When challenges hinder: An investigation of when and how challenge stressors impact employee outcomes.

Over the past two decades, accumulating evidence has indicated that individuals experience challenge and hindrance stressors in qualitatively different ways, with the former being linked to more positive outcomes than the latter. Indeed, challenge stressors are believed to have net positive effects even though they can also lead to a range of strains, eliciting beliefs that managers can enhance performance outcomes by increasing the frequency of...