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Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is a facet-specific climate for psychological health and safety which constitutes an important organizational resource for creating a conducive work environment. The process to regain/restore energy expended at work, known as "recovery," also plays a pivotal role for individuals; however, this process, together with PSC, remains largely underexplored. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the role of PSC in enhancing the moderating role of individuals' psychological detachment and relaxation during weekends on the relationship between daily job demands in Week 1 and daily emotional exhaustion in Week 2. Data from a shortitudinal study of 178 teachers (in total, 534 diaries) in Terengganu, Malaysia, over two consecutive weeks, were operationalized at the individual level and daily level using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) software. The analysis showed that the daily experience of job demands in the prior week led to an increment of emotional exhaustion in the following week. Interestingly, the interaction role of PSC*psychological detachment and PSC*relaxation moderated the relationship between daily job demands and daily emotional exhaustion. Overall, this study highlights the importance of individual off-job recovery time and that building good PSC at work is fundamental in compensating for the adverse relationships between job demands and its consequences.

Objective. Our innovation was to propose a multilevel model to explain how an organizational factor, psychosocial safety climate (PSC)—the climate for worker psychological health—related to work investment (work engagement and workaholism) and, in turn, psychological distress. Methods. Longitudinal data were collected in Peninsular Malaysia across 26 police departments from 392 police personnel, matched across four months and were tested using Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). Results. The analysis revealed between-group effects linking PSC to job resources, to work engagement, and to workaholism. When PSC operated by improving job resources, aside from increased work engagement, it could unwittingly boost workaholism. However, this only existed under low PSC conditions. The secondary function of PSC buffered the impact of job resources on workaholism and psychological distress. When PSC was high, job resources reduced both workaholism and psychological distress, suggesting that PSC enabled resources to do their job of mitigating unfavorable conditions. Conclusions. Results support a multilevel PSC-extended JD-R motivational path with cross-links, and PSC’s moderation function, as an explanation of worker psychological health. Confirming PSC as a leading indicator and the importance of a motivational path, the paper presents new evidence in support of targeting PSC to improve worker psychological health. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impact of job demands on health and work outcomes among Malaysian workers. We hypothesized that job demands (i.e., emotional demands and physical demands) would predict future work‐related burnout and work engagement, in turn affecting sleep problems and job performance (in‐role, extra‐role). A longitudinal two‐wave survey was conducted among Malaysian workers and valid data from 345 participants were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results revealed that work‐related burnout predicts sleep problems while work engagement increased employees' job performance over time. Overall, the current study highlights the importance of specific job demands (i.e., emotional demands and physical demands) that specifically affect health‐related behavior and work‐related behavior among workers. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

usc The aim of the current research is to investigate the effect of work conditions on job strains, including burnout and depression. In addition, we are interested to know how strains cross over between spouses at home. We predicted that job demands would lead to employees’ burnout and depression, and then cross over to their spouse at home. A total of 150 dyads (each consisting of both husband and wife) were included in this study. All participants were from dual-earner families. The hypotheses were tested using the structural equation modeling (SEM) AMOS software. Firstly, we discovered that work conditions predicted husbands’ burnout and depression but not that of wives. Secondly, husbands’ burnout and depression were found to cross over to their wives. However, no crossover effects were observed from wives to husbands. The contributions of the study are then discussed. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Many studies have validated that emotional demands are one of the main stressors that lead to fatigue, decreasing the safety behaviour in services work-related. However, studies to date have relied on long-term emotional demands rather than on the short-term fluctuation in emotional demands. The main aims of this research was to investigate the influence of individuals, as well as the daily levels of emotional demands on self-reported crashes, mainly through daily acute fatigue and safety motivation. The study was conducted among taxi drivers (N = 96) over a period of six days for both, morning and afternoon sessions in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As expected, it was found that increased levels in an individual's daily emotional demands were related to acute and chronic fatigue, where only acute fatigue had an influence on safety motivation. In addition, safety motivation decreased the rate of self-reported crashes. These results suggest that the increment level of emotional demands has an indirect relationship to traffic crash rates, mainly through fatigue and safety motivation. Keywords: Emotional demands, Job demands-resources (JD-R), Acute fatigue, Chronic fatigue, Safety behaviour, Taxi drivers

