Abstract
Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are widespread in organizations, but their relationship to employees’ work stress has been unclear. Based on the model of effort-reward imbalance (ERI), our study investigates this relationship and takes into account the role of social comparisons and denied i-deals. Two types of i-deals, flexibility i-deals and development i-deals, have been studied. We applied a time-lagged research design for which we collected data from 120 employees at two points in time to test our hypotheses. The results show that development i-deals significantly reduce employees’ ERI, whereas flexibility i-deals do not relate to employees’ ERI. Above that, the denial of i-deals increases ERI. Our results also show that social comparisons with co-workers’ i-deals can influence the relationship between an employee’s i-deals and his or her ERI. Hence, this study demonstrates that i-deals can affect employees’ ERI, which may have diverse health-related and job-related consequences.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.