The phenomenon of workplace involution has attracted ample attention. How to make employees treat their work with the correct attitude and behavior and improve their work performance has become a realistic proposition. This study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, with the help of grounded theory, to conduct an exploratory study on the structural dimensions of employee involution in the Chinese workplace and, on this basis, to develop and test the measurement scale. The research results show that employee involution is a multi-dimensional construct with rich connotations, including four dimensions: inefficient busyness, exhaustion of innovation, promotion anxiety, and internal competition. The measurement scale consists of four factors and 13 items. The factor analysis results showed that the developed scale’s reliability and validity reached an ideal level. To a certain extent, this study promotes the recognition and attention of various types of organizations at all levels to involution. The research conclusions provide theoretical guidance for employees to get rid of the involution crisis and will motivate managers to formulate better intervention measures to prevent and reduce workplace involution.

Based on the conservation of resource theory, this manuscript explores the impact mechanism of the challenge and hindrance stressors on innovation performance, introduces emotional atmosphere as a mediation variable, and on this basis, it examines the moderating role of organizational climate on emotional atmosphere and innovation performance. A two-wave survey of 263 subordinates and 29 supervisors who come from multisource field offered support for our model. Results showed that challenge stressors have a positive effect on innovation performance, positive emotional atmosphere mediates the relationship between challenge stressors and innovation performance; hindrance stressors have a negative effect on innovation performance, and negative emotional atmosphere mediates the relationship between hindrance stressors and innovation performance. Organizational climate strengthens the positive relationship between positive emotional atmosphere and innovation performance and weakens the negative relationship between negative emotional atmosphere and innovation performance. This study enriches the existing literature by identifying the impact of stressors on employee innovation performance and has certain practical significance for optimizing the management of enterprises and improving employee innovation performance.