Aim: To present benchmarks for working conditions in healthcare industries as an initial effort into international surveillance.Background: The healthcare industry is fundamental to sustaining the health of Australians, yet it is under immense pressure. Budgets are limited, demands are increasing as are workplace injuries and all of these factors compromise patient care. Urgent attention is needed to reduce strains on workers and costs in healthcare, however, little work has been done to benchmark psychosocial factors in healthcare working conditions in the Asia-Pacific. Intercultural comparisons are important to provide an evidence base for public policy. Design: A cross-sectional design was used (like other studies of prevalence), including a mixed-methods approach with qualitative interviews to better contextualize the results. Methods: Data on psychosocial factors and other work variables were collected from healthcare workers in three hospitals in Australia (N = 1,258) and Malaysia (N = 1,125). 2015 benchmarks were calculated for each variable and comparison was conducted via independent samples t tests. Healthcare samples were also compared with benchmarks for non-healthcare general working populations from the irrespective countries: Australia (N = 973) and Malaysia (N = 225). Findings: Our study benchmarks healthcare working conditions in Australia and Malaysia against the general working population, identifying trends that indicate the industry is in need of intervention strategies and job redesign initiatives that better support psychological health and safety. Conclusion: We move toward a better understanding of the precursors of psychosocial safety climate in a broader context, including similarities and differences between Australia and Malaysia in national culture, government occupational health and safety policies and top-level management practices. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Purpose The importance of organizational climates in enhancing employees’ job performance is well studied in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and team climate on job performance, particularly through job engagement, by using a multilevel survey. The study also predicted that only PSC (and not team climate) predicted job resources (i.e. role clarity and performance feedback). Design/methodology/approach A total of 412 employees from 44 teams (72.6 per cent response rate) in Malaysian private organizations participated in the current study. Findings Research findings revealed that performance feedback and role clarity mediate the relationship between PSC and job engagement, and that there is no direct effect between the variables, team climate, and job resources. As expected, the study also discovered that job engagement mediates the relationship between PSC and team climate related to job performance. Practical implications This paper suggests the importance of PSC as the precursor to better working conditions (i.e. job resources) and to indirectly boosting employees’ engagement and job performance. Originality/value The study compared two distinctive organizational climate constructs that affect the different types of job resources using multilevel approach within the Asian context.

Purpose This study aims to examine how the relationship between customer accountability and voluntary organizations’ effectiveness is mediated by knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach Using a cross-sectional survey and a structured questionnaire, data were collected from 349 employees of Malaysian voluntary organizations (VOs). Baron and Kenny’s (1986) procedures for mediation testing were adopted for the main analysis. Findings Results of structural equation modelling indicated that knowledge sharing partially mediates the relationship between and voluntary organizations’ effectiveness. Research limitations/implications Despite the authors’ contribution on the current academia, this study only investigated 349 employees representing VOs located in a single area, which is the Klang Valley area, Malaysia. Further research could identify a larger sample that would strengthen the inferences and conclusions. Practical implications The main practical implication is that Malaysian VOs need to be aware of the impact of customer accountability upon their voluntary organizations’ effectiveness, and they need to inculcate their employees’ knowledge sharing behaviour to foster the impact of customer accountability on voluntary organizations’ effectiveness. Originality/value This paper is unique in that it is the first attempt to combine the previous direct effect relationship into a new model that shows the effect of customer accountability on voluntary organizations’ effectiveness and the role of knowledge sharing as a mediator in the context of Malaysian voluntary sector.

