Weary At Work: A Conservation of Resources Approach to Understanding Job-Related Boredom

Despite the pervasive nature of boredom in the workplace, there has been surprisingly little theoretical and empirical analysis on the phenomenon. The existing research suffers from several shortcomings preventing progress on job-related boredom including the lack of an agreed definition and a properly developed and validated measure of the construct. This dissertation addresses these deficiencies by first developing and validating a psychometrically sound measure for job-related boredom. Then, drawing upon conservation of resources theory, hypotheses for the antecedents and consequences of job-related boredom were tested using a sample of 199 employees at a large insurance organization in the United States. Hypotheses were also tested to examine the interaction effect of several personal and contextual resources on the job-related boredom-outcome relationships. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that job crafting, skill utilization, and job meaningfulness are all significant negative predictors of job-related boredom. Consistent with theoretical arguments, job-related boredom was found to be significantly associated with a decrease in employee task performance and well-being and increase in counterproductive work behaviors. Contrary to expectations, job-related boredom also significantly predicted a decrease in organizational citizenship behavior, which provides evidence of the overall negative impact of job-related boredom on global measures of employee job performance. There was limited support for the moderating effects on the job-related boredom-outcome relationships. Results revealed that for those employees high in conscientiousness and with more accurate job expectations, job-related boredom has a stronger negative impact on task performance. The implications of these findings as well as limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed