Article

Organizational Psychology Review

2023, Vol. 13(3) 209–236
Job demands-resources theory © The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/20413866221135022

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Evangelia Demerouti
Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Arnold B. Bakker
Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract
This theoretical paper presents an extended Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) theory aimed
at understanding how organizations and their employees can best deal with COVID-19 and
other crises in the workplace. The crisis showed that job characteristics alone are insuffi-
cient to explain employee health and motivation, i.e., the two focal outcomes of the JD-R
theory. Rather, demands and resources of the individual, the family, the job and the organ-
ization interact with each other to predict outcomes. Moreover, next to individual regula-
tory strategies also the regulatory strategies of the family, the leader and organization/team
are suggested to modify the impact of demands and resources on outcomes. This was pos-
sible by integrating the crisis management literature in JD-R theory. Viewing the crisis from
a job design perspective helped us to introduce several new and testable propositions that
specify how employee well-being and functioning are impacted by crises and turbulent
times.

Plain Language Summary

Organizations have been struggling to find out how their employees are affected by the
COVID-19 pandemic and what they can do to support their well-being and improve their
functioning during the pandemic and beyond. The well-being and job performance of individ-
ual employees are difficult to predict which becomes even more complicated during times of
crisis. The Job Demands–Resources theory is a helpful means because it suggests that

Paper received 23 February 2021. Received revised July 15, 2022

Corresponding author:
Evangelia Demerouti, Department Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology,
P.O.Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Email: e.demerouti@tue.nl

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reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified
on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
210 Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)

employee health and motivation are outcomes of two different processes, i.e., the health
impairment process and the motivational process. Job demands, such as work pressure
and demanding customers, exhaust the energy of employees and consequently diminish
their health, whereas job resources, such as autonomy and social support, help employees
to deal with the demands and to develop themselves. The pandemic showed that the inter-
play between demands and resources of the individual, the job, the family and the organiza-
tion predict outcomes. Moreover, next to individual regulatory strategies also the regulatory
strategies of the family, the leader and organization/team are suggested to modify the impact
of demands and resources on outcomes. Viewing the crisis from a job design perspective
helped us to introduce in the Job Demands–Resources theory several testable propositions
that specify how employee well-being and functioning are impacted by crises and turbulent
times.

Keywords
COVID-19, crisis management, JD-R theory, leadership, regulatory strategies

Like earlier crises, the COVID-19 pandemic is
linked to increased ambiguity and uncertainty,
forcing organizations to manage risks by
taking various measures to protect employee
health and improve the organization’s chance
for survival (Combe & Carrington, 2015).
How the pandemic influences employees’
health and the organization’s functioning
depends on the specific measures that are
taken to deal with the crisis. The pandemic
has forced political leaders to take measures
on a national level, but also forced organiza-
tional leaders to take measures in teams, fam-
ilies to take measures at home, and individuals
to take personal measures (Kniffin et al.,
2021). Uncovering the factors that determine
the impact of major societal crises, like
COVID-19, on employee health and well-being
as well as organizational survival is essential.
Moreover, COVID-19 represents a health
crisis that has important implications for occu-
pational health.
Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory is
widely used to explain organizational processes
influencing employee health, well-being, and
performance. Moreover, there is ample evi-
dence confirming its main propositions
(Bakker & Demerouti, 2017; Lesener et al.,
2019). However, has JD-R theory been able to
explain employee outcomes during crises like
the COVID-19 pandemic? Our impression is
that the answer is affirmative. Several recent
studies have used JD-R theory as a conceptual
framework to investigate the impact of
(remote) work on employee, family, organiza-
tional, and societal outcomes (Bapuji et al.,
2020). These studies introduced some
pandemic-specific demands and resources
(e.g., risk of infection of team members, oper-
ational readiness; e.g., Thielsch et al., 2021),
whereas others discussed (e.g., Bilotta et al.,
2021) or tested the importance of specific job
characteristics (e.g., destructive leadership;
Dolce et al., 2020).
The question that now arises is whether JD-R
theory is sufficiently able to predict well-being
and performance during crises and whether
the COVID-19 crisis may have led to new
insights that require adaptations of the theory
to increase its applicability and ability to
predict outcomes also in turbulent times. We
aim to make three contributions to the literature.
First, we contribute to JD-R theory by expand-
ing the scope of its propositions such that they
integrate various life domains. In this way,
we increase JD-R’s predictive value during
crisis situations and beyond. This may give a
further boost to research on well-being and
Demerouti and Bakker
performance. Second, we contribute to the crisis
management literature by linking this body of
work to job design and employee well-being
as conceptualized in JD-R theory (Bakker &
Demerouti, 2017; Demerouti et al., 2001). By
integrating these literatures, we are able to
specify the impact of the pandemic on employ-
ees and their jobs which will eventually deter-
mine how effective crisis management
measures are. Third, we contribute to job
design and employee well-being literatures by
focusing on the processes through which jobs
and employees are influenced by macro
factors (i.e., crises). What are the processes
through which a crisis, like COVID-19,
changes job characteristics and influences
employee well-being?
Crisis management in
organizations
Organizational crises refer to highly ambiguous
and threatening situations where causes and
effects are unknown (Quarantelli, 1988). Such
crises have a low probability of occurring but
pose a major threat to the survival of an organ-
ization (Shrivastava et al., 1988). A crisis some-
times surprises organizational members
(Hermann, 1963), and usually offers only
limited time to respond (Quarantelli, 1988). It
presents a dilemma in need of a decision or
judgment that will result in change for better
or worse (Aguilera, 1990).
In this context, crisis management is gener-
ally viewed as a cycle or process. Crisis man-
agement practices include any action that can
help prevent incidents, as well as enhance work-
place risk perceptions and performance (Haas &
Yorio, 2018). Recent research has examined
crises as the interplay between internal and
external forces occurring in multiple phases
(Sherman & Roberto, 2020). These phases gen-
erally include (a) the identification and assess-
ment of internal and external threats (e.g., how
damaging COVID-19 is for the business as
well as employee health and safety), (b) the
211
specification of strategic resource deployments
to counter those threats (e.g., changing the
workflow and building design, providing
proper/adequate equipment and tools as well
as personal protective equipment, organizing
work remotely), (c) the management and
follow-up actions once the crisis occurs (e.g.,
adjustment of buildings or ways of communica-
tion), and (d) the identification of lessons
learned both internally and by others after the
crisis (Crandall et al., 2015; Sherman &
Roberto, 2020).
According to Pearson and Clair (1998), crisis
management efforts are effective when ongoing
operations are sustained or resumed (i.e., the
organization is able to maintain or regain the
momentum of core activities necessary for
transforming input to output at levels that
satisfy the needs of key customers), organiza-
tional and external stakeholder losses are mini-
mized, and learning occurs so that lessons are
transferred to future incidents. Managers who
effectively manage a crisis ensure that key sta-
keholders can improvise and interact. In this
way, individual employees, teams, and depart-
ments are stimulated to engage in collective
sensemaking, develop shared meaning, and
reconstruct organizational roles. Eventually,
effective crisis management entails individuals
and organizational groups changing their basic
assumptions, emotions, and behaviors with the
aim to readjust from the crisis and recover
(Pearson & Clair, 1998).
Individuals and teams managing unexpected
events or crises are faced with a dilemma
(Maitlis et al., 2013). On the one hand, hazard-
ous and rapidly unfolding situations are usually
difficult to comprehend, which means that indi-
viduals need to collect information before they
can determine the most appropriate action. On
the other hand, urgent situational demands
usually require people to take immediate
action even with incomplete information as
doing something is usually better than doing
nothing. Taking action during a crisis thus
involves a trade-off between “dangerous
action which produces understanding and safe
212
inaction which produces confusion” (Weick,
1988, p. 305). Whereas early actions in a
crisis determine the trajectory of the crisis
(Weick, 1988), during a crisis, actions
strengthen commitment at precisely the time
that flexibility and improvisation are required
(Maitlis et al., 2013). Eventually, crisis manage-
ment may change the decision making of an
organization and motivate managers to alter
organizational policies and procedures (Seeger
et al., 1998).
