Epistemic curiosity and perceived workload: a moderated mediation model of achievement striving and overwork climate

Abstract

In today’s increasingly complex and highly competitive business environment, hiring individuals who can cope with challenging job demands is considered critical. In this context, epistemic curiosity, which enables enhanced learning and intellectual development, has long been known to positively impact on-job performance. This study explores the less positive side of curiosity by examining the relationship between epistemic curiosity and perceived workload, as well as the mediating role of achievement striving and the moderating role of an overwork climate. We collected data from 252 employees in various organizations across Pakistan. The results support the predicted positive relationship between epistemic curiosity and perceived workload and indicate that achievement striving fully mediates this relationship. In addition, overwork climate moderates the relationship between epistemic curiosity and perceived workload via achievement striving, such that the relationship weakens as an overwork climate develops. The study has implications for recruitment practice, the work environment, and training and development.

Keywords:

• Epistemic curiosity
• perceived workload
• achievement striving
• overwork climate

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 In addition to CFA, the validity tests for distinctiveness of each variable showed that the maximum shared squared variance for all the variables is less than the average variance extracted (AVE) (I-EC =.542<.917, D-EC =.549<.936, Overwork climate =.005<.723, Achievement striving =.549<.716, Workload =.406<.672) and AVE for all variables is greater than 0.5. Thus, our analysis meets the criteria for adequate discriminant and convergent validity (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2010).