RESEARCH ARTICLE

Perceived Effects of Organizational Downsizing and

Staff Cuts on the Stress Experience: The Role of
Resources
Carolyn M. Boyd*†, Michelle R. Tuckey & Anthony H. Winefield
Centre for Applied Psychological Research and School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy, University of South Australia
Adelaide, Australia

Abstract
In response to global financial pressures, retail companies have introduced measures to reduce costs by cutting staff
allocations to individual outlets. On the basis of interview data from four employees of a large retail organization,
this paper employs an ideographic case-study approach to illustrate how the processes linking job characteristics to
job-related strain and well-being (e.g. appraisal, action regulation, coping, resource utilization) unfold within four
individual workers, as they attempt to manage perceived increases in demands resulting from staff cuts. We highlight
the importance that these employees place on their own psychological resources (e.g. self-efficacy) and coping
mechanisms (e.g. disengagement) in dealing with these changes, as well as how the perceived availability or absence
of job resources (e.g. social support, decision authority, organizational justice) influences their ability to cope with
increased demands. We use the insights gained from the case studies to illustrate the value of integrating multiple
theoretical perspectives towards achieving a nuanced understanding of the intricacies involved in these experiences
and to suggest ways in which the coping capacities of individual employees might be increased. Copyright © 2013 John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 13 November 2012; Revised 18 April 2013; Accepted 21 April 2013

Keywords
job stress; job design; emotional labour; organizational injustice; self-regulation

*Correspondence
Carolyn Boyd, Centre for Applied Psychological Research, University of South Australia, Magill Campus, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide
SA 5001, Australia.
†
Email: Carolyn.Boyd@unisa.edu.au

Published online 19 July 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/smi.2495

Introduction (e.g. self-efficacy) factors are known to influence the

Organizational downsizing in response to global financial
pressures has been found to have a deleterious effect on
the wellbeing and motivation of retained employees,
regardless of whether or not they are successful in
achieving organizational outcomes (Babakus &
Yavas, 2012). One reason for this is that besides
experiencing increased job insecurity and powerlessness
(Armstrong-Stassen, 2005), the remaining staff are faced
with increased role stressors and responsibilities, placing
pressure on their physical, psychological and social
resources (Jimmieson, Terry & Callan, 2004; Kivimäki
et al., 2001). The resulting resource depletion leads to
deteriorations in health (Kivimäki et al., 2001) and
positive work attitudes (Bordia, Restubog, Jimmieson &
Irmer, 2011).
Although these effects are well documented, certain
environmental (e.g. leadership, social support and
provision of change-related information) and individual
degree of adversity that employees experience, as well as
their success in adapting to change, and their willingness
to remain committed to their jobs (Armstrong-Stassen,
2006; Bordia et al., 2011; Jimmieson et al., 2004).
The present study seeks to expand our understanding
of the mechanisms linking one aspect of downsizing—
staff cuts—to workers’ experience of job stress using a
case-study approach.
The study is based on qualitative interviews with
four employees working in diverse outlets of a large
retail organization. For several decades, and particu-
larly more recently as a result of the global financial
crisis, large retail organizations have opted to reduce
staff numbers and restructure working hours in order
to cut costs, increase revenue and improve short-term
financial performance (Broadbridge, 2002a; Ton,
2012). These practices have created increases in job
strain for retail employees because of changes to the

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Downsizing and the Stress Experience
work environment and increases in role stressors. This,
in turn, has increased pressure on the resources, both
individual and job-related, that retail employees can
draw on to cope. The present study seeks to illustrate
these phenomena using a qualitative approach and to
uncover more detail about psychosocial processes that
have received empirical support. In particular, we aim
to identify, for each employee, the following: (a) which
(if any) perceived job stressors were perceived to
increase as a result of staff cuts; (b) which additional
job stressors did the employees face in combination
with staff cuts and what were their effects; (c) what
were the factors that influenced employees’ coping
decisions and their success; and (d) what resources
(if any) did employees use in selecting and implementing
coping decisions.
Influences on employee motivation and
well-being
Insights from job characteristics, transactional and
action regulation theories inform our approach to the
conceptualization of job stress and coping. We initially
draw on the proposed dichotomy within job character-
istics models of work stress, between job demands
(characteristics that incur psychological costs and
consume effort and energy) and job resources
(characteristics that meet basic psychological needs,
reduce demands and aid in task accomplishment) to
frame our research (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007;
De Jonge & Dormann, 2003, 2006; Demerouti, Bakker,
Nachreiner & Schaufeli, 2001). Job demands include
not only the objective requirements of the job—the
tasks to be carried out, the rules governing their
execution and the attendant physical, cognitive and
affective complexity—but also those ‘problem’ charac-
teristics of the job or the organization that disrupt goal
attainment and divert employees’ resources away from
it (Zapf, Seifert, Schmutte, Mertini & Holz, 2001). Job
demands become stressors when they overtax (or threaten
to do so) employees’ cognitive, affective and physical
resources (Zapf et al., 2001) and/or threaten self-
regulatory functions such as self-esteem and self-efficacy
(Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Siegrist, 1996).
According to Lazarus’ well-known transactional
theory (Lazarus, 2001; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), a cru-
cial element in the relationship between environmental
stimuli and stress-related outcomes (strain and exhaus-
tion) is appraisal. That is, individuals make affectively
charged judgements (appraisals) of the degree of harm
and/or benefit attached to a given environmental stimu-
lus, which shape their responses to it. In the event of
harm or loss appraisals (or threatened harm or loss), the
ensuing affective, physiological and cognitive reactions call
forth coping behaviours aimed at minimizing the poten-
tially harmful impacts of both the stimulus itself and any
maladaptive subjective reactions to it (e.g. extreme nega-
tive affect, disabling cognitions; Lazarus, 2001; Lazarus
& Folkman, 1984; Zapf et al., 2001). Extrapolating
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
to the work context, this means that when job de-
mands are appraised as harmful or threatening and
trigger strong affective reactions, extra pressure is
placed on employees’ energy and coping resources,
beyond that already associated with managing ob-
jective task requirements. Hence, these so-called ‘hin-
drance’ demands (Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling &
Boudreau, 2000; Lepine, Podsakoff & Lepine, 2005) may
be particularly likely to lead to rapid energy depletion
and exhaustion.
Certain aspects of customer service work likely fall
into this category because of the potential for employees
to experience aversive interactions involving angry or
dissatisfied customers (and/or supervisors). Customer
service also involves emotion work, a self-control demand
requiring the display of organizationally desired emotions
(e.g. cheerfulness, sympathy) and the inhibition of
undesired emotions (e.g. anger, distress) for the purposes
of managing customer interactions and influencing
customer affect (Zapf, Vogt, Seifert, Mertini & Isic, 1999;
Zapf et al., 2001). Emotion work is demanding, both
because of the level of self-control required and because
of the potential for employees to experience dissonance
between felt and displayed emotions (Zapf et al., 1999;
Zapf et al., 2001). With regard to the former, Muraven
and Baumeister (2000) have proposed that different forms
of volitional self-control draw on a limited resource,
leading to energy depletion when demands are intense
or prolonged and there is little opportunity for recovery.
Concerning the latter, emotional dissonance is considered
stressful because it represents a form of person–role
conflict that indicates a discrepancy between situational
requirements and available resources (Frese & Zapf,
1994). Further, the energy-depleting effects of emotion
work are shown to be amplified in the presence of organi-
zational and role stressors such as role conflict (Zapf et al.,
1999; Zapf et al., 2001). This is thought to be because
when multiple stressors share use of the same energy
source, they exceed a capacity threshold ‘leading to effects
which are higher than [their] additive effects’ (Zapf et al.,
2001, p. 533). Thus, when role and organizational
stressors (are perceived to) increase as a result of staff cuts
and there are associated increases in objective job require-
ments (e.g. extended working hours, expanded individual
service requirements), the emotion work required may
also intensify and the extent of its effects be augmented.
Coping with job demands (e.g. requirements and
obstacles) and their possible consequences (e.g. threats
to self-regulatory functions and maladaptive stress
reactions) requires energy expenditure, as well as the per-
ception and deployment of personal (e.g. knowledge, skills
and abilities) and job (e.g. autonomy and leadership)
resources. According to action theory (Frese & Zapf,
1994; Hacker, 2003), resources offer ‘regulation possibil-
ities’, that is, they increase employees’ options for regulat-
ing behaviour effectively in response to demands. The
identification and use of appropriate coping resources
form part of a package of intentional, goal-directed
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
behaviours that also includes the formulation of coping
purposes (e.g. regulating emotions and solving problems),
and the identification, selection and implementation
of coping strategies (e.g. taking a break, talking to a
colleague; Daniels, 2013; Frese & Zapf, 1994). How-
ever, paradoxically, when staff cuts increase job
demands, the availability of job resources may also
decrease, forcing employees to rely more heavily on
their own resources in order to survive.
The present study
Organizational downsizing sets in motion a dynamic in-
terplay between changes in working conditions and em-
ployees’ responses to those changes. Although previous
quantitative studies have documented relationships
among demands, resources, well-being and motivation,
there are periodically calls for such evidence to be
supplemented by idiographic accounts that convey em-
ployees’ own experiences and understandings of work
stress and that can illuminate new research questions
and phenomena of interest. As well as enriching quanti-
tative studies by bringing the processes involved to life,
such accounts indicate the degree of fit between expert
theories and employees’ lay understandings of the stress
process (e.g. Kinman & Jones, 2005).
Accordingly, the present qualitative study sought to
apply a combination of job characteristics, transac-
tional, and action regulation theories towards an anal-
ysis of the sequences linking employees’ perceptions
of increased job demands and their affective responses
to those demands, and the crucial role played by the
perceived presence or absence of resources in deter-
mining coping efforts. The first two of the four
accounts examined describe how the stressful effects
of perceived increases to role stressors following staff
cuts are partially offset by the perceived availability
and capacity to take advantage of job resources (social
support and decision authority, respectively). The third
describes how the effects of increased role stressors may
be exacerbated by the added stressor of perceived
organizational injustice. Finally, the fourth account
describes how perceived increases to workload and
compromises to health and safety, may combine with
reductions in creativity to reduce job satisfaction and
motivation. Although there are commonalities in the
four accounts presented, the differences among the
sequences described illustrate the potential diversity of
ways in which particular combinations of perceived
demands, resources and coping decisions influence
outcomes, and the mechanisms involved.
The case studies are based on interview data gathered
from four employees from diverse retail outlets of the
same organization. The organization had recently
implemented serious measures designed to cut costs
and increase market share, including extending trading
hours, increasing employer control over employees’
work schedules and introducing customer loyalty
programmes designed to boost sales. Together these
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Downsizing and the Stress Experience
measures increased objective and perceived demands,
and reduced latent resources for long-serving staff
members.