The role of management
Scholars have suggested that crisis prepared-
ness starts with executive perceptions of risks
and risk-taking (Mitroff et al., 1996; Pauchant
& Mitroff, 1992; Pearson & Clair, 1998). If
executives do not believe their organization is
vulnerable to crises, they will not allocate
resources to prepare for or safeguard against
those risks. Perceptions of senior executives
determine cultural beliefs in the organization
about the value of and need for crisis manage-
ment (Pauchant & Mitroff, 1992). Even in
industries that are regulated or where crisis
management practices have been institutiona-
lized, executive perceptions and the cultural
environment must support crisis management
for programs to be highly effective (Pearson
& Clair, 1998).
Although top management provides import-
ant details about the crisis and specifies the
necessary measures, middle managers are left
to construct their own meanings of it, and there-
fore play a crucial role in how measures to
combat the crisis ultimately get passed on to
frontline employees (Maitlis & Sonenshein,
2010). Moreover, middle managers mediate
the sensemaking between top managers and
frontline employees, because due to their pos-
ition they can affect both employee cognitions
and actions. Specifically, Beck and Plowman
(2009) highlight how middle managers frame
and enrich the interpretation of unusual events
in organizations, an activity they are uniquely
positioned to do because of their proximity to
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
interpretations of both strategic and frontline
managers. Another key activity for middle man-
agers during crises is engaging in sensegiving.
Middle managers’ sensegiving regulates subor-
dinates’ emotions and actions and creates a
sense of continuity and change (Huy, 2002).
We will discuss later on how they do this.
Whereas a focus on top and middle managers
is important, frontline employees are often
responsible for implementing the bulk of crisis
management efforts. Accordingly, the key is
to unpack how frontline employees make
sense of a crisis in ways that align with the sen-
semaking of management and reduces competing
enactments of organizational crisis management.
The role of employees
Engaging in sensemaking of risks may help
organizations and their leaders to stimulate indi-
viduals to invest cognitive, social, and motiv-
ational resources to accurately perceive and
participate in risk management (Haas &
Yorio, 2018). Engaging workers so that they
can perceive and initiate responsibility, regard-
less of the risk, is essential to managing a
dynamic environment (Haas & Yorio, 2018).
Employees play a pivotal role in crisis manage-
ment although their role is not really recognized
in the literature. We specify their contributions
in three ways. First, since employees have the
most thorough knowledge about their job and
how to best execute it, they may be best able
to suggest effective measures to minimize the
impact of the crisis on their work. For
example, a university president may decide to
allocate budget to buying licenses for remote
teaching tools, but the faculty of various disci-
plines will decide which specific tool to buy
for the form of teaching that is used. Second,
even measures with a lot of potential will not
effectively reduce the impact of the crisis if
these measures are not correctly implemented,
or if the measures are not used at all by those
who are supposed to use them. For instance,
COVID-19 measures required that customers
keep distance from each other and the service
Demerouti and Bakker
employee. This could only be effectuated by
front-line employees who need to implement
this measure by organizing the service such
that the distance can be kept. Third, since organ-
izational viability and performance depend on
employee performance, employees are key for
the survival of the organization—particularly
when performance is threatened due to the chal-
lenges of the crisis. This requires that employ-
ees are motivated to perform well and that that
they are able to do so even during crisis. The
question is how this can be achieved.
The roles of multiple actors
Up to now, we saw that effective crisis manage-
ment depends on action of the organization or
top management, the middle management and
the work teams that they lead as well as frontline
employees. These actors are important but not
sufficient. Because individuals bring their work
stress home and their home stress to work, in a
crisis where individuals must work remotely,
boundaries between these spaces become even
more blurred. This increases the role of family
or friends as important actors that may pose
another stressor or provide support during crisis
management as crises often reveal the importance
of close relationships (Gabriel & Aguinis,
2022). This was particularly the case during the
COVID-19 pandemic that forced employees to
work from home but has been found relevant
also to other crises, e.g., hurricane Katrina
(McCanlies et al., 2018) or the economic reces-
sion of 2008 (Burgard & Kalousova, 2015).
Although the government with its state regula-
tions represents another key actor during a
crisis, this falls outside the scope of this article
since it requires specific analyses. Moreover,
some of the impact of state regulations may
occur through organizational policies, which are
largely influenced by governmental or state regu-
lations (Parker et al., 2017). Next to the govern-
ment or state level, another player that gained
importance during the COVID-19 pandemic is
the family. Perhaps this is contingent on the
nature of the crisis, but the literature seems to
213
suggest that the family system is important
during crises.
Already in the 50’s Hill (1949, 1958) devel-
oped the ABCX model to describe the adjust-
ment of families to the crises caused by the
Second World War. Accordingly, the adjust-
ment and adaptation of families to crisis-
precipitating events can be explained by the fol-
lowing formula: A (the crisis-precipitating
events or demands) interacts with B (the
family’s crisis-meeting resources) and with C
(the definition the family gives to the event) in
order to produce X (the crisis). The stressor or
crisis-precipitating event represents a life
event that places demands on the family
system that have to be managed in order to
prevent the system from going into a crisis
(Paterson, 1988). Resistance resources or crisis-
meeting resources are defined as the family’s
ability to prevent change in its system from
leading to disruptiveness or a crisis. Examples
of such resistance resources are personal
resources of individual family members (e.g.,
self-esteem and sense of mastery), family
resources (e.g., cohesion, adaptability, and
effective communication skills), and commu-
nity resources (e.g., health-care facilities and
social support) (Paterson, 1988). Whether the
family will move from the stressor event into
a state of crisis depends on the family’s defin-
ition of the stressor event or sensemaking
which is based on family’s value system, and
its previous experience and mechanisms in
meeting crises. Family’s inability to restore sta-
bility during crisis events occurs when there is a
deficiency in existing resources (B factor),
when they misinterpret stressor events and
when the family has low capability in family
coping behavior (i.e., coordinated and comple-
mentary problem-solving efforts of the family
members within the system) (Paterson, 1988).
This model highlights precisely the idea that
we will discuss in this paper namely that mul-
tiple actors, including the organization, the
leader, the family, and the individuals them-
selves, influence the well-being and functioning
of employees during crises and that the impact
214
of the crisis depends on the level of demands it
poses, the available resources as well as coping
capacity to deal with the crisis and the sense-
making or interpretation of the crisis by the dif-
ferent players. The question is how these
multiple actors explicitly influence the well-
being and performance of employees during a
crisis and what can be done to retain these out-
comes at high levels when they are threatened
(by the crisis). To answer this question, we
focus on the work context and introduce an
expanded version of JD-R theory to explain
the specific processes that influence employee
well-being and performance. We do this by dis-
cussing how the crisis led to falsification or
expansion of JD-R theory and by putting
forward new theoretical propositions.
Job demands–resources theory
during crises
According to Job Demands-Resources (JD-R)
theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017; Demerouti
et al., 2001), every work context can be charac-
terized using two categories of job characteris-
tics: job demands and job resources. Job
demands are defined as those aspects of the job
that require sustained physical and/or psycho-
logical effort (e.g., work pressure, cognitive
demands) and are associated with physiological
and/or psychological costs (Demerouti et al.,
2001). Job resources refer to those aspects of
the job that are functional in achieving work
goals, reduce job demands and the associated
physiological and psychological costs, or stimu-
late personal growth, learning, and development
(Demerouti et al., 2001)—examples are social
support, task significance, and opportunities for
growth.
The essence of job demands is that they
consume energy because demands must be
addressed. The essence of job resources is that
they generate motivation (i.e., the voluntary initi-
ation of action to achieve goals) and buffer the
effects of job demands on employee well-being
and performance (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017).