The current study aimed to examine the role of psychological detachment in the relationship between working conditions and burnout and depression. First, the study proposed that job demands would increase burnout after four months but not depression. Second, it proposed that psychological detachment would moderate the impact of job demands and job resources on burnout and depression. Third, it was proposed that the interaction between job demands, job resources and psychological detachment would predict burnout and depression. The longitudinal study design involved 345 workers (at both Time 1 and Time 2). The hierarchical regression analysis showed that increasing psychological detachment reduced the negative relationship between physical demands and depression four months later. In contrast, high psychological detachment increased the negative association between emotional resources and burnout, but not between emotional resources and depression. Overall, this study, in its discovery of the impact of working conditions on psychological health, has made a new contribution to psychological detachment studies by using different sub-constructs of job demands and job resources (i.e., emotional and physical) with four-month gaps, as previous studies did not address the impact within this time frame. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This book responds to a public health priority (Whiteford et al., 2013) and a call from the WHO (2016), ILO (2016) and OECD (2012) to prevent and manage mental ill-health and promote health and well-being by drawing attention to the connection between work and mental health. By demonstrating a link between work factors and mental health-related issues, this book will provide public policy makers with evidence needed to shift policy attention to create mentally healthy workplaces and move investment of health, compensation, and insurance funding into proactive prevention strategies rather than costly treatments, medications, therapy, and hospitalisation. Ensuring workplaces globally have the conditions for good worker mental health is essential for the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goal of employment and decent work for all. However work factors must be considered in their context. In Politics of the Mind, Marxism and Mental Health, Ferguson (2017) highlighted the link between the + economic, social and political system we live under—capitalism—and the extremely high levels of distress evident in the world today. In this chapter we consider worker mental health by exploring theories that emphasise the economic, social and political system, the corporate climate, work design, social-relational factors, person-environment fit, and individual psychology. Work stress theoretical frameworks have evolved to explain why work stress occurs, and the consequential negative outcomes, and they may be differentiated by their emphasis on the organisational, job design, or individual factors. It is important to understand the assumptions of the major aetiological frameworks and ideologies concerning the origin of the work stress problem, because this has implications regarding how and where to intervene. In this chapter we introduce various theoretical accounts of work stress, and Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) theory. We identify propositions and gaps in the PSC literature, linking them to the chapters in the book that provide some evidence for these new propositions.

The importance of organisational context in shaping employee outcomes and motivation has been studied over many years. Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) is proposed as the crucial element for building a psychologically safe environment. However, the literature describing PSC has been mostly derived from quantitative data. Yet, some unavoidable disadvantages of quantitative data approaches might limit our full understanding of the role of PSC and how it helps to protect employees. The current study aims to investigate the phenomenon of PSC among Malaysian healthcare employees by determining how the level of PSC influences their resource utilisation in coping with their job demands and psychological health issues. By using semi-structured interviews, the current study reveals that high levels of PSC encourage employees to retrieve more resources from their working environments and also personal lives. This can be explained as PSC acting as a resource ecology, which helps in creating resources caravan (i.e., a collection of resources). The findings provide additional support for the crucial role of promoting high PSC in healthcare settings.

The main objective of the current study was to investigate a multilevel model of Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC), emotional demands, supervisor support, and boredom. Specifically, we examine the mediational relationships between PSC and boredom via emotional demands and resources (supervisor support) using the job demands–resources (JD-R) model. We argued that PSC is an important factor to prevent employees’ boredom by creating more resources and reducing demands at work. Data were collected from 404 employees from 63 work units (separate departments therein) in Malaysia and were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). Results revealed that PSC was negatively associated to emotional demands and positively to supervisor support, and PSC was also negatively related to employees’ boredom mediated by both emotional demands and supervisor support. These findings suggest that a work unit level PSC plays an important role as a predictor of work outcomes, specifically boredom.

While the model of proactive motivation acknowledges the role of environment in affecting individual’s personal initiative, it lacks a clear explanation the processes involved. Adopting the notion that the providence of job resources originates from management and job resources is a positive spiral agent in motivating employees, we propose that psychosocial safety climate (PSC), an important environment factor, increases employees’ personal initiative using the pathway PSC --> personal development --> work engagement --> personal initiative. This study utilises a longitudinal multilevel study amongst Malaysian private employees (N=134; 28 organisations) over a one-year gap. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), results reveal that PSC significantly relates to personal development, work engagement, and personal initiative. In addition, personal development mediates the relationship between PSC and work engagement. The results show that although work engagement mediates the personal development and personal initiative relationship, work engagement does not mediate between PSC and personal initiative. The study suggests that PSC is an important organisational climate in enhancing employees’ motivation (i.e. work engagement) and personal initiative, particularly through personal development. Hence, it is suggested that organisations implement PSC to produce a conducive working environment for employees’ growth and productivity.

