Organizational Role Stress (ORS) affects the productivity and efficiency of the employees and indirectly hurts organizations’ profitability. The phenomenon is more acute for dual-career couples. The present paper seeks to explore the mediating role that ORS plays in the relationship between availability of High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs) and employee engagement, between HPWPs and job satisfaction, and between employee engagement and job satisfaction. The paper confirms the positive association between availability of HPWPs and employee engagement, between HPWPs and job satisfaction, and between employee engagement and job satisfaction. Further, ORS is also found to mediating these associations significantly. The result answers one of the baffling questions for HR experts, i.e., why same HR practice leads to different effects on different employees. One of the reasons is the different level of role stress experienced by different employees.

Modern-day’s organizational life is quite stressful. Life at workplace comprises tremendous work pressure, tight and relentless schedules, untimely and long meetings, unhelpful and selfish colleagues, critical and over-demanding bosses, incompetent and ever-complaining subordinates and also a host of other irritating factors. These factors have a snowballing effect in making the lives of modern-day executives quite miserable and burdensome. Work-related stress is the natural and obvious reaction of the employees who are being put under intense work pressure over a prolonged period of time. When the pressure of work demands becomes excessive and prolonged, employees perceive a threat to their wellbeing or interests and experience unpleasant emotions such as fear, anger or anxiety.

This work-related stress is soaked by the caring and loving environment of home. Spouse plays an important role in relieving an employee from organizational role stress. Love, care, and comfort of spouse makes employee ready to confront future challenges. But the equation is not so simple for dual-career couples. Previous researches suggested that dual-career couple faces distinctive problems in their work, family, and personal arenas of life (Hall and Hall, 1979; and Moen, 1985). Sekaran (1986) concluded that family and organizational stress heightened in case of dual-career couples. Elloy and Smith (2003) also stated that dual-career couples experienced higher levels of stress, family conflict, overload, role ambiguity and role conflict than single-career couples. Various other researchers have also highlighted the same fact.

Management Research Journal, Organizational Role Stress (ORS), High Performance Work Practices (HPWPs), Dual-Career Couples, Mediating, Relationship Between HPWPs, Employee Engagement, Job Satisfaction.