Emotional exhaustion and innovation in the workplace—a longitudinal study

Emotional exhaustion and innovation at work are two major topics of interest to organization researchers, employees and employers. However, working conditions that foster innovation may also heighten employees’ emotional exhaustion. By conducting a two-wave, longitudinal online study among the German working population (N=320), we analyzed the longitudinal impact of qualitative overload, unreasonable tasks, social support from a supervisor, and task variety on emotional exhaustion and innovation based on the categorization approach from the job demands-resources model research. Longitudinal structural equation modeling revealed that unreasonable tasks predicted emotional exhaustion (γ=0.111, p<0.01) and that task variety predicted individual innovation (γ=0.126, p<0.01) over time. Social support from a supervisor and qualitative overload, however, did not have any longitudinal influence on either emotional exhaustion or individual innovation. Rather unexpectedly, and in contrast to our hypotheses, no diverging effects from working conditions on emotional exhaustion or innovation could be found. The results demonstrate that the presence of unreasonable tasks impairs employees’ psychological well-being and that a high task variety at work leads to innovation. Implications for practice and future studies are discussed.