The Demand-Control Model: Specific Demands ... - Study at UniSA

282 de Jonge, Dollard, Dormann, Le Blanc, and Houtman1999; Söderfeldt, Söderfeldt, Bejerot, & Axtelius, 1999). Many health careworkers feel some ambivalence in curing and/or caring for intensely sufferingpatients or clients. In fact, employees who reported low control may have feltbetter knowing that they could not prevent the suffering or dying of very ill orchronic patients. In other words, these workers have an opportunity to avoid theinternal attributions of failure that might be more likely if they had high jobcontrol. This result highlights the potential negative side of possessing high jobcontrol in the case of emotional demands. As Karasek and Theorell recentlyhave argued (see Levi et al., 2000), high job control seems to be the primarypsychological demand in such a case, and then the DCM fails. Furthermore, thepresent finding also stresses the use of new concepts of job control to deal withthis kind of demand such as emotional control (Zapf et al., 1999).All other findings, however, corroborate those in recent reviews on theDCM (e.g., van der Doef & Maes, 1998, 1999; Jones, Bright, Searle, & Cooper,1998; Jones & Fletcher, 1996; Schnall et al., 1994). Generally, the current findingsprovide renewed empirical support for the view that high-strain jobs (highdemand, low control) are conducive to ill health (Karasek, 1998; Karasek &Theorell, 1990; Schnall et al., 1994; Theorell & Karasek, 1996). Furthermore, itis interesting that we also found some support for the active learning hypothesis(Landsbergis et al., 1992). In the latter case, it appears that active jobs (i.e., highdemands, high control) give rise to positive outcomes (i.e., high job challenge,high job satisfaction).The current results have conceptual and methodological implications forthe DCM. The present study indicates that there is merit in using more focusedmeasures of job demands and job control, and even using broader formulationsof job demands (e.g., workload, physical demands, and particularly emotionaldemands), as well as job control (like multiple facets or levels; de Jonge &Kompier, 1997; Frese, 1989; Karasek, 1998). Further, using well-defined occupationalgroups seems to enable meaningful analyses. As Kristensen (1995,1996) has noted, in this type of study the variation in exposure is the decisivefactor, rather than the representativeness of the sample (see also Table 3).However, a shortcoming is that we cannot determine empirically the psychologicaldifferences among the five subgroups. That is, we are unable to investigatewhat job-related variables moderate the interaction effect. For instance,we can only speculate why interactions are significant for health care, transport,and warehouse employees, but not for bank/insurance and retail trade workers.One explanation may be that supervision is much closer in banks/insurance andretail trade than in health care settings, transport, and warehouses because thelatter are usually large and autonomous organizations. Perceived control, whichwas essentially investigated in the present study, may thus be more easily putinto action in those sectors.With respect to the interactions which were not found in the present study,