Stressors and Social Resources at Work: Examining the Buffering Effects of LMX, POS, and Their Interaction on Employee Attitudes

Numerous advancements have been made regarding how aspects of job roles and organizational environments affect work attitudes. However, less attention has been devoted to factors that might buffer attitudes against the adverse effects of job and organizational stressors. Grounded in the Buffering Hypothesis, we tested focus-matched hypotheses that considered the moderating roles of two workplace social resources—leader–member exchange (LMX) and perceived organizational support (POS)—in the relations between job and organizational stressors and job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Using multi-wave data from a sample of financial services employees (n = 1921), we found that independently, LMX did not buffer against the negative effects of job stressors (i.e., role ambiguity and role conflict) on employee attitudes, nor did POS buffer against the effects of organizational stressors (i.e., low communication and ethical climates). Rather, only in conjunction did high LMX and POS jointly reduce the negative effects of job stressors on organizational commitment. When examining the three-way interactions among job stressors, LMX, and POS, POS was significantly more influential in buffering organizational commitment than was LMX, although there were interesting nuances to these effects. In particular, role ambiguity affected commitment most negatively when either LMX or POS (but not both) was lacking, whereas role conflict did not appreciably impair commitment when POS was high, even if LMX was low. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our result patterns.