Coping Strategies For The Impact Of Dirty Work Perception On Physical And Mental Well-being

The 'Dirty work' concept is defined as tasks that are ‘physically,socially,or morally' tainted,which refer to tasks and occupations that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading.Dirty work is necessary for the society,but dirty workers are degraded and slandered for dealing with these necessary but unwelcome jobs.Dirty work is therefore regarded as on kind of workplace stressor,making workers suffer many aspects of physical and mental influences.In recent years,scholars have explored the possible influences and coping strategies of dirty work from the perspective of stress,and found that the physical and mental influences of individuals under the perception of dirty work are different,depending on people's attitudes and coping strategies under stressful events.However,few studies have focused on coping strategies for the effects of dirty work on physical and mental well-being.Exploring the effective coping strategies for dirty work is an urgent management problem,which has actual and crucial practical significance for improving the physical and mental well-being of dirty workers and helping them to better deal with the dirty work stressor.Therefore,this article aims to enrich the research of dirty work in the fields of management and organizational behavior through focusing on the dirty work group of health care workers.The research first conducted phenomenological data analysis to carry out case studies of Study One,investigated the real experiences of dirty workers through in-depth interviews with 7 health care workers,and draws a series of dirty work themes,including the feelings of dirty work,the drivers of dirty work and the coping methods of dirty work.Based on the phenomenological analysis,the research carried out the empirical study of Study Two,refines the findings of case study into quantifiable constructs,introduced dirty job perception as the antecedent variable,work engagement and turnover intention as outcome variables,and perceived social support and active job-crafting as moderators.Based on the Social Stress Theory,a mediated moderation model was constructed.Research collected a total of 181 valid samples by distributing questionnaires and tested the theoretical model and proposed hypothesis.Results show that dirty work perception is positively related to the health care workers' work engagement;both perceived social support and active job-crafting negatively moderates the relationship between dirty work perception and turnover intention;active job-crafting positively moderates the relationship between dirty work perception and work engagement,and active job-crafting mediates the moderation effect of perceived social support between dirty work perception and work engagement.Active coping strategies can buffer the influences of dirty work stressor,resulting positive results of well-being.