Hindrance Stressors, Career Plateau, Work-Related Depression and Emotional Exhaustion among Flight Attendants

Özet

Purpose – The present study bears numbers of prospective contributions by pointing to neglected issues in hospitality management and service literature. Specifically, it applied job demands-resources model to test a conceptual model to check whether career plateau (CP) acts as a mediator in the relation between hindrance stressors (HSs), work-related depression (WRD) and emotional exhaustion (EE).
Design/methodology/approach – Data was collected from flight attendants in public and private airlines in Iran via their direct supervisors through judgmental sampling technique. One-hundred ninety-two flight attendants participated in the study. Structural equation modelingwas applied for data analysis.
Findings – The results confirm that HSs are significantly associated with CP and CP is directly related to WRD and EE. The results similarly proved that CP acts as a mediator in the aforementioned relationships.
Discussion – This study connects HSs on WRD and EE through CP. Inspecting the mediation impacts of CP in this relation seems noteworthy since it is largely overlooked in the relevant service literature. The results showed that HSs enhance CP. Moreover, the existence of CP elevates strain. That is, plateaued employees feel ignored by their organizations, and this boosts their feeling of WRD and EE.
Implications – Managers should help crew members in understanding their responsibilities through establishing a clear job description consisting of clear responsibilities, tasks and goals. Managers should take proactive approaches to decrease job demands and deal with plateaued employees. They should put enough effort into changing these employees’ perceptions and negative attitudes toward their job.