The study adopted a case narrative approach in
order to capture employees’ own accounts of work
stress. The four employees were interviewed about
their understanding and experiences of work stress
and coping. Staff cuts and the accompanying increases
in workload were central and common themes in the
experiences described. However, the particular conse-
quences flowing from these changes, in the form of
additional demands, differed across the four accounts,
as did employees’ responses, and the resources and
strategies that they used to deal with them. As well as
illustrating the processes of responding to, and coping
with, increased job demands and reduced job
resources, the examples also point to the influences
that perceived job characteristics bring to bear on types
of coping resources that employees utilize, as well as
the likelihood that coping efforts will succeed.
Method
Participants, procedure and materials
The sample consisted of three women and one man.
Two were customer service employees, one was a
merchant officer, and one was a visual merchandising
(VM) technician. Participants’ ages ranged from 42 to
60 years old, with years of service in the company
ranging from 15 to 40 years. All four were included in
this study because they reported having witnessed
considerable organizational downsizing.
The four participants were occupational health and
safety (OHS) representatives at their respective work-
places and were attending mandatory OHS training
run by the local retail employees’ union. This intensive
five-day programme delivers training to newly elected
worksite OHS representatives on local and national
OHS legislation, the identification and reporting of
workplace hazards, the steps involved in responding
to employees’ health and safety concerns, and the role
of employers, employees and unions in promoting
OHS in retail workplaces. Sessions are run 12 times
per year, with an average of seven attendees per session.
During the year in which these interviews took place,
54% of the total attendees were women. Approximately
60% were employed in supermarkets or department
stores, and the remainder worked in variety stores or
retail warehouses.
Prior to the training sessions, the study had been
advertised to OHS representatives by the trainer, and
trainees had been invited to participate. Those who
agreed were subsequently interviewed individually
by the first author. Interviews took place at the
training venue during breaks in the training sessions
and lasted approximately 40 min. Participation was
voluntary and, with participants’ consent, the inter-
views were recorded and transcribed. Participants
55
Downsizing and the Stress Experience
were informed that they were free to withdraw from
the study at any time.
As well as requesting demographic information
(age, sex, marital status, name of employer and job
title), the semi-structured interview schedule asked
participants to describe their perceptions of the
causes of job stress among retail employees and
aspects of their work that helped them cope with
job stress.
Analytical approach
A modified, case-centred narrative-based approach was
adopted. According to Harling Stalker (2009), narra-
tives are stories that ‘provide, in sequential order, the
meaningful telling of events’ and are inherently case-
centred. Narrative analyses are commonly used for
theory-building purposes (Harling Stalker), as well as
for identifying phenomena not captured in quantitative
analyses. Accordingly, the primary purpose in our case
was to capture the meanings assigned by participants to
their experiences and thereby to elaborate on the
processes and sequences that led to individual coping
decisions, as well as coping outcomes (as distinct from
extracting an exhaustive list of the perceived causes of
stress among retail workers; see Broadbridge, Swanson
& Taylor, 2000). Accordingly, an in-depth exploration
was undertaken of the interviews that were judged by
the first two authors to provide illustrative examples
of the processes and constructs in question. The
examples were chosen because of the particularly vivid
and detailed nature of the descriptions they contain.
When analysing the interviews we followed the
guidelines of Schilling (2006). The first author read
through the transcripts several times and manually
coded responses according to themes. In the first pass,
statements related to the identification and enactment
of job demands and resources were highlighted, which
aided selection of the exemplars. Themes were then
assigned to these statements to reflect the underlying
issues being described by the participants. The themes
were refined in the second and third readings by
removing unnecessary information and centring on
the processes of enactment that we elaborated earlier.
In the final stage, the first and second authors discussed
and reached agreement upon the key aspects of the
narratives, going back to the raw data where necessary.
Following discussion, the first and second authors
reached 100 per cent agreement on the major themes
highlighted by participants.
Results and discussion
Example 1: Staffing cuts increase role
stressors and emotional demands
The first example concerns Cathy, a 50-year-old, full-
time, department store assistant. Cathy describes her
responses to the increased customer-service demands
and role stressors that she believes are associated with
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
reductions in staffing allocations throughout the store.
Along with overall staff cuts, Cathy believes that
mature, full-time staff has been replaced with younger
casual staff who work irregular, short shifts (e.g. 5 h
or less) and have little job commitment. Despite the
decrease in both quantity and (perceived) quality of
staff, however, management expects overall work output
to be maintained:
We work in a really stressful situation . . . we’re
so short-staffed . . . Just for example in the last
couple of years . . . we’ve lost 100 [workforce]
hours a week . . . The assistants now have to take
upon themselves to do all those extra hours’
work in the same time, . . . and still [expected to
appear] happy and cheerful and encouraging for
. . . customers . . . which is a great deal of stress
in itself . . .
This quantitative increase in workload has thus
created a new demand to work harder and faster whilst
maintaining high standards of individual customer
service and adherence to emotional display rules
(cf. Dormann & Zapf, 2004). Since the combination
of working more intensely and maintaining adequate
emotional display regulation requires increased effort
and self-control (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000), it
places increased demands on Cathy’s energetic reserves,
potentially leading more rapidly to exhaustion.
There is also an increase in perceived role conflict, as
employees juggle competing service and non-service
demands. This sense of added pressure and responsibility
is exacerbated when the time required to serve each
customer is lengthened, as occurs, for example, when
employees sign customers up for loyalty programmes, in
line with management expectations. Inevitably, waiting
customers become annoyed at increasing service delays,
creating an additional emotional demand stressor for
employees (Dormann & Zapf, 2004).
When [a staff member] goes on a break and say
there’s five registers in one area and [only] one
[sales assistant] and no-one in the fitting rooms
. . . then you’ve got to deal with customer
hostility because they’re not getting the service
that they would like.