These principles imply that the absence of a job
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
demand has no motivating potential, whereas the
absence of a job resource is not necessarily stress-
ful—rather, the voluntary initiation of action to
achieve work-related goals is not facilitated.
Mapping the relevant demands and resources
of a specific job can be used as a diagnostic tool
to uncover whether this job has too much or too
little of any of the two. This is important, since
job demands and resources may initiate two
independent processes—a health-impairment
process and a motivational process, respectively.
In the health-impairment process, chronic job
demands use up employees’ cognitive and phys-
ical resources (can do), and may therefore lead to
energy depletion (i.e., a state of chronic exhaus-
tion, which is a core component of burnout).
When individuals need to constantly invest
high effort to deal with their job demands, they
deplete their energetic resources, start to
develop health complaints, and undermine their
own functioning (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017;
Hockey, 1993). In the motivational process, job
resources may either function as intrinsic motiva-
tors by fostering employee’s growth, learning
and development, or as extrinsic motivators by
facilitating the achievement of work goals. The
experience of motivation (want to) consequently
leads to improved functioning.
JD-R theory further proposes that jobs are
designed optimally when they set manageable
demands on employees and provide sufficient
resources to deal with these job demands. In
other words, the interaction between job
demands and job resources is also important—
next to the sole existence of any job characteris-
tic (e.g., Bakker et al., 2005). More specifically,
according to JD-Rs buffer hypothesis, job
resources can weaken or buffer job demands’
unfavorable impact on health and well-being
(e.g., Bakker et al., 2005; Shin & Hur, 2021a,
2021b). This means that job demands will be
less effortful and less straining when there are
many resources available in the work environ-
ment. In addition, according to JD-Rs boosting
hypothesis, challenging job demands can
strengthen or boost job resources’ favorable
impact on work engagement (e.g., Breevaart &
Demerouti and Bakker
Bakker, 2018; Tadic et al., 2015). This means
that job resources will be more motivating
when work is really complex and a serious test
of one’s abilities.
Rather than being a mechanistic theory (stimu-
lus-organism-response), JD-R theory acknowl-
edges that employees’ personal demands and
resources may play an important role. Personal
resources refer to aspects of the self that are gen-
erally linked to resiliency and capture employees’
ability to control and impact upon their environ-
ment successfully (Hobfoll et al., 2018).
Personal resources play a similar role as context-
ual job resources protecting individuals from job
demands and the associated costs, stimulating
their growth, and facilitating goal achievement
(Xanthopoulou et al., 2009). Furthermore, per-
sonal demands have been defined as “the require-
ments that individuals set for their own
performance and behavior that force them to
invest effort in their work and are therefore asso-
ciated with physical and psychological costs”
(Barbier et al., 2013, p. 751). Depending on
their nature, personal demands may be involved
in the health-impairment process proposed by
JD-R theory (like workaholism; e.g., Guglielmi
et al., 2012) or in the motivational process (like
performance expectations; e.g., Barbier et al.,
2013). Highlighting the importance of personal
resources during COVID-19, Losada-Baltar and
colleagues (2021) found that personal resources
(e.g., self-efficacy, entertainment resources) were
negatively associated with loneliness and psycho-
logical distress in the first week of the lock-down
due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Britt et al. (2021)
found, however, that personal demands (health
threats to self and others, including partner and
colleagues) were positively related to psycho-
logical distress. This implies that personal
resources are favorable whereas personal
demands are unfavorable individual characteris-
tics during the COVID-19 crisis.
JD-R theory can be used by researchers and
practitioners as a job analysis framework to diag-
nose possible causes of diminished health and
motivation during the pandemic. The application
of the JD-R theory for this purpose requires a
215
focus on employees’ activities, the interactions
with people within and outside the organization,
the context in which work takes place, and the
organizational processes and procedures that
frame how things are done in the organization.
After that, a specific level of abstraction is
applied in order to understand which demand or
resource is relevant and (un)favorably designed
in the specific work context. For instance, for
intensive care nurses who have to provide care
to COVID-19 patients and who are confronted
with suffering patients and absent colleagues,
we may conclude that they work under time pres-
sure and are exposed to high emotional demands.
To specify a job characteristic as a job demand or
job resource, it is important to consider the defin-
ition of job demands and resources instead of con-
sidering all negative work aspects as demands and
all positive aspects as resources.
There is ample evidence for the two separate
processes in JD-R theory and for the suggested
unique outcomes of those processes (Bakker &
Demerouti, 2017). High or unfavorably designed
job demands initiate a health impairment process
resulting in exhaustion and health problems (e.g.,
anxiety, depression, PTSD). Job resources initi-
ate a motivational process and increase employee
work engagement and performance. Moreover,
work contexts combining high job resources
like appreciation and innovativeness, are most
predictive of work engagement when job
demands (e.g., pupil misbehavior, unfavorable
physical working environment) are high
(Bakker et al., 2007). On the contrary, employees
report the highest levels of exhaustion and cyni-
cism when high job demands (i.e., workload,
physical demands, emotional demands and
work-home interference) coincide with low job
resources (i.e., autonomy, social support, rela-
tionship with the supervisor, and performance
feedback) (Bakker et al., 2005).
Impact of COVID-19 on job demands, job
resources, and employee outcomes
The COVID-19 crisis has had a major impact
on our work and the way we execute it.
216
Governmental regulations forced organizations
to adjust their organizational practices to restrict
the spread of the virus. These regulations were
translated into altered organizational demands
(e.g., additional health and safety measures,
online meetings/provision of service) and
altered resources (e.g., ICT support, financial
resources). It can therefore be expected that
COVID-19 has altered the job demands and
job resources for most occupational groups
(Kniffin et al., 2021). Some job demands
increased for all employees, like risk of conta-
gion, social isolation, and loss of usual
working routine (Brooks et al., 2020). Other
job demands only increased for some occupa-
tions, like workload for health care, security,
and logistics; job insecurity for the touristic
and retail sectors; and role demands such as
work-to-family conflict for those forced to
work from home (Barello et al., 2020;
Gössling et al., 2021; Vaziri et al., 2020).
For specific occupations, like the education
and service sector, the COVID-19 crisis
resulted in altered job demands because profes-
sionals had to adjust their work as they had to
work remotely (Wang et al., 2021). Still, there
are occupations in which the workload was
drastically reduced because of local lockdowns,
for example, cleaning personnel and reception-
ists as well as catering and cultural businesses.
Organizations have generally offered job
resources to help employees deal with the pan-
demic—with the provision of information
(regarding measures to combat the pandemic)
being the most important resource (also for sen-
semaking). Due to the necessity to work from
home, autonomy and computer-mediated com-
munication may have increased if leaders
understood their importance to deal with the
increased job demands as they are essential to
motivate employees and to help them reach
their work goals (Wang et al., 2021).
Irrespective of the occupation, the crisis has
led to increased job demands because all
employees have been required to work differ-
ently as a consequence of the pandemic. In
this way, the crisis has changed job demands
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
and increased threats for own and public
health which require additional effort by
employees (Kniffin et al., 2021). This increase
in job demands is not unique for the
COVID-19 pandemic. Centra and Gualtieri
(2014) showed that the economic crisis, via
the employment crisis, had significantly
changed quality of work by increasing job com-
plexity and worsening ergonomics, whereas
Bussing (1999) highlighted the increase in
ambiguity/uncertainty and insecurity. At the
same time, some job resources have gained
importance due to the requirements of remote
working or overload. For example, a supportive
work environment in the form of supervisor and
colleague support has been shown to be essen-
tial during the current (Britt et al., 2021) and
during earlier crises (e.g., Belfroid et al.,
2018). Social support seems to act as a “nega-
tivity buffer” (Bavik et al., 2020). Another job
resource that has become essential during the
crisis because it reduced the ambiguity related
to it is adequate communication by the organ-
ization regarding issues related to the pandemic
(Britt et al., 2021). Therefore, our first propos-
ition is:
Proposition 1: Crises influence job charac-
teristics by increasing the level of job
demands (such as insecurity and role ambi-
guity/uncertainty) and the importance of
job resources (such as social support and
adequate communication).
