Abstract
The purposes of this study were to investigate 1) the effects of social support on the relationships between stressors and mental-health, work-motivation, and 2) the relationships between social support and job characteristics (autonomy and variety). Subjects were 493 young workers in Study 1 and 174 female office workers in Study 2. Job stressors (role conflict, role ambiguity, quantitative work overload, qualitative work overload) and social support (emotional and instrumental support from co-workers, senior colleague and supervisors) were used to predict employees' work-motivation and mental-health. The main results were as follows: 1) The form of the interaction was different from the predictions of the buffering hypothesis, and it implied that the effects of social support might have a limitation. 2) The effects of social support were dependent on the differences of the level of job characteristics. That is, social support had little effect on work-motivation at low levels of autonomy and variety. Social support was the most effective on mental-health at middle levels of autonomy and variety.
