The relationship between work characteristics and employee health and well-being: how much complexity do we really need?

In comparison with R. A. Karasek and T. Theorell's (1990) well-known demand-control-support (DCS) model, recent models of the effects of work characteristics on employee health and well-being are complex in regard to the number of characteristics included, the specificity of the relationships, and the situational specificity assumed. Data from 37,291 Dutch employees were used to examine to what extent these 3 approaches are valid. Several increasingly complex models of the relations among 7 work characteristics were compared and cross validated in 4 branches of industry. Further, these work characteristics were related to 3 outcome variables. A general model--tentatively labeled the demand-skill-support model--provided the best approximation of the relationships among work characteristics, health, and well-being.