Employee outcomes. The pandemic has
impacted occupational health and safety in
many respects, although the degree of impact
differs between occupational groups (Rudolph
et al., 2021). Research on the impact of
COVID-19 has focused on health and well-
being (e.g., burnout, life satisfaction, loneliness,
procrastination; Van Roekel et al., 2021; Wang
et al., 2021) and performance-related outcomes
(e.g., task performance; Bakker et al., 2021;
Wang et al., 2021). In principle, we want
employees to effectively adapt to a crisis situ-
ation and maintain a satisfactory level of well-
Demerouti and Bakker
being and performance (cf. Krok et al., 2021).
In line with JD-R theory, this can be achieved
when job demands are high but manageable
and job resources are sufficiently high. Within
this constellation of working conditions,
employees will remain healthy and motivated
to perform their work tasks effectively. Failing
to provide sufficient job resources to employees
during a crisis, or setting too high job demands
in light of the crisis, will increase the likelihood
that employees become fatigued and demoti-
vated (see Figure 1). This implies that employ-
ees will lack the engagement needed to
contribute to organizational outcomes (product-
ivity, high-quality services) or will be unable to
make a valuable contribution due to diminished
energy resources or health problems. More than
ever, it is important during crisis to aim for or
retain an optimal constellation of job character-
istics (manageable job demands and high job
resources) as this is challenged by the threats
of the crisis. Because a crisis leads to scarcity
of resources, information about how resources
are currently allocated is critical to individuals’
ability to redirect resources to where they are
most needed to deal with the crisis (Mishra,
1996). For instance, Bussing (1999) found
that the level of job satisfaction was not
impaired due to job insecurity during an eco-
nomic crisis when the level of control and
social support were high. Thus:
Proposition 2: During a crisis, employees
with manageable (vs. high) job demands
and high (vs. low) job resources can better
adapt to the situation and maintain a satisfac-
tory level of well-being and performance.
Integrating Various types of demands in
JD-R Theory
The specific nature of the pandemic forced
people to work remotely, and created the condi-
tion that job demands became interwoven with
family/home demands but also with organiza-
tional and personal demands. Note, however,
that JD-R theory originally focused on job char-
acteristics only (for an exception, see Demerouti
217
et al., 2004, who applied JD-R theory to the
home domain). Similarly, most stress theories
consider only one role at a time (e.g., job strain
theory; Karasek & Theorell, 1990), yet most
employees occupy multiple roles, thereby creat-
ing a gap in our understanding of the complexity
of the stress process (Barnett et al., 2012). The
crisis showed that work characteristics alone
are insufficient to explain outcomes. Remote
work blurred the boundaries between work and
nonwork, which makes it necessary to simultan-
eously consider the characteristics of multiple
domains. Therefore, one lesson learned by
COVID-19 is that the demands (and resources)
of the various life domains—namely personal,
family, work, and organizational demands—are
interconnected (see Figure 1) and that indivi-
duals are constantly required to regulate these
demands and to keep them in balance.
Kreiner (2012, p. 417) acknowledges that
organizational processes are ‘embedded in wider
ecologies of processes, the interactional outcomes
of which remain matters of unpredictability and
surprise’. Thus, each demand experienced by an
individual does not occur in isolation from other
demands (Turner & Lingard, 2016). The inter-
action between various job demands has been
found to worsen absence behavior even further
than each job demand separately. For instance,
van Woerkom et al. (2016) found that different
types of job demands interacted such that the
combination exacerbated company registered
absenteeism. The authors explained this effect
by using conservation of resources theory
(COR; Hobfoll et al., 2018), which suggests that
the energetic resource losses that result from
high demands in one aspect of the job may lead
to a depletion of resource reserves for confronting
another demand, thereby triggering a loss spiral.
Scarce research on the work-nonwork interface
even seems to favor the idea that the influence
of job demands may depend upon the presence
or absence of high family role demands, which
is rooted in role theories (Hughes & Galinsky,
1994; Pleck, 1977).
The complex interplay between work (job
and organizational) and nonwork (family and
218
Figure 1. Extended demands–resources model.
personal) role characteristics (see Figure 1) may
be better able to explain how people react to
demands because time and energy are finite
resources. Moreover, individuals are usually
not in the advantageous situation to manage
only one single demand at the time. Instead,
they need to address several work- and
nonwork-related demands simultaneously and
employees’ reactions to a job demand will
most probably be affected if they simultan-
eously need to address a high demand outside
the work domain. Pleck’s (1977) delineation
of the work-family role system even suggests
that workers’ occupational demands are
managed or regulated at a family level rather
than the individual level. Similarly, Barnett
et al. (2012) suggested that when the demands
of one role threaten the depletion of one type
of resource, other resources from other roles
may be called upon. This strategy may lead to
actual or threatened cross-role resource
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
depletion. In an effort to avoid further resource
depletion, individuals draw on resources from
family or personal domains (e.g., time, energy,
support) and devote these resources to fulfil
work demands.
Indeed, Hughes and Galinsky (1994) found
that job characteristics such as work pressure,
extended work times, and job insecurity inter-
acted with family role stressors i.e., the presence
of children under 13 in the home, household
labor inequity, and dual-earner family status,
to predict family outcomes like mood, tension,
and mutual support. Structurally demanding
jobs make it more difficult for workers to
accommodate their spouse’s limited participa-
tion in housework, which may increase the fre-
quency of negative marital interactions. The
same kind of reasoning may apply when high
job demands need to be fulfilled by individuals
who set high demands on themselves (e.g., per-
fectionism) or when the organization sets
Demerouti and Bakker
additional organizational demands e.g., safety
measures due to COVID-19. For instance,
organizational production pressure climate exa-
cerbated the effect of individual job demands on
risky safety behaviors during (Ghezzi et al.,
2020). Therefore, we propose the following
new proposition in JD-R theory:
Proposition 3: Organizational, job, home,
and personal demands interact with each
other such that the effect of either demand
(e.g., job demands) on health-related out-
comes is exacerbated when other demands
(e.g., home demands) are high.
Integrating Various types of resources in
JD-R Theory
Not only should the interplay of demands from
various life domains explain the health impairing
impact of demands on outcomes, the interplay
between resources from various life domains
may better explain their motivating impact.
According to COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989;
Hobfoll et al., 2018)—a general stress theory—
people strive to build, protect, and retain the per-
sonal characteristics, conditions, and energies
that enable them to cope with job demands.
When individuals are unable to do so in the
face of substantial job demands, the depletion
of their resources can lead to stress or exhaustion.
To protect their psychological and physical well-
being, individuals are thought to turn to other
resources that serve as indispensable elements
of their “stress resistance armamentarium”
(Hobfoll, 2002, p. 312). As resources are finite
in their availability (e.g., time, physical and cog-
nitive energy; Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker,
2012); when they are utilized to cope with one
job demand, individuals may be left with fewer
resource reserves to cope with other demands
(Van Woerkom et al., 2016).
Based on Ross and Mirowsky (2010),
having resources from various domains at
one’s disposal may influence the role of
resources while dealing with demands in at
least two ways. The first scenario represents
219
what Ross and Mirowsky call “reinforcement
of advantage” or “resource multiplication” in
which “advantaged groups gain most from the
resources they have, so that their resources
multiply to reinforce their advantage” (p. 2–3).
The second scenario represents the resource
substitution hypothesis, which predicts that the
buffering potency of job resources should be
stronger among those who lack other (e.g., per-
sonal) resources. In this case, Ross and
Mirowsky suggest that “the effect of having a
specific resource is greater for those who have
fewer alternative resources” and “that each has
less of an effect if the other is present” (p.7).
Resources might, therefore, substitute for each
other in order to manage demands.