Dealing with increased customer hostility involves
diffusing customer affect (e.g. deploying strategies
aimed at soothing, reassuring, negotiating), managing
one’s emotional experience (e.g. emotional dissonance,
feelings of anger, injustice) and regulating one’s display
of positive and negative emotions(Zapf et al., 2001). As
outlined in the Introduction, these emotion work
processes involve effortful self-control and, together
with role conflict, place multiple demands on employees’
finite supplies of cognitive and affective resources. The
combination of multiple stressors appears finally to prove
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
too much for Cathy and to exceed her capacity threshold
(e.g. Zapf et al., 2001), as she is no longer able to manage
them effectively. She resorts to physical disengagement:
. . . I usually have to walk away. . . . If occasionally
you do . . . try to defend yourself that only makes it
worse, it escalates it, quite often, or you get more
upset and more distressed, so I think the best thing
is you just say ‘I can’t serve you’, walk away, go
out the back, and then try and compose yourself
and come back out . . ..
Thus, ‘walking away’ helps Cathy to regulate her
distressing emotions (Broadbridge, 2002b), as well as
to manage the customer interaction and protect herself
from further emotional harm and distress. Hence,
using her initiative (a personal resource) she ‘enacts’
job autonomy to serve emotion- and problem-
focused coping goals (see Daniels, 2013). She also
enacts ‘permission’ to deviate from the prescribed
emotional display rules by telling the aggressive
customer that she will no longer serve him/her. If
Cathy did not perceive and enact these resources, she
would have to cope in some other way.
Important elements of coping in this customer
service job are the perceived availability and use of social
and emotional support from colleagues and managers.
Managers are . . . understanding . . . also the
co-workers look after each other . . . I find that
those people that have worked out a method
of coping with the stress [will] try and get
other people [to help them].
In line with the principle that job demands are best
managed using matching resources (e.g. emotional
demands using emotional resources; de Jonge &
Dormann, 2006), emotional support is an effective
resource in Cathy’s case. However, rather than involving
overt expressions of sympathy or advice, it seems to
convey a tacit acknowledgement of her need for time
out, which is expressed by covering for her while she
takes a break.
To summarize, Cathy’s case illustrates how reduc-
tions in departmental staffing levels may be associated
with perceived increases in job requirements (quantity
of work, customer service demands) and an increase
in job strain as mounting stressors (role conflict, work
pressure and emotional demands) exceed her supply of
personal coping resources. Elsewhere, it has been
documented that retail employees rely heavily on infor-
mal, relational resources to assist emotion-focused,
palliative coping (Broadbridge, 2002b). However, the
discretionary nature of these kinds of resources means
that their availability may fluctuate over time depending
on situational factors (e.g. mood and workload) and
vary between individuals and work teams according to
collegial relationships and supervisor skills.
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Downsizing and the Stress Experience
Example 2: Staff cuts increase the role of
initiative and decision authority
The case of Jen uncovers an innovative and forthright
approach to dealing with staff shortages and difficult
customers. Her example shows how (perceived)
decision authority can combine with individual initiative
to allow implementation of a creative problem-solving
strategy to deal with a stressful customer-related
situation arising from staff cuts. Jen is a third-in-charge
(3-I-C) in a large supermarket; thus, although she has
no formal supervisor status, she is responsible for the
smooth operation of the checkout area. The position
entails opening and closing cash registers as guided by
official store protocols for gauging customer demand,
dealing with customer-related problems (e.g. refunds,
complaints), maintaining overall customer flow, and
overseeing the shut-down of registers at closing time.
An operation of the same company that employs
Cathy, the supermarket for which Jen works has
recently reduced staff numbers, while extending
trading hours into late evenings and weekends. Staff
resources are tightly budgeted. The firm requires strict
adherence to protocol to regulate the volume of
customers per register and covertly monitors compli-
ance, as well as the speed and quality of individual
customer service. Monitoring occurs via ‘secret
customers’ – employees who pose as shoppers and
report to management on the service experience
(e.g. waiting time, cashier behaviours).
Like Cathy, Jen nominated inadequate staff numbers
and their impact on workloads and customer waiting
times as being the principal causes of work stress:
[Stress is] when you’ve got people everywhere
. . . up the front end there’s customers, all your
staff are on registers, you call ‘priority one’ and
no-one comes. [If] one of those customers is a
secret customer filling out an audit report, [and]
had to wait in line, then it comes back to me:
‘Why was there so many people in the queue?’
‘Well, I called “priority one” but no one came
[to help] . . . They’re things out of your control
. . . you’ve done all you can and it still looks bad.
Jen’s position as 3-I-C brings a level of informal
responsibility (perceived as an additional demand, but
not documented as an official job requirement) and
decision authority (a potential resource) beyond that
of the cashiers. However, because of the added respon-
sibility, she is also more likely than they to be held
accountable for customer service delays. Hence,
additional work pressure arises from her anticipation
of being unfairly blamed if things do not run smoothly,
even when events occur over which she feels she has
little control (cf. Burger, 1989; Shapiro, Schwartz &
Astin, 1996).
Jen is capable of adopting an active problem-focused
approach to managing job demands, as shown in her
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account of a stressful incident that occurred before
closing time one evening. Large queues of customers
were waiting to be served with too few operators
to serve them promptly. Rather than meeting the
demand by serving customers herself, she employs
an extra-role resource.
I only had three operators on so I went and got a
packet of [toffees] off the shelf and . . . offered
everyone a [toffee], and said ‘Sorry about the
wait . . .’
Using this strategy, Jen makes use of her informal
decision authority to prevent the difficult customer-
related situation from becoming unmanageable. Her
strategy is proactive, rather than reactive, aimed at
averting customer anger before it erupts (cf. Carver &
Connor-Smith, 2010). In addition, the primary coping
strategy is problem-focused, aimed at managing the
situation overall—to keep things running smoothly
and divert anger away from the checkout operators.