Organisational climate, particularly safety climate, has been documented as a crucial element in promoting occupational health and safety. However, most previous studies have focused more on safety issues (e.g., injuries and accidents) rather than health outcomes (e.g., illnesses, stress, etc). A comprehensive review is also lacking in relation to understanding the organisational climate–health relationship between different levels of analysis, different data sources and different analytical procedures. We conducted a systematic review to investigate previous scholarly contributions to organisational climate and health. The reviewed articles were obtained from three databases: ISI Web of Knowledge, PsycINFO and EBSCOHost Academic Premier Search. After reading the abstracts and full texts, we included 56 articles in our review. We found that the influence of organisational climate on employee health has been supported in prior research. However, hypotheses at the individual level are more frequently supported than those at the organisational level. Even though most studies analysed self-reported data and, thus, possibly suffered from common method bias, half of the studies were explicitly or implicitly trying to reduce the bias. Studies with and without remedies for reducing common method bias yielded similar results, suggesting that common method bias has little impact on organisational climate research. Overall, almost no differences were found among the different organisational climate constructs. The current review includes several recommendations for future research. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Human resource development (HRD) is key to organizational success. With some HRD roles devolving to leaders in recent years, a gap in understanding is now evident in how leaders’ leadership styles shape development-oriented behaviours that may effectively assist them in fulfilling their HRD roles, and the corresponding effects that this has on employee work engagement and turnover intention. This study compared the effects of transformational and transactional leadership styles on employee attitudes (i.e. work engagement and turnover intention) through leaders’ behaviours (i.e. supervisory coaching and performance feedback). This study used a multilevel approach (i.e. matching leaders to multiple subordinates) with 500 employees, nested in 65 workgroups from private organizations in Malaysia. As hypothesized, we found a link between transformational (but not transactional) leadership and higher levels of supervisory coaching and performance feedback, and that these job resources mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. Furthermore, we found that work engagement mediates the relationships of both supervisory coaching and performance feedback to turnover intention. Overall, the study results reveal one way in which Asian leaders can effectively facilitate some aspects of HRD through development-focused behaviours which serve as job resources to boost work engagement and reduce turnover intention. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is a facet-specific aspect of organizational climate that pertains to employees' psychological health. We sought to deepen our understanding of how and when resources function by considering the role of PSC as a contextual factor for job demands-resources model. We explained this using two different mechanisms - PSC as a resource passageway (i.e., channelling, supplying, bolstering, complementing, compensating resources) or PSC as a safety signal (i.e., enabling resource use) effect. Using longitudinal data from 429 Malaysian health care workers from 53 teams and hierarchical linear modelling (HLM), we found team PSC was a stronger moderator of emotional demands than control or rewards on psychological health problems (emotional exhaustion and somatic symptoms), after controlling for the baseline outcomes. A three-way interaction of team PSC at Time 1 with demands and resources (rewards only) at Time 2 showed that PSC is able to moderate the moderation relationship of demands and resources. Specifically, PSC, as a resource passageway, is providing a range of resources, that likely to compensate and complement low rewards. Hence, when both PSC and rewards were low, emotional demands had the strongest effect on psychological health. This result is robust as it was validated using HLM and split samples of PSC at the upper level. Given the important contextual role of PSC as a 'moderator of the moderators', building PSC should be the focus of workplace interventions to protect the psychological health of workers. Practitioner points: Psychosocial safety climate may compensate for job resources, particularly rewards in an organization to protect workers' psychological health. Psychosocial safety climate buffers the detrimental effect of emotional demands on workers' psychological health better than rewards and control. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Determining the factors that contribute to nonprofit effectiveness is a problematic and puzzling task. In that respect, utilizing the intellectual capital (IC) concept, this paper proposes an analysis of knowledge sharing, collaborative culture, and beneficiary participation as determinants of nonprofit effectiveness. Drawn from quantitative research strategy, a cross-sectional survey and a structured questionnaire have been employed. The final valid data consist of 271 participants from Malaysian nonprofits located in the Klang Valley area, Malaysia. The main analysis used structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings revealed that knowledge sharing and beneficiary participation significantly predict both external and internal effectiveness. However, collaborative culture fails to act as a predictor of either nonprofit external or internal effectiveness.