In this view, simultaneously possessing mul-
tiple resources (i.e., more job autonomy as well
as higher education) makes outcomes less depend-
ent on any one resource. In line with the reinforce-
ment hypothesis, family support strengthened the
positive effect of work-family enrichment and
family-work enrichment on well-being (Kalliath
et al., 2019) or the impact of organizational com-
munication about COVID-19 on employee
coping beliefs (Tuan, 2021). Similarly, the effect
of organizational health climate on work engage-
ment was stronger when the leader had a more out-
spoken health mindset towards employees (Shin &
Hur, 2021a, 2021b). In line with the substitution
hypothesis, Koltai and Schieman (2015) found
that the impact of autonomy or challenging work
was lower for those with a higher level of the per-
sonal resource of SES. Taken together, these theor-
etical approaches and empirical evidence suggest
that looking at the interplay between various
resources in predicting motivational outcomes par-
ticularly for those in need (as during crises) is
essential (Ross & Mirowsky’s, 2010). As it is
unclear which resources can substitute others in
causing motivational outcomes, it is critical that
future research uncovers the substitutability of spe-
cific resources. This leads to the next new propos-
ition in JD-R theory:
Proposition 4: Organizational, job, home,
and personal resources interact with each
220
other such that the effect of either resource
(e.g., job resources) on motivational out-
comes is exacerbated when other resources
(e.g., home resources) are high (i.e., resource
reinforcement), or diminishes in the presence
of other resources (i.e., resource substitution).
The buffering effect of Various resources
Whereas JD-R theory suggests that job
resources buffer the impact of job demands on
outcomes, the COVID-19 crisis has shown
that this view may be rather restricted. It is
well conceivable that demands and resources
emanating from different life domains interact
in more complex ways, for example, by chan-
ging the nature and/or impact of other
demands or resources (Bakker et al., 2019; Du
et al., 2018; Turner & Lingard, 2016). From
the perspective of ecological systems theory,
individuals participate in various life domains
(systems) that are related to each other and
that influence the individual (Bronfenbrenner,
1989). Cross-domain processes include resource
drain, resource generation, and positive and
negative spillover (Edwards & Rothbard,
2000; Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012).
Particularly when the boundaries between the
work and family microsystems are permeable
and flexible (as was the case during the
COVID-19 pandemic), aspects of the work and
family domains influence each other (Ashforth
et al., 2000).
Voydanoff (2005) theorized that people
assess whether work and family resources are
sufficient to meet work and family demands
such that participation is effective in both
domains. More specifically, individuals assess
whether family resources are adequate to meet
work demands and whether job resources can
meet family demands. Consequently, they use
boundary-spanning strategies to reach harmony,
equilibrium, and an integration of work and
family life (see Figure 1). When the demands
of one role threaten depletion of one type of
resource, other resources from other roles may
be called upon (Barnett et al., 2012). Employed
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
caregivers whose work demands threaten to out-
strip their resources may, in an effort to avoid
further resource depletion, draw on their family
resources such as family time and devote more
time and/or other personal resources to work
(Barnett et al., 2012) or draw on organizational
resources such as leave possibilities. For
instance, the interaction between (in)security
during the COVID-19 pandemic and organiza-
tional resources (i.e., workplace disaster pre-
paredness, policy, social capital) was found to
predict various aspects of distress (Pacheco
et al., 2020)), whereas organizational safety
climate significantly mitigated the effect of indi-
vidual job demands on risky safety behaviors
(Ghezzi et al., 2020). There is considerable evi-
dence for the buffering effect that resources, suc-
cesses and satisfaction in one role may have on
the negative effects of stressors or failures in
another role (Barnett & Gareis, 2006).
This perspective is consistent with a central
proposition of COR theory that people with
more resources are less negatively affected
when they face resource drains because they
can substitute resources. This may occur
because resources in one domain are likely to
facilitate employees to accomplish goals in the
other domain via more increased personal
resources or energies (Ten Brummelhuis &
Bakker, 2012). Resources from one domain
may also generate new resources in another
domain that provide the means for enhancing
participation in the second domain, or may
increase the competence and capacities of indivi-
duals to perform in other domains (Voydanoff,
2005). In addition, resources in one domain
can ‘enable’ an individual to manage multiple
demands across multiple domains, e.g., partner
practical support enables individuals to partici-
pate in long work hours and overtime hours
(Turner & Lingard, 2016).
The evidence regarding the buffering effects
of cross-domain resources is somewhat mixed.
Luk and Shaffer (2005) found that the effect
of work time commitment on work-family con-
flict was buffered by family-friendly policies
(an organizational resource) and that domestic
Demerouti and Bakker
support (a home resource) reduced the effect of
work role expectations on work-family conflict.
Butler et al. (2009) failed to find that the effect
of daily job demands on work-family conflict
was buffered by spousal support. However,
Luk and Shaffer (2005) found that family-
friendly policies and supervisor support exacer-
bated instead of buffered the effect of family
role expectations on family-work conflict.
They explained this finding as an attempt to
reciprocate to the domain that provides the
resource. From a cognitive dissonance perspec-
tive (Festinger, 1957), when support from
another domain is received, an implicit obliga-
tion to reciprocate may result in increased
anxiety and tension rather than reduced stress.
If employees have supportive supervisors or
work in supportive organizations, they may per-
ceive stronger obligations to return high-quality
work in order not to disappoint their supervisors
and organizations. Therefore, and expanding
JD-R theory, our next, new propositions
suggest two types of moderation effects. First,
we suggest the buffering hypothesis but
instead of same-domain buffering—i.e., job
resources buffer the impact of job demands on
health outcomes—we suggest that the buffering
can occur across domains, e.g., job resources
can buffer the impact of home demands on
health outcomes. Thus:
Proposition 5: Resources from either
domain (i.e., organization, job, home, per-
sonal) can buffer the effect of demands from
the same or other domains on health-related
outcomes (e.g., health problems, exhaustion).
In addition, based on the reviewed literature,
we suggest that resources can also exacerbate
the health impairment process of another
domain when individuals reciprocate to the
domain that provided them the resources instead
of investing energy in the other domain. Future
research should specify whether this occurs for
specific resources e.g., when receiving support
from a specific domain (e.g., family support) or
when confronted with demands from specific
domains. Therefore, we suggest:
221
Proposition 6: Resources from either
domain (i.e., organization, job, home, per-
sonal) can exacerbate the effect of demands
from another domain on health-related
outcomes.
The boosting effect of Various demands
One of the assumptions in JD-R theory is that
challenging job demands can boost the impact
of job resources (Breevaart & Bakker, 2018;
Tadic et al., 2015). This means that the motiv-
ational potential of resources increases when
one is confronted with demanding situations.
This notion is consistent with Hobfoll’s
(2002) proposition that resources are of greatest
use when they are needed most (i.e., during
times of high job demands due to the crisis),
and that resource gain is most salient in the
face of resource loss. The more specific boost-
ing hypothesis in JD-R theory posits that job
demands accentuate the positive effects of job
resources on outcomes by stimulating learning
and intrinsic motivation (Schneider et al.,
2017) or by prompting active use of job
resources (van den Broeck et al., 2011).
There are a few studies on the moderating
effect of job demands in the resources-work
engagement relationship (e.g., Bakker et al.,
2007; Breevaart & Bakker, 2018; Hakanen
et al., 2005; Tadic et al., 2015; van den
Broeck et al., 2011). Similar boosting effects
have been found between resources and
demands from different domains. For instance,
Hughes and Galinsky (1994) found that
having a child younger than 13 years of age
moderated relationships between job flexibility
and marital quality. Specifically, the relation-
ship between job flexibility (i.e., a job resource)
and marital support was positive only among
employees with children under the age of 13
(i.e., a home demand). For those employees
with children above the age of 13, the relation-
ship between job flexibility and marital support
was not significant. Therefore, and as can be
seen in Figure 1, we expand JD-R theory and
suggest:
222
Proposition 7:: Demands from either
domain (i.e., organization, job, home, per-
sonal) can exacerbate the positive impact of
job resources on motivational outcomes
(such as work engagement, adaptivity, extra-
role behavior).
