Stressed out public servants? Testing the stress appraisal of psychological and emotional stressors on stress reactions through psychological capital

Purpose – PA scholars argue that two gaps are present in the stress literature: (1) “stress” is too simply treated as deleterious and (2) insufficient efforts are made to capture public servants’ stress appraisal, i.e. the degree to which stressors are appraised as hindering or challenging. Overcoming Gap 1, this study aims to study stress as a continuum; from distress to eustress. Overcoming Gap 2, stress appraisal is studied through testing the interaction of PsyCap with the two most common clusters of public servants’ job stressors: emotional and psychological stressors.

Design/methodology/approach – Hypotheses are tested through structural equation modeling. A sample is used in this study of 1,853 Dutch public servants.

Findings – The results show that emotional and psychological stressors are high, but public servants often appraise them as challenging or as “part of the job”, with consequently no increased distress or decreased eustress. Moreover, psychological capital helps public servants to appraise some of the negative effects of emotional, but not psychological, stressors as less deleterious.

Originality/value – By approaching stress as a continuum, the authors bring in a more complete picture of public servants’ stress in PA literature. Moreover, this research shows that the ambiguous results in the existing stress literature about the consequences of emotional and psychological stressors on distress/eustress
can partially be explained by sector differences as well as personality differences (i.e. PsyCap). Finally, this study criticizes the one-sided attention to PsyCap as purely positive. PsyCap is not only unhelpful in coping with psychological stressors, it also drains the challenging properties of psychological stressors for dedication.