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) how these appraisals affect the relationship between job demands and engagement/burnout. Design and Methods: A multi-occupation cross-sectional study was conducted among 527 Chinese workers (321 females, 60.9%; M_age = 32.74, SD = 6.70). The data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Results: We found that the appraisal of job demands (time urgency, role conflict, and emotional demands) as a challenge moderated the associations between these demands and burnout/engagement. Generally, the results indicate that the presence of high job demands was associated with negative outcomes. However, these detrimental effects were weaker if workers appraised these characteristics as being high-challenge. Conclusions: This study extends research on job demands within the challenge–hindrance framework by focusing on the moderating effects of appraisals. Given the important role of appraisal, we conclude that researchers should include appraisal more systematically in their theorizing and research on the effects of job demands on well-being.

Despite the considerable focus on job characteristics and individual differences in job crafting research, the influence of social factors on job crafting has not been well-acknowledged. Based on social interaction and job crafting literature, this meta-analysis estimates the associations between social factors (i.e., organizational insiders and outsiders) and job crafting, and how these social factors contribute to employee outcomes through their job crafting. Based on a sample of 51 empirical studies that included 54 independent samples (N = 17,863), we found that social factors of positive leadership styles (e.g., empowering and transformational) and coworker support were positively related to employee job crafting. Moreover, leadership showed a stronger correlation with employee job crafting than coworker support and Leader-Member-Exchange (LMX). Further, our study showed that employee job crafting positively mediates the relationships between social factors and work outcomes (e.g., job performance and well-being). Our study contributes to job crafting literature by integrating social factors into the job crafting model and demonstrating that the social context of work (in particular organizational insiders) plays a crucial role in shaping employees’ job crafting behavior. We also emphasize the critical role that job crafting plays in transmitting valuable social resources into improved work outcomes. Building on our results, we provide future direction for job crafting research and discuss how our results can imply practice in terms of job crafting training.

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 pressure. Next, building on transactional stress theory, we investigate (a) how creative performance pressure influences employee creativity through different appraisals (i.e., challenge and hindrance) and (b) the moderating role of a job and personal resource (i.e., servant leadership and promotion focus) in the stressor appraisal process. In Study 1, we developed a creative performance pressure scale and assessed its psychometric properties across two samples (N = 181 for Sample 1;N = 253 for Sample 2). In addition, using multi‐wave, multi‐source data (Study 2), we tested our hypotheses in a Chinese sample (N = 206). The results demonstrated that creative performance pressure can have both positive and negative effects on employee creativity through challenge and hindrance appraisals, respectively. Servant leadership moderated the effect of creative performance pressure on challenge and hindrance appraisals, by transmitting the beneficial and detrimental effects of creative performance pressure to creativity, respectively. Similarly, promotion focus moderated the relationship between creative performance pressure and hindrance appraisal. We discuss future research directions and offer several practical implications for both organizational leaders and human resource (HR) practitioners.