The alignment between espoused (saying) and enacted (doing) psychosocial safety climate (PSC; a climate for worker psychological health) is important to consider in relation to health and work outcomes. This diary study explored the interplay (moderation and mediation processes) between espoused PSC (organizational level PSC) and daily enacted PSC (operationalized in the specific domain of managerial support) and their relationships to worker psychological health (i.e., daily emotional exhaustion) and motivation (i.e., daily work engagement). In all, 545 diary data points were collected within five consecutive days from 109 secondary school teachers across 23 schools in Selangor, Malaysia. Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) in a three-level model, we found espoused PSC was positively related to daily enacted managerial support. For work engagement, espoused PSC was related to work engagement through enacted managerial support. For emotional exhaustion, enacted managerial support moderated the negative relationship between espoused PSC and daily emotional exhaustion. The expected (beneficial) effects of espoused PSC were evident when high levels aligned with high levels of enacted managerial support within schools. In this case, PSC acts as a safety signal — when high espoused PSC is coupled with repeated, unequivocal and stable support (enacted managerial support), employees may feel safe to take action in their environment to protect themselves from emotional exhaustion. These findings offer new insights regarding how managers can build PSC, by valuing employee psychological health, and translating PSC into action (integrity in saying and doing), to increase psychological health and work engagement. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

A systematic review was conducted on the facet-specific climate for psychosocial safety [psychosocial safety climate (PSC)] that has been featured in the literature. Specifically, we sought answers regarding the roles, impacts, research trend, and challenges for PSC research. From our search of three databases, 113 articles peer-reviewed journal articles were identified of which 13 PSC articles qualified for the review. For comparative purposes we also considered research on other climate facets, safety climate (n = 59), and psychological safety climate (n = 16), published from 1980 to 2016. Although safety climate remains the dominant research interest, PSC surpassed psychological safety climate in terms of publications from 2010. We found that PSC has its own specific outcomes, whereby PSC was predominantly associated with psychological health. Evidence strongly supported the dual function of PSC, as an antecedent and moderator (rather than mediator) of the work stress process. Around half the studies were longitudinal, and all were published in either Australia or Malaysia. The review provides a better understanding of PSC research and shows that the climate for psychosocial safety is crucial for improving health and work quality. Given its important implications for working conditions, health, and engagement, we encourage further research on PSC. We provide insights into future research requirements to advance the field of PSC research such as the simultaneous use of multiple climates, multilevel modeling, research time lags, advanced research designs, and data analysis tools. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Psychosocial safety climate is an emerging construct that refers to shared perceptions regarding policies, practices, and procedures for the protection of worker psychological health and safety. The purpose of the research was to: (1) demonstrate that psychosocial safety climate is a construct distinct from related climate measures (i.e., physical safety climate, team psychological safety, and perceived organizational support); and (2) test the proposition that organizational psychosocial safety climate determines work conditions (i.e., job demands) and subsequently worker psychological health. We used samples from two different cultures; an Australian sample (N = 126 workers in 16 teams within a primary health care organization) and a Malaysian sample (N = 180 workers in 31 teams from different organizations and diverse industries). In both samples confirmatory factor analysis verified that psychosocial safety climate is a construct distinct from related climate measures. Using hierarchical linear modeling, psychosocial safety climate was superior to other team level climate measures in its negative relationship to both job demands and psychological health problems. Results supported a mediation process, psychosocial safety climate → job demands → psychological health problems, corroborating psychosocial safety climate as a preeminent stress risk factor, and an efficient target for intervention. We found both physical and psychosocial safety climates were stronger in the Australian, compared with the Malaysian work context. Levels of psychosocial safety climate were significantly lower than those of physical safety climate in both countries indicating a ‘universal’ lack of attention to workplace psychological health.

