Self-Endangering Work Behavior

Abstract

Confronted with progressively increasing demands for greater flexibility, organizations apply organizational and managerial practices that build on their employees’ self-organization and self-discipline, thereby increasing their employees’ control over achieving their everyday work tasks. Although these practices offer opportunities for personal growth and coordination of work and private life, the resultant demands for increasing autonomy and self-organization may overtax employees’ capacities, leading to stress. Furthermore, employees are increasingly reacting in ways that are self-exploitative and detrimental to their own health in response to large work-loads and strong demands for self-organization. This chapter introduces the concept of self-endangering work behavior; namely, behaviors that may be functional with regard to attaining work goals but dysfunctional with regard to health and long-term ability to work. We propose that self-endangering work behavior can be viewed as a form of coping reaction when workers are confronted with large work-loads and strong demands for self-organization. Based on the transactional stress model and regulation of behavior theory, we propose that self-endangering work behavior may mediate the effect of large work-loads and strong demands for self-organization on impaired well-being. We summarize empirical findings that confirm the detrimental role of self-endangering behaviors and their capacity to increase the detrimental effects of work demands. Finally, we discuss the benefit of assessing self-endangering behavior with the aim of taking preventive measures.