Regulatory strategies by Various actors
Individual strategies. If there is something we
learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is
the importance of individual strategies to
manage functioning in the various life
domains. The importance of the availability of
specific coping strategies has been shown in
research executed in extreme work environ-
ments such as the military or bushfire brigades
revealing the strategies that are important for
coping with extremely stressful situations
(Nassif et al., 2019). There are at least two
types of individual strategies relevant to the
JD-R theory. First, individuals may change
their work environment. Employees may pro-
actively increase their job resources (e.g., ask
for feedback and help) and may actively seek
challenge job demands (e.g., start a new
project, learn to master a new skill).
Moreover, employees may decrease or optimize
their hindrance job demands (e.g., reduce task
interruptions and overcome bureaucracy). This
proactive behavior is called job crafting, the
process of employees taking the personal initia-
tive to shape and redefine their job to create a
better person–job fit (Tims & Bakker, 2010;
Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001).
Job crafting can help individuals to cope with
challenges in remote working as, in addition to
the top-down approaches (i.e., re-designing
remote work), people can proactively optimize
their working environment to stay motivated
(bottom-up approach; Kniffin et al., 2021; Wang
et al., 2021). Similarly, individuals may use
playful work design defined as the process of pro-
actively creating conditions during work activities
that foster fun and competition (Bakker & Van
Wingerden, 2021; Scharp et al., 2021). Several
field and quasi-experimental studies have shown
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
that job crafting leads to changes in (self-reported)
job demands and resources, as well as increases in
work engagement and decreases in burnout
(Demerouti et al., 2015; Gordon et al., 2018;
Van Wingerden et al., 2017). In addition, research
has indicated that when employees redesign their
work tasks to be more fun or more challenging,
they can effectively manage hindrance job
demands (e.g., solitude when working from
home, repetitive work; Scharp et al., 2021).
Next, individuals may use strategies to dir-
ectly influence their own level of energy and
motivation. These strategies can be constructive
like proactive vitality management, or destruc-
tive like self-undermining. Proactive vitality
management is self-initiated behavior aiming
to change and improve one’s own physical
and psychological state (Bakker et al., 2020;
Op den Kamp et al., 2020) and may take the
form of mindfulness so that people manage
their physical and cognitive resources so that
they are fit for work. Other examples are an
art gallery visit to find new inspiration, or a
walk in the park with the goal to change one’s
mood (Sianoja et al., 2018). On days or weeks
individuals proactively manage their levels of
vitality they are more engaged in their work
and more creative (Bakker et al., 2020; Op
den Kamp et al., 2020). In contrast, self-
undermining is defined as “specific behaviors
through which people create new obstacles
that may compromise their performance” such
as making careless mistakes, poor communica-
tion, and creating interpersonal conflicts
(Bakker & Costa, 2014; p. 115). According to
JD-R theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017), self-
undermining may occur when employees per-
ceive high job demands or when they experi-
ence high levels of strain indicating that
self-undermining represents the fuel of a
vicious cycle of high job demands and strain
(Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). Indeed, Bakker
and Wang (2020) found that self-undermining
was consistently related to increased levels of
burnout (exhaustion and cynicism). In a recent
weekly diary study, Bakker et al. (2022)
showed that weekly job demands were related
Demerouti and Bakker
to weekly self-undermining behaviors through
weekly burnout symptoms (exhaustion and
cynicism). The impact of weekly job demands
on burnout symptoms and self-undermining
was stronger for individuals who were already
relatively high (vs. low) on chronic burnout.
In addition, Roczniewska and Bakker (2021)
found that nurses with lower self-regulation
capacity at the beginning of the day were
more likely to show self-undermining during
the day, which impaired daily job performance.
There is very little insight in the effective-
ness of proactive individual strategies to deal
with crisis situations like the COVID pandemic.
Exception is the diary study of Bakker et al.
(2021) among employees who worked from
home during the COVID-19 crisis. The results
showed that employees performed better on
the days they used more self-leadership (e.g.,
goal-setting, self-reward, self-monitoring) and
playful work design (i.e., use play during
tasks to make their work activities more fun or
more competitive). In addition, self-leadership
was particularly important for need satisfaction
and performance on days employees ruminated
a lot about COVID-19. In another recent study,
Bakker and Van Wingerden (2021) showed that
playful work design weakened the relationship
between rumination about COVID-19 and
employee well-being. Rumination was posi-
tively related to depressive symptoms and
exhaustion and negatively related to vigor
when employees scored lower (vs. higher) on
designing fun. Moreover, Allen et al. (2021)
examined strategies that individuals use to
deal with the blurred boundaries between
work and nonwork domains due to forced
remote working and to meet the high demands
of the situation. They showed that being able
to create time and physical borders to separate
work from nonwork helped individuals to
better balance roles in both domains. In con-
trast, it was not helpful for individuals to inte-
grate both roles, e.g., by constantly thinking
about work or by not specifying work and
nonwork time. Taken together, these findings
suggest that employees may use personal
223
initiative when confronted with a crisis event
like the (partial) lock-down or social distancing
conditions—that is, when they are confined to
their homes and are very much dependent on
themselves.
In crisis situations such as the COVID-19
pandemic, individuals’ functioning and well-
being is more challenged. Proactive regulatory
attempts help people control, direct, and
correct their own actions in order to achieve
their goals (cf. Aspinwall, 2004). Such attempts
may help individuals manage their emotions,
thoughts, and behaviors which is particularly
necessary when confronting adversity/crisis in
which they lose control of the situation
(Carver & Scheier, 1999). Such proactive regu-
latory strategies are suggested to enhance the
motivating effect of resources and to minimize
the health impairment effect of demands.
There is some evidence confirming such
effects. For instance, job crafting particularly
buffered the impact of job demands (e.g., work-
load, physical demands) on burnout and also to
a somewhat lesser extent on work engagement
(Hakanen et al., 2017). Proactive strategies are
suggested to be effective, whereas destructive
strategies are more reactive and demands-
driven. They concern behaviors that potentially
harm adequate functioning because of a lack of
self-regulatory resources (Bakker & Wang,
2020). Therefore, we suggest:
Proposition 8: Proactive regulatory strat-
egies of the individual (such as job crafting,
playful work design, proactive vitality man-
agement, self-leadership) buffer the unfavor-
able impact of demands from either domain
(i.e., organization, job, home, personal) on
health-related outcomes.
Proposition 9: Proactive regulatory strat-
egies of the individual boost the positive
impact of resources from either domain
(i.e., organization, job, home, personal) on
motivational outcomes.
Proposition 10: Destructive regulatory
strategies of the individual strengthen the
224
impact of demands from either domain (i.e.,
organization, job, home, personal) on
health-related outcomes.
Family strategies. Crisis situations may have dis-
continuous effects on individuals and couples
(Eby et al., 2015) and reveal new, complex
associations between division of labor and out-
comes. Given the crisis context, one can assume
that couples may have developed new manage-
ment strategies to deal with the crisis (Shockley
et al., 2021). Crawford et al. (2019) suggest that
dual-earner couples navigate during work-life
shock events (i.e., disruptive, novel, and critical
events) by making decisions on how to invest
the couple’s resources. Partners initially make
sense of the event as individuals and then
engage in couple-level sensemaking. When a
couple has limited resources, the partner’s role
becomes even more critical. By considering
how a crisis is perceived and regulated at the
couple level, we can start to understand how
resources are negotiated, exchanged, and
managed (Crawford et al., 2019). This is also
in line with the theoretical ideas in the ABCX
model (Hill, 1949, 1958) described earlier.