We integrated psychosocial safety climate (PSC) with the job demands and resources (JD-R; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) framework to examine the impact of both job demands and job resources at work on employee depression, anger, and engagement. PSC refers to a climate for the protection of employee psychological health and safety. As PSC theoretically influences the working environment, we hypothesized that PSC would have an indirect effect on specific negative emotions (e.g., anger, depression) via job demands and an indirect effect on positive emotion (e.g., engagement) through job resources. We used a population-based sample consisting of 269 public and private employees from the State of Selangor, Malaysia. Overall, results using structural equation modeling showed that PSC negatively related to job demands and positively related to job resources. In mediated paths, job demands carried the effect of PSC on anger and depression, whereas job resources carried the effect of PSC on engagement. We also showed that job demands related negatively to engagement, and that the effect was carried by anger and depression. Using multigroup analysis, we found that the model was invariant within both the public and private sectors. These findings suggest that JD-R theory may be expanded to include PSC as an antecedent, and that the PSC model is largely valid in an Eastern, Muslim, developing economy setting. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Objective: To examine the impact of globalization on employee psychological health and job satisfaction via job characteristics (i.e., job demands and job resources) in an emerging economy, that of Malaysia. As external factors are regarded as influences on the working environment, we hypothesized that global forces (increased pressure and competition) would have an impact on burnout and job satisfaction via increased demands (role conflict, emotional demands) and reduced resources (supervisor support, coworkers support). Methods: Data were collected using a population based survey among 308 employees in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. Participants were approached at home during the weekend or on days off from work. Only one participant was selected per household. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. Nearly 54% of respondents agreed that they need to work harder, 25% agreed that their job was not secure and 24% thought they had lost power and control on the job due to global trade competition. Results: Consistent with our predictions, demands mediated the globalization to burnout relationship, and resources mediated the globalization to job satisfaction relationship. Conclusions: Together, these results support the idea that external factors influence work conditions and in turn employee health and job satisfaction. We conclude that the jobs demands resources framework is applicable in an Eastern setting and that globalization is a key antecedent of working environments. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This multilevel longitudinal study investigates a newly identified climate construct, psychosocial safety climate (PSC), as a precursor to job characteristics (e. g., emotional demands), and psychological outcomes (i. e., emotional exhaustion and depression). We argued that PSC, as an organizational climate construct, has cross-level effects on individually perceived job design and psychological outcomes. We hypothesized a mediation process between PSC and emotional exhaustion particularly through emotional demands. In sequence, we predicted that emotional exhaustion would predict depression. At Time 1, data were collected from employees in 36 Malaysian private sector organizations (80% responses rate), n = 253 (56%), and at Time 2 from 27 organizations (60%) and n = 117 (46%). Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), we found that there were cross-level effects of PSC Time 1 on emotional demands Time 2 and emotional exhaustion Time 2, but not on depression Time 2, across a 3-month time lag. We found evidence for a lagged mediated effect; emotional demands mediated the relationship between PSC and emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion did not predict depression. Finally, our results suggest that PSC is an important organizational climate construct, and acts to reduce employee psychological problems in the workplace, via working conditions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) on work engagement, emotional exhaustion and physical health problems, particularly through two types of demands (i.e., challenge and hindrance demands) among police personnel in Peninsular Malaysia. Data were collected using a survey among 909 participants from 58 departments and were analyzed using hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) version 7.0. The study discovered that PSC was negatively related to hindrance demands. PSC was also negatively related to emotional exhaustion and physical health problems. Interestingly, challenge demands increased work engagement and also emotional exhaustion, whereas hindrance demands were negatively related to work engagement and positively associated with emotional exhaustion. In the mediating pathways, hindrance demands mediated the relationship between PSC and emotional exhaustion, whereas emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between challenge and hindrance demands and physical health problems. This study provides evidence that PSC acts as a predictor in a multi-level way, while challenge and hindrance stressors at the task level, lead to negative and positive work outcomes.