Jen focuses on the bigger picture, even at the cost of
additional emotional demands to herself:
But that [was] stress on me as well because I felt
like I was compensating for the customer having
to wait by having a conversation and giving
them a [toffee].
Finally, the chosen strategy involves forethought and
initiative: Jen consciously chooses not to ‘jump in’ and
start serving customers herself, because that strategy
(working harder and faster) could create more unmet
demands and more stress overall. Instead, she uses
the toffees to circumvent the problem. Her apparent
ability to keep her head and look at the big picture is
an adaptive strength, given the tendency for individuals
under stress to abandon strategies involving planning
and forethought in favour of well-learned, habitual re-
sponses (e.g. Frese & Zapf, 1994).
Jen’s strategy involves risk because, by dispensing
confectionary at the store’s expense, she may be
overstepping her legitimate authority. However, in so
doing, Jen capitalizes on the job-related and personal
resources at her disposal. As a permanent, full-time
employee, she enjoys job security (a valuable job
resource), which may give her courage to take bolder
risks than someone more precariously employed. As
an individual, she is easy-going and good-natured
(‘I just cruise along—water off a duck’s back’), as
well as outgoing and assertive, enabling her to speak
her mind when necessary. Because she also cares
about and protects her more vulnerable colleagues,
she enjoys the trust and respect of co-workers and
supervisor, alike. These qualities enable Jen to enact
job resources (e.g. decision authority) in ways that
promote effective and creative problem-focused
coping (Karasek, 1979). Overall, despite reductions
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
in tangible resources (staff allocations) and increases
in objective and perceived job demands, she enjoys
her job. She experiences a positive resource spiral
(e.g. Llorens, Schaufeli, Bakker & Salanova, 2007;
Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti & Schaufeli, 2009),
such that her positive emotional outlook enhances her
capacity to enact resources effectively, and additional
resources accumulate to enhance her overall well-being
(see Fredrickson, 2001; Hobfoll, 1989).
Example 3: Staff cuts increase perceived
injustice
The previous two examples showed how the deploy-
ment of social and personal resources within a work
team (Cathy) and the effective use of rich psychological
resources (Jen) can help limit the negative effects of
resource deficits (i.e. in customer service staff). By
contrast, Joylene’s case illustrates how perceived
organizational injustice can exacerbate the effects of
stressful demands associated with staff cuts (increased
workload, role conflict), and also create new ones.
Joylene’s case also illustrates the important role of
the wider organizational context in supporting or
undermining the efforts of employees and work
groups to adapt to stressful conditions.
A merchant officer for a discount variety store,
Joylene has little direct customer contact. Nevertheless,
because of the store’s cost-cutting measures she has lost
10 weekly hours of paid assistance, and furthermore,
has not been allocated a replacement to perform her
duties during her OHS training attendance. These
resource deficits have increased her quantitative work-
load, as she has had to absorb the 10 hours of lost
assistance herself and deal, unaided, with tasks that
accumulate during her training absence. Joylene is
unhappy at the unfairness implicit in the store’s
management of her attendance at OHS training:
While I’m at this course they won’t pay [someone]
. . . to do my job . . . every other area of the store is
covered, [but] while I’m here there’s no one to do
my work.
As a coping strategy, she decides to work, unpaid,
after hours, to tackle the backlog of demands.
However, instead of overcoming the demands as
intended, this strategy backfires, bringing unexpected
added stressors:
Last night I went back from here [OHS training]
straight to work . . . and . . . I’m not getting paid
for it, OK? – My manager [got angry with] me
about something really trivial . . . That really
upset me because . . . I’m trying to do the right
thing and help the company . . . and not getting
any recognition. . . . I’m working till 9 pm after
[training] to get the workload done because it’ll
get so far behind [my manager] will look bad.
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
Her manager’s apparent failure to recognize Joylene’s
demonstration of organizational citizenship, along with
the perceived injustice of the reprimand and its timing,
compound the effect of the distributive injustice
(‘every other area of the store is covered’) perceived
in the organization’s failure to resource her OHS
training (e.g. Greenberg, 2004). Together these injustices
constitute a violation of the reciprocity norm implicit in
the psychological contract between employer and
employee (Coyle-Shapiro, 2002; Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler,
2002; Epitropaki, 2013). According to Siegrist (1996),
persistent lack of reciprocity and chronic effort–reward
imbalance result in recurrent feelings of threat, anger
and demoralization, which are associated with increased
psychological distress and other health problems (e.g. risk
of cardiovascular disease). Joylene alludes to having
needed stress-related time away from work as a result of
her work problems.
Joylene attempts to explain her supervisor’s unjust
actions by alluding to negative repercussions should
Joylene’s work fall behind (‘it will look bad on her’),
and the possibility that her manager feels threatened
by Joylene’s knowledge and influence as OHS represen-
tative. Both explanations imply perceived job insecurity
on the supervisor’s part, an interpretation supported by
the apparent power struggle between her and the store
manager. This continuing power struggle is perceived
to reflect a broader organizational culture, which, in
Joylene’s view, is characterized by a lack of commitment
to worker health and safety, an ethos of aggressive male
dominance, and a mismatch between the company’s
stated aim of prioritizing worker health and safety and
its approach to resolving workplace disputes:
[The company] is big . . . on health and safety
and harassment and bullying . . . [But] [those
things are] actually dealt with within the
company, there’s not a separate body that . . .
comes in and does any mediation . . . I have
found that actually the mediator sticks up for
the company.