In terms of empirical evidence about family
strategies during crisis, there are several mainly
qualitative studies that uncovered the strategies
that couples used to deal with COVID-19
crisis. For instance, using interviews with
couples, Beigi et al. (2021) showed that families
adopted collaborative, attentive, and relational
strategies to fit their demands and resources,
while using delegative and negligent strategies
to manage their unmet demands. In another
study, Shockley et al. (2021) focused on the div-
ision of labor between partners with young chil-
dren during COVID-19. They found that couples
used (a) egalitarian strategies where both part-
ners were highly committed to both work and
family demands; or (b) gendered strategies
where one person (usually the man) devoted
more time to work while the other (usually the
woman) devoted more time to the family—or
where one person (usually the woman) took
responsibility for all family demands while not
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
scaling back at work. Results suggested that
when women worked remotely and did all child-
care, they reported the lowest well-being and
performance. Egalitarian strategies (more specif-
ically when partners alternated childcare days)
were the best ways to preserve wives’ and hus-
bands’ well-being, while allowing both to main-
tain adequate job performance.
In a related vein, Allen et al. (2021) identi-
fied four categories of boundary management
tactics that were relevant during COVID-19:
(a) behavioral tactics such as arranging help
from others, (b) temporal tactics, such as speci-
fying time for work and time for nonwork, (c)
physical tactics, such as altering the physical
space, and (d) communication tactics like con-
fronting those who violate boundaries. Overall,
their findings suggested that during the pandemic
individuals attempted to separate work from
home and to mimic the rhythm of “going to
work” outside of the home.
These studies conducted during crisis (the
COVID-19 pandemic) indicate that families
seem to use various strategies to manage indivi-
duals’ and family demands and resources and to
allow each family member to perform at various
life domains (see Figure 1). Moreover, the
studies showed that the regulation strategies
used by one partner influenced not only own
well-being and performance, but also that of
the partner. For instance, Higgins et al. (2010)
found that when perceived overload was high,
dual-earner employees, regardless of gender,
coped by sacrificing their own needs (e.g.,
leaving things undone at home), and coped by
expecting their families to accommodate their
work demands (e.g., covering family responsi-
bilities for each other). Similarly, Zou et al.
(2021) showed that mothers’ work-to-family
conflict was positively related to fathers’
depressive symptoms when the partners under-
mined each other, and mothers’ family-to-work
conflict was positively related to fathers’
depressive symptoms when the cooperation
between partners was low.
Coping by restructuring family roles attenu-
ated the work overload-stress relationship for
Demerouti and Bakker
both men and women. This suggests that
dual-earner couples can reduce stress associated
with greater role overload by getting their
family to do more at home. Coping by restruc-
turing work roles attenuated the overload-stress
relationship for men but not for women. Also,
Hughes and Galinsky (1994) found that
extended work time of the individual was asso-
ciated with increased marital tension among
those receiving little help from their spouse
but was associated with decreased marital
tension among respondents who received sub-
stantial help. Taken together, we may conclude
from the above that partners’ strategies or strat-
egies used on the family/couple level influence
the well-being of individuals or modify the way
that external environment influences the indi-
vidual. Therefore, we suggest:
Proposition 11: Regulatory strategies of the
family (e.g., boundary management, division
of labour) buffer the impact of demands from
either domain (i.e., organization, job, home
personal) on health-related outcomes when
they are directed towards providing support
or an egalitarian division of labor.
Proposition 12: Regulatory strategies of the
family (e.g., boundary management, division
of labour) boost the positive impact of
resources from either domain (i.e., organiza-
tion, job, home personal) on motivational
outcomes when they are directed towards
providing support or an egalitarian division
of labor.
Proposition 13: Destructive regulatory
strategies of the family such as undermining
behaviors or gendered division of labor
strengthen the impact of demands from
either domain (i.e., organization, job, home
personal) on health-related outcomes.
Leadership strategies. Leaders may play a
crucial role in the process of resource allocation
and coordination and their role has been dis-
cussed extensively during the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Tourish (2020) even argued that the
225
COVID-19 crisis is also a crisis of leadership
theory and practice. As we already discussed
in the section on crisis management, crisis and
leadership are closely intertwined phenomena
(Santos et al., 2016). Boin et al. (2009) define
crisis leadership as the set of strategic tasks
that encompasses all activities associated with
the stages of crisis management namely sense-
making, decision-making, terminating, and
learning. First, leaders are those persons in an
organization that must appraise the threat and
decide what the crisis is about i.e., sensemaking
(Santos et al., 2016). Next, since leaders may
have insight into information regarding the
whole organization, they are the most eligible
persons to determine the impact of the crisis
on the organization, (e.g., in terms of health
and safety, viability of the business) and the
necessary action (e.g., about the means to deal
with the impact of the crisis on the organiza-
tion). As crises force organizations to confront
issues they do not face daily, they present a
challenge for leadership (Heifetz et al., 2009),
which leaders may only be able to deal with
after consulting specialists, employees or other
stakeholders. The next task of leaders is to com-
municate with the employees about the impact
of the crisis on the organization and the neces-
sary measures so that leaders help employees
to make sense of the crisis, reduce ambiguity
and enhance employees’ effort to manage it
(Santos et al., 2016). Finally, as the crisis
experience offers the possibility to learn poten-
tial lessons about contingency planning and
training as well as how to prepare the organiza-
tion for future crises, it is the leader who needs
to make sure that learning and innovation
occurs by maintaining a long-term perspective
(Boin et al., 2009; Santos et al., 2016).
Next to these top-down strategies which are
necessary due to time pressure and knowledge
concentration, leaders’ most-used strategy also
in terms of JD-R theory (e.g., Crayne &
Medeiros, 2021) is to provide resources like
information, clarity, means and direction. In
this way, leaders are instrumental and motivate
individuals and teams to contribute to the
226
viability/performance of the organization. The
global crisis caused by COVID-19 has seen
remote collaboration increase dramatically and
‘virtual’ teams forming almost overnight.
Scientific evidence shows that the most successful
leaders in managing telework arrangements are
found to be those who display both agentic or
task-oriented behaviors (e.g., clear communica-
tion and project management), and communal or
relational behaviors (e.g., providing social
support and displaying sensitivity; Eichenauer
et al. 2021; Taylor & Kavanaugh, 2005).
In terms of JD-R theory (Bakker &
Demerouti, 2017, 2018; Breevaart et al.,
2015), leading during crises such as the
COVID-19 pandemic requires leaders to
provide sufficient tangible and psychosocial
resources. Relevant tangible resources are
ICT-tools, sufficient rewards, career opportun-
ities, and increased job security. Psychosocial
resources that leaders may provide to their
teams/subordinates are emotional and instru-
mental support, role clarity, coaching, recogni-
tion of the hard work, constructive feedback,
relevant and timely information, and fair treat-
ment. At the same time, leaders are those who
determine the targets and requirements that
employees have to fulfil—or, in terms of JD-R
theory, the job demands (Kniffin et al., 2021).
As the crisis forms by itself an additional
demand, leaders need to be vigilant of their
employees’ levels of job demands, so that the
demands do not become overwhelming. In
line with this, Possamai (2007) suggests that
while both agentic and communal leader beha-
viors are important to safe workplaces, to
develop a strong workplace safety culture,
leaders need to listen to workers’ concerns, sug-
gesting that communal behaviors may be seen
as particularly important during a time of
reduced safety at work.
Not only does the crisis influence which
leadership behaviors are effective, it also influ-
ences which characteristics make leaders more
appropriate to take leadership positions during
crisis. One such characteristic is gender.
Women are found to display a more communal
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
and men a more agentic leadership style due to
behavioral constraints placed upon them by pre-
scriptive role expectations (Eagly & Karau,
2002) and by evaluative penalties, or “back-
lash” effects, if they engage in counter-role
behavior (e.g., Heilman & Wallen, 2010). The
gendered character of crisis leadership is
further suggested by the so-called “glass cliff”
phenomenon. Accordingly, women are more
often chosen to lead organizations during
times of crisis (a ‘think crisis—think female’
association Morgenroth et al., 2020; Ryan &
Haslam, 2007). This is because of the expect-
ation that women will show more communal
leadership, which is effective during crisis, or
because organizations want to signal change
by shifting away from previous leadership
choices (i.e., white men) during crisis or
because women are put forward to take leader-
ship positions that are less desirable and more
prone to failure (Morgenroth et al., 2020). The
meta-analysis of archival studies by the latter
authors revealed a small glass cliff effect with
women and members of underrepresented
racial and ethnic groups being more likely to
be selected over men in times of crisis—particu-
larly in countries with higher gender inequality.
