Employees in Times of Crisis: Macrolevel Stressors and Their Relationship With Exhaustion and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we assess whether financial worries may explain why co-occurring macrolevel objective and subjective stressors (i.e., increased food prices, energy prices, safety concerns; jointly constituting a resource loss caravan) affect the level and development of employee exhaustion and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). By doing so, we investigate how and when macrolevel stressors spill over into the work sphere, affecting individuals' work-related experiences. We conducted a 6-wave longitudinal study with German participants (N = 241 at Time 1) in 2022 and 2023 against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which caused an energy crisis and inflation across Europe. As hypothesized, the macrolevel stressors predicted higher levels of exhaustion, mediated by financial worries. Surprisingly, the macrolevel stressors predicted a stronger (and not a weaker) decrease in exhaustion over time. The macrolevel stressors marginally predicted the level of OCB and did not predict changes in OCB. Our results support the effects of combined objective and subjective macrolevel stressors on employees, contributing to research on conservation of resources theory at the macro-micro intersection.