So, together with incidents of injustice, the orga-
nization’s perceived lack of impartiality fosters
mistrust and cynicism towards the organization as
a whole, as well as towards individual supervisors.
By undermining positive social exchange processes
and relationships across the organization, perceived
injustice and mistrust can also be expected to reduce
employees’ motivation and performance (Colquitt,
LePine, Piccolo, Zapata & Rich, 2012).
In Joylene’s account, the contextual nature of per-
ceived and enacted work characteristics is well illustrated.
Interpersonal injustice occurs within a poor collegial
relationship, embedded within an aggressive organiza-
tional culture, which itself has presumably developed
as a short-term survival response to the prevailing
competitive economic climate. The findings are
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Downsizing and the Stress Experience
consistent with the idea that bullying is more preva-
lent when companies and employees are under stress
(Hoel & Salin, 2003).
Despite her difficulties, Joylene remains attached to
her job, relying on her own personal resources to help
her cope. She does not report enlisting social support,
but rather relies on her experience and maturity,
which allow her to be assertive (e.g. ‘I’m not afraid
any more’). Her strategy for coping with emotional
distress is to disengage by ‘going for a walk’. While
disengaging may be a successful short-term emotion
regulation strategy, however, repeated occurrences
involving organizational injustice and effort-reward
imbalance could be expected to take a heavy emotional
toll, given the powerful negative emotions elicited
(distress, anger, resentment) and the effort required in
suppressing them.
Example 4: Staff cuts compromise physical
health and safety, reduce creativity
Staff cuts and the associated increases in work pressures
for retail employees also pose risks to physical health
and safety, and curtail creativity. These are illustrated
by the case of Frank, a 50-year old VM technician for
a chain of department stores. His work is varied and
technically complex, including, among other things,
changing window displays, preparing sets for fashion
parade, and installing fixtures and fittings.
Like the previous interviewees, Frank nominates
staff cuts and corresponding increases to workload as
the principal sources of his workplace stress. Specifically,
the number of VM technicians across the company has
been reduced by two-thirds, with the remaining third
‘still doing the same function’. Increases in workload
and time pressure have, he claims, led employees to
adopt unsafe work practices:
Things aren’t done properly anymore. Every-
thing’s just thrown together in a hurry . . . people
get hurt, things are done in a dangerous manner.
Store management’s failure to appreciate the amount
of work involved in minimizing hazards to health and
safety compounds Frank’s sense of frustration:
[Management say] we want this department
refurbished and we want to shift it from the fifth
floor to the ground floor and we want it to
happen [right now]. And then suddenly, magi-
cally the VM team get it there, you know.
But [management] don’t seem to understand the
skills, the types of people, the work involved,
how long it takes, the pressures and the stresses
that people have to go through to make that hap-
pen. And that’s my constant frustration . . . they
never accept no for an answer so you just
have to [do it], that’s when you work danger-
ously and you work long hours.
59
Downsizing and the Stress Experience
The perceived lack of time, and management’s
inflexibility, are compounded by deficits in training
and experience among new employees. Things have
changed for the worse:
When I first started there . . . it might be three to
four years before they would let you do all the
VM activities. Whereas now the kids [do] a one
year technical course . . . which doesn’t give
them all the skills that they really need. They
get thrown in the deep end, first day on the job
with very little training and very little supervision.
This increases Frank’s self-perceived burden of
responsibility to assist new employees.
As a VM technician, Frank potentially has the
opportunity to exercise creativity (a challenge demand,
offering scope for mastery and growth; Crawford,
LePine & Rich, 2010) and job autonomy (a resource;
Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). This was his experience
during his early career when his job involved
constructing elaborate seasonal window displays.
However, over time, levels of job autonomy and
creativity were eroded, until eventually, they were
almost entirely eliminated:
When I first started we had a [lot] of . . . creativity.
We . . . would design props, build them, paint
them, install them, do the works. And then . . .
the company . . . wanted all the stores to look
absolutely identical. So we became installers.
They would send us all the props and we would
just install them, even down to the point where
[there was] a graph of the floor of a window
with an X marked and that’s exactly where the
mannequin had to stand.
This loss of creativity and autonomy was particularly
demoralizing. According to Siegrist (1996), such a
removal of continuity in the work role threatens
important self-regulatory processes such as self-esteem.
Like Joylene, Frank mentions having taken a period of
stress-related time off work.
Since this low-point, there has been a restoration of
some freedom and flexibility (‘we’re doing a lot more
painting and using a lot more imagination in the
store’). Concomitantly, Frank’s satisfaction levels have
also improved (‘it’s much better now’), although not
to the high levels experienced previously (‘it’s nowhere
near as satisfying as it used to be’). However, on the
downside, the absence of adequate staffing resources
means that the scope for greater freedom and creativity
is coupled with tighter deadlines and increased work
pressure (‘the workload is horrendous’). It seems,
therefore, as though the advantages conferred by
increased opportunities for individual autonomy,
flexibility, and creativity are partially counteracted by
reductions in resources such as personnel and time.
60
C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
Frank repeatedly returns to these themes – unrealistically
high workloads, insufficient staff, the perceived
compromises to health and safety, and especially,
the perceived refusal of management to acknowledge
OHS concerns. Frank’s failure to enlist managerial
support for his OHS concerns may be regarded as
an unsuccessful attempt to enact job resources.
According to Hobfoll (1989; Hobfoll & Shirom, 2001),
when attempts to garner new resources (in this case,
managerial support) via the initial investment of existing
resources (i.e. efforts to negotiate with management)
there is a net resource loss, leading to energy depletion
and loss of motivation. Indeed, both the frustration
associated with this failure, and the erosion of his
working conditions (especially creative opportunities
and complex challenges) over the years, have drained
his intrinsic motivation, so that he now offers a strictly
transactional commitment motivated by external
rewards (‘I just do it for the pay packet’). He has psycho-
logically disengaged from work, and his main sources of
life satisfaction come from his non-work interests. Thus,
for Frank, disengagement from work has become a
protective coping strategy.
General discussion
The case study narratives from retail employees
illustrate the varied implications for employees of staff
cuts, a core aspect of downsizing. By examining these
accounts this paper offers new insights in three areas.
First, it illustrates how, despite their commonalities,
the mechanisms underpinning the links between staff
cuts and well-being differ for each employee depending
on the particular combination of demand stressors, job
resources (or deficits), and personal resources. Second,
it illustrates how psychosocial resources must be relied
upon when job resources are reduced, with uncertain
effect. Finally, flowing on from these two issues, this
paper highlights implications for interventions at
different levels. These contributions are elaborated in
turn below.
The examples presented earlier illustrate the varied
implications for employees of a reduction in specific
tangible resource-staffing levels. Both on its own, and
in combination with changes to other job characteris-
tics (extended trading hours, competitive loyalty
programmes), this measure resulted in increased
demands for individual employees and work teams,
and to increased reliance on psychosocial resources to
cope with those demands. Importantly, for all four
employees, the reduction in staffing levels led to
increases in perceived role stressor demands (i.e. work
pressure, role conflict), which, in general, was associ-
ated with the initial demand response of attempting
to work harder, longer and faster to overcome them.
With the exception of Jen, it was only when these initial
efforts were perceived as, or anticipated to be
unsuccessful that employees resorted to other strategies
(e.g. asking for help, disengaging from the demands).
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
According to the Job Demands-Resources model
(Demerouti et al., 2001), the increased expenditure of effort
and energy on these enacted demands leads more rapidly
to accelerate the depletion of energy leading to exhaus-
tion (Demerouti et al., 2001; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).
In all four accounts, it was not just the increase in
workload arising from staff cuts that strained resources
and influenced coping decisions. Rather, the direct
effects of increased workload demands were apparently
exacerbated by additional job demands and/or resource
deficits that, in some cases, were themselves associated
with staff cuts. For example, for Cathy, the increased
work pressure combined with increased customer-
related stressors to exceed her capacities for coping
and self-regulation (e.g. Hofmann, Schmeichel &
Baddeley, 2012; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000; Zapf
et al., 2001), creating a periodic need for time out; for
Jen, the anxiety-producing effects of both customer
and non-customer demands were heightened by the
anticipation of managerial blame should things go
wrong (e.g. Burger, 1989), prompting her to take
extra-role measures to avert a crisis; for Joylene, the
combination of work pressure, organizational injustice,
and lack of reciprocity damaged morale and created
lingering anger and distress (Coyle-Shapiro, 2002;
Coyle-Shapiro & Kessler, 2002; Siegrist, 1996); and
for Frank, work pressure, loss of creativity and the
perceived unresponsiveness of company management
to his OHS concerns led to frustration, disappoint-
ment, and, ultimately, his decision to adopt an attitude
of disengagement. With the exception of Jen, whose
personal resilience appeared to enable her to thrive
within her job, these kinds of changes—particularly
those seen to involve injustice or resulting in frustration—
were associated with increased strain and reduced
motivation, and for Joylene and Frank, in more serious
health problems.
The intricacies involved in these processes are not
adequately explained by any single model of work
stress. Rather, this study confirms that a variety of
mechanisms is at work within any given individual’s
experience of strain and exhaustion resulting from
work-related stressors and that to do justice to the
complexity of these mechanisms, job characteristics
models (e.g. Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Demerouti
et al., 2001) must be integrated with perspectives that
capture within-person processes, such as those involved
in appraising circumstances and in identifying and
choosing among alternative courses of action (e.g. Daniels,
2013; Frese & Zapf, 1994; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
Further, the accounts underscore the importance of
considering that multiple demands may not only have
cumulative and/or interactive effects (Zapf et al., 2001)
but also that they may place different kinds of strain on
psychological resources, and therefore be associated, with
differing health-related outcomes (e.g. depression versus
anxiety) as well as with exhaustion.
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Downsizing and the Stress Experience
The role of resources
In response to the increases of demands that flowed
from reduced staffing resources, our case studies
revealed increased reliance on personal and informal
job resources to cope with the exacerbation of existing
demands and the introduction of new stressors. As
illustrated, where present and accessible (as in Cathy’s
case), the enactment of social support was effective in
ameliorating the emotional effects of perceived role
stressors and customer-service stressors. Likewise, Jen
was able to exercise her informal decision authority to
enact a form of instrumental support using an extra-
role resource (a bag of toffees) to prevent customer-
service stressors from escalating when quantitative
customer demand exceeded the store’s capacity for
timely service. These respective measures were only
possible and effective because Cathy’s agreeableness
and social skills, and Jen’s personal initiative and confi-
dence, ensured the capacity of each to detect, and make
use of the relevant resources.
Paradoxically, however, employees’ perceptions of
their own resources can also lead them to take on
further job demands. Joylene described how she ‘chose’
to work unpaid overtime to manage the increased
workload. Rather than going home and leaving the
work unfinished, her personal work ethic and percep-
tion of responsibility led to her enact longer working
hours, with the associated strain. Likewise, where such
resources were perceived as absent, or had themselves
fallen victim to the pressure of increased perceived
demands (as in Joylene’s case), the perceived emotional
burdens were augmented. Even when psychosocial
resources are perceived to be plentiful and helpful, they
can be eroded over time. Hence, while it appears that
some employees may be resilient, initially, to surviving
staff cuts, organizations should not rely on employees
in this way, nor focus exclusively on individual resilience
as an intervention target.