Orientation: Job characteristics are well accepted as sources of burnout and engagement amongst employees; psychosocial safety climate may precede work conditions. Research purpose: We expanded the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) model by proposing psychosocial safety climate (PSC) as a precursor to job demands and job resources. As PSC theoretically influences the working environment, the study hypothesized that PSC has an impact on performance via both health erosion (i.e. burnout) and motivational pathways (i.e. work engagement). Motivation for the study: So far, integration of PSC in the JD-R model is only tested in a Western context (i.e. Australia). We tested the emerging construct of PSC in Malaysia, an Eastern developing country in the Asian region. Research design, approach and method: A random population based sample was derived using household maps provided by Department of Statistics, Malaysia; 291 employees (response rate 50.52%) from the State of Selangor, Malaysia participated. Cross-sectional data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Main findings: We found that PSC was negatively related to job demands and positively related to job resources. Job demands, in turn, predicted burnout (i.e. exhaustion and cynicism), whereas job resources predicted engagement. Both burnout and engagement were associated with performance. Bootstrapping showed significant indirect effects of PSC on burnout via job demands, PSC on performance via burnout and PSC on performance via the resources-engagement pathway. Practical/managerial implications: Our findings are consistent with previous research that suggests that PSC should be a target to improve working conditions and in turn reduce burnout and improve engagement and productivity. Contribution/value-add: These findings suggest that JD-R theory may be expanded to include PSC as an antecedent and that the expanded JD-R model is largely valid in an Eastern, developing economy setting.

Since being introduced in 2000, the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner & Schaufeli, 2000) has been studied extensively in various Western countries. Although the JD-R proposition is not proscriptive about specific demands and resource variables, scholars have used common variables as demands (e.g. workloads, deadlines), and as resources (e.g. support). The question is whether the common variables in the JD-R model that had their origins in Western formulations are applicable in developing countries. In this paper, based on grounded theory, we conducted focus group interviews to investigate specific variables that may apply in Malaysian workplaces. Two focus group interviews (N=13) were conducted with two groups of respondents (managers and non-managers) who worked for private and public sector organizations. Data were analysed using a thematic content analysis strategy. The study found that new variables (e.g. organizational politics, bureaucratic factors) emerged as new demands not generally explored in JD-R research, whereas similar demands were identified at a job-task level (e.g. deadlines). Regarding resources these were mainly identified as in other Western research (e.g. support). Job challenge and exploring new things were identified as pleasurable aspects of work. This finding suggests that using qualitative methods is crucial to exploring the psychosocial concept of stress at work to uncover cultural differences that are apparent between Malaysian and Western employees . Keywords: Job demands, job resources, qualitative studies, job stress, JD-R.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the causes and consequences of job stress in Malaysia and make a comparison between Western and Eastern perspectives.Design/methodology/approachA grounded theory approach was used to develop a lay representation of Malay people's descriptions of their experiences at work, including job stress. Interviews were conducted with 48 employees in Malaysia, using six semi‐structured interview questions adopted from Kinman and Jones and translated into the Malay language, as a guide.FindingsAlthough most respondents perceived that individual factors play an important role in work stress, organizational factors seemed to be the dominant factor identified that contributes to work stress. Respondents also perceived the individual as key to stress reduction rather than management interventions. A new concept emerged in this study that was related to external factors impinging on work (such as globalization).Practical implicationsOrganizations should formulate strategies to prevent job stress among employees. They must also be alert to the impact of external factors that are now common in the Malay workplace.Originality/valueResearch of job stress in employees in Eastern cultures is rare. The paper provides in‐depth preliminary research which will lead to further investigations of job stress in Eastern workplace settings.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the happiness indicators of the Malaysians and Indonesians. Although there have been many studies investigating happiness dimension in Western societies, relatively is known about it in the Eastern societies. A total of 202 respondents (100 Malaysians, 102 Indonesians) were asked to respond to a question on happiness. Content analysis of responses to the question what makes you happy yielded 12 themes. Qualitative analyses yielded, as predicted, the welfare of the groups especially family, take precedence over personal achievements.