Overview of the Job Demands-Resources Model

What is it about?

Job design is considered among the most powerful contextual factors influencing worker well-being (Pinder, 2008). Accordingly, it has become a central topic in work and organizational psychology, leading to various models such as the Job Demand-Control model (JDC; Karasek, 1979) and the Effort-Reward Imbalance model (ERI; Siegrist, 1996). Recently, these were integrated and developed into the Job Demands-Resources model (JD-R model; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). During the past decade, the JD-R model has given rise to a vast literature on how various job aspects might relate to individual and organizational outcomes. The current contribution provides an overview of the JD-R literature and highlights some remaining issues feeding further theorizing and practice. We start off with describing the core assumptions of the JD-R model, as also pictured in Figure 1: We detail the concepts of job demands and job resources and define burnout and work engagement as the most prominent outcomes of the energy-depleting and motivational process, respectively. Then we detail the relationships between the job characteristics categories and employee well-being. We present the role of personal resources in the JD-R model and provide an overview of its empirical support. In the second part of this chapter, we highlight some remaining issues and indicate a couple of fruitful avenues for future research.

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