Practical implications
As mentioned in the Introduction, several workplace
factors have been found to attenuate the adverse effects
of downsizing on employees, including leadership, and
perceived organizational support, and control-oriented
coping (Armstrong-Stassen, 2006). In the present
study, several measures could be considered in order
to reduce strain and improve motivation for the four
employees described here. One could be for unions to
work with management to increase their commitment
to employee psychological health and safety and to
reduce psychological hazards. So-called ‘psychosocial
safety climate’ (Dollard & Bakker, 2010) is normally
considered an initiative of senior management, as
expressed in their ‘policies and procedures for the
protection of worker psychological health and safety’
(Dollard & Bakker, 2010, p. 580; Dollard et al., 2012).
However, it also involves employees and unions
61
Downsizing and the Stress Experience
collaborating with employers, to identify and rectify
psychosocial hazards, and negotiate psychologically
safer working conditions. Such measures would ideally
include implementing policies to improve communica-
tion, curtail bullying and intimidation, promote the
respectful and just treatment of employees by supervi-
sors, colleagues and customers alike, and ensure
physical, as well as psychological safety. As well as
conveying care and respect for employees, helping to
create a healthier psychosocial safety climate in this
way would go some way to boosting these employees’
sense of voice and control and reducing their frustra-
tion and powerlessness. This, in turn, could enhance
well-being and improve motivation. Given that the
employees in this study already have a working
association with the union by virtue of being OHS
representatives, they may be well positioned to become
involved in such processes.
In addition, as described earlier, from an action
theory perspective, resources represent regulation
possibilities (Frese & Zapf, 1994), so that increasing
resources means increasing the range of possible coping
decisions and actions available to people. Therefore,
another important means of improving conditions and
outcomes for these employees could be to work with
them to boost their levels of job control and their percep-
tions of the range of coping choices available to them. In
order for this to be effective, however, measures should
be taken to boost levels of self-efficacy, confidence and
entitlements at the individual employee level, as well as
at the team or store level. This could involve taking
measures to improve employees’ problem-focused and
emotion-focused coping skills to manage emotionally
challenging customer interactions and co-worker relation-
ships. It might also involve encouraging both employees
and managers to recognize that there are limits to the
extent to which employees can be held responsible for
undesirable work-related outcomes over which they have
little control. Providing training and information in these
areas could boost employees’ capacity to identify and enact
appropriate resources for dealing with challenging situa-
tions, thereby increasing employee self-efficacy, altering
their appraisals of potentially stressful demands, and
reducing the pressure on their emotional reserves and
informal support systems. In addition, it would also
convey recognition that, being integral to service work,
such demands have a legitimate claim on company
resources and should be taken seriously, thereby boosting
perceived organizational support.
Finally, it is important to recognize that there are
likely to be upper limits to what employees can be
assisted to deal with, whether via problem-focused
or emotion-focused coping. As with the case of Frank,
it is likely that greater investment of company re-
sources in job redesign and physical safety measures
would be required to improve working conditions.
And, although some employees appear to be well
equipped to cope with staff cuts in the short term,
62
C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
our case studies suggest that individual resilience is
at risk of being undermined in the longer term. This
may occur as a result of the perception and enactment
of new demands, exacerbation of existing demands,
and/or depletion of resources through their enact-
ment, all of which in turn are likely to shape subse-
quent perceptions of resources and how they are
later utilized.
Study limitations and suggestions for
future research
A possible shortcoming of the present study was that it
was based on data from a small number of mature
employees with permanent jobs and long years of
service at the company in question. This limits the gen-
eralizability of the results to other employee types, for
example, younger, casual employees, who may have
less investment in the job or their long-term relation-
ship with the organization (and therefore may be less
sensitive to perceived violations of a long-term psy-
chological contract), but who face a different set of
job stressors (e.g. variable and unpredictable shift-
work, job insecurity, bullying from older workers).
In addition, given that the four participants were
OHS representatives, it is likely that they had a height-
ened awareness of psychological health and safety
issues and an enhanced knowledge of the role of the
union as a possible employee resource.
A second limitation is that because the four accounts
tend to focus on stressful experiences at work, the
broader long-term health implications—or, indeed
implications for non-working life—are not covered in
depth (although, as noted earlier, Joylene and Frank
allude to having experienced serious health consequences
stemming from job-related strain). In addition, the
qualitative nature of the study means that causal
interpretations remain speculative without additional
quantitative evidence. Nevertheless, the accounts provide
rich data, allowing for in-depth exploration of these
employees’ experiences, particularly their identifica-
tion of staff cuts and shortages as the principal
source of a network of job demands and stressors.
Because the narratives convey employees’ own implicit
attributions for ‘causes’ and ‘effects’ (e.g. reduced staffing
levels lead to increased job demands), the study adds to
the literature on lay theories of occupational stress
(e.g. Dewe & O’Driscoll, 2002; Kinman & Jones,
2005) and confirms their varied nature. Future
research could expand the range of employees
sampled, to determine if the mechanisms identified
here apply to employees facing different job stressors
and with different personal resources.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the qualitative accounts we have presented
in this paper illustrate the diverse ways in which
perceived job demands, job resources and coping efforts
combine to influence various health and well-being
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C. M. Boyd, M. R. Tuckey and A. H. Winefield
outcomes. Personal resources and coping decisions are
also important, especially in situations where job
resources are used up by increasing job demands. These
intricacies underscore the value of integrating different
conceptual approaches to understanding occupational
stress in order, ultimately, to inform and enhance stress
prevention efforts.
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