Ph.D.
Beyond Workload: How Demand Configurations Shape Strain
Aman Kabra, Pennsylvania State University
You may access a free, publicly accessible copy of my dissertation here.
A dissertation is the work of one person on paper, but never in practice. The people behind the work deserve to be on the website too. Therefore, I first share below the acknowledgment section from my dissertation.
To call this doctoral journey mine alone could not be further from the truth. Undergirding this journey is a constellation of people, and I want to take stock of my gratitude toward them here.
Professionally, I begin with Stephen Humphrey, my advisor