., emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction). Furthermore, the mediating role of negative work–home interference (NWI) in this context was examined...

The purpose of the present longitudinal study was to examine the role of negative work–home interference (WHI) in the classical stressor–strain sequence. First, the predominant time-lagged path between WHI and job stressors was investigated. Furthermore, the direct and indirect (mediating) process of WHI, job stressors, and employee health was exam...