On the contrary, Eichenauer et al. (2021) found
that during the COVID-19 crisis employees
desire communality regardless of the leader’s
gender, disconfirming gender differences in
the display of agentic or communal behaviors.
Similarly, when leaders were perceived as
inclusive irrespective of gender, employees
experienced lower distress during the pandemic
(Ahmed et al., 2020).
Taken together, we think that an effective
leader (who combats the impact of the pan-
demic and who positively influences employee
outcomes) is a person who is able to enact the
above-mentioned behaviors during the various
phases of crisis management. From a JD-R per-
spective (Bakker & Demerouti, 2018), an
effective leader provides resources to employ-
ees such that they can contribute to the viability
of the organization with their performance
while managing the demands such that
Demerouti and Bakker
employees remain healthy and safe. Therefore,
we suggest:
Proposition 14: Regulatory strategies of the
leader, such as sensemaking, communality
and management of employee job resources,
buffer the impact of demands of either
domain (i.e., organization, job, home, per-
sonal) on health-related outcomes.
Proposition 15: Regulatory strategies of the
leader such as sensemaking, communality
and management of employee job resources,
boost the positive impact of resources of
either domain (i.e., organization, job, home,
personal) on motivational outcomes.
Organizational and work group strategies.
Viewing the crisis management literature from
a JD-R perspective shows that effective crisis
management involves management of essential
resources that are crucial to minimize risks and
improve performance. To this end, organiza-
tions need to do more than increase the fre-
quency of communication. Specifically, a
primary task of top management is to create
an organizational culture that values and
rewards assessment and communication per-
taining to risk-related events (Clarke & Ward,
2006). As we saw in the crisis management
section, because risk mitigation often depends
on collective work and because workers are
often interdependent, it is important for every-
one to establish a common perception of, agree-
ment about, and response to workplace risks/
crisis (Weick et al., 2005). Shared responsibility
and worker involvement are important ways to
establish organization-wide consensus regard-
ing what should be done. Consensus requires
competent leaders who are willing to engage
in an open dialogue with workers, which even-
tually can make workers more motivated in
helping the organization achieve its strategic
goals during the crisis (Bowen & Ostroff,
2004).
Effective group effort increases the variety
of perspectives and skills available, fosters
synergistic contributions of the members,
227
and facilitates access to essential resources
for the crisis (Zander, 1982). A diversity of
relevant perspectives that captures the differ-
ent aspects of the crisis and the (re)actions
of key stakeholders facilitates sensemaking
and crisis management (Pearson & Clair,
1998). Best practices of teams that operate
in adverse conditions are when they can pull
pieces of old routines and adapt them to face
new task demands (Barton et al., 2020).
Barton and Sutcliffe (as cited in Barton et al.
2020) in a study of adventure racing found
that the best teams were those that had
created a process to manage the limited
resources (of attention and task engagement)
by preassigning backups for key roles, main-
taining a flexible attitude about changing
roles, and by viewing adversity as belonging
to the team as a whole.
Next to the importance of group/teamwork,
existing or new channels to collect and
exchange relevant information and other
resources that can be used to deal with the
crisis are essential. If activities and roles are
practiced prior to the crisis, information
sharing about causes, consequences and
coping strategies regarding the crisis will be
easier (Pearson & Clair, 1998). Having estab-
lished links to key stakeholders before the
crisis makes organizations more successful at
managing potential miscommunications
(Susskind & Field, 1996) as they can better rec-
ognize (a) how key stakeholders might react to a
crisis, (b) what resources and information stake-
holders might have available to assist in the
management of a crisis, (c) how stakeholders
might be impacted by the crisis, and (d) how
stakeholders might exert a negative impact on
the organization’s ability to manage the crisis
(Mitroff et al., 1996; Pearson & Clair, 1998).
Therefore, our final propositions are:
Proposition 16: Regulatory strategies of the
organization/work team such as fostering
shared responsibility and synergistic contri-
butions and building on/expanding existing
team processes buffer the impact of
228
demands of either domain (i.e., organization,
job, home, personal) on health-related
outcomes.
Proposition 17: Regulatory strategies of the
organization/work team such as fostering
shared responsibility and synergistic contri-
butions and building on/expanding existing
team processes boost the positive impact of
resources of either domain (i.e., organiza-
tion, job, home, personal) on motivational
outcomes.
Implications and conclusion
The special case of the COVID-19 pandemic
created a natural experiment in which employ-
ees had to work in an altered work context in
which boundaries between life domains were
blurred and in which the regulatory capacity
of the individual as well as the partner, the
organization and the leader gained importance.
In the present paper, we used JD-R theory to
understand and predict the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic and other crises. Based
on theoretical justification and empirical
results, it was suggested that employees are
now confronted with high demands which
increases the importance of resources to fulfil
these demands and mitigate their impact. The
extended JD-R theory suggests that employee
health impairment can be caused not only by
high or unfavorably designed job demands but
also by the interplay between demands from
various life domains. Similarly, motivation
does not only result from high job resources
but also from the interplay of resources from
various life domains.
This extension increases the complexity of
JD-R theory but also its explanatory power.
The expanded JD-R theory captures the nexus
of occupational health more integrated in the
context where it occurs. The buffering and
boosting propositions of the JD-R theory are
suggested to occur across life domains which
sets a new research agenda that has the potential
to reveal which resource works for which
Organizational Psychology Review 13(3)
demand. The new propositions were based on
COVID-19 studies but also on unrelated
earlier literature. This strengthens the applic-
ability and the promising value of the extended
JD-R theory. The COVID-19 context uncov-
ered the importance of strategies to alter the
impact of demands and resources on individual
outcomes. Not only individual strategies were
suggested to modify the impact of external con-
ditions but also strategies used by the partner,
the leader, and the organization/team. Taking
these actors of individuals’ network into consid-
eration opens a window of opportunities to
support individuals in dealing with and effect-
ively function during crises and turbulent times.
In order to mitigate the detrimental short-
and long-term effects of the pandemic on
employees and organizations, it is important
that all stakeholders (governments, organiza-
tions, leaders, families and employees) take
their share of responsibility. Achieving this
requires keeping the pandemic-specific and
pandemic-unspecific demands manageable and
to provide sufficiently high resources to deal
with these demands. This may occur through
interventions focused on the redesign of the
work, organizational and family context and
processes such that risks can be minimized
and effective functioning is facilitated with
less negative consequences (Tetrick &
Winslow, 2015). In order to support people
dealing with the fast and often truly threatening
changes, secondary and tertiary prevention is
also necessary with the former teaching people
how to cope with stress, telework, and work-
family problems, and the latter alleviating
symptoms of illness and strain, as well as finan-
cial problems (Tetrick & Winslow, 2015). We
hope that this extension of JD-R theory will
inspire research and practice to develop
approaches that better address the complexity
of today’s reality.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this article
Demerouti and Bakker
ORCID iD
Evangelia Demerouti https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-4615-6532
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Author Biographies
Evangelia Demerouti is a full professor and
Chief Diversity Officer at Eindhoven
University of Technology, The Netherlands
and Distinguished Professor at University of
Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research inter-
ests include topics from the field of well-being
and performance, including the Job Demands
—Resources model, job crafting, work-family
interface, change behavior and interventions.
Arnold B. Bakker is professor of Work and
Organizational Psychology at Erasmus
University Rotterdam, and (distinguished) visit-
ing professor at the University of Johannesburg,
North-West University (Potchefstroom), and
the University of Zagreb. His research interests
include (playful) work design, work engage-
ment, leadership, and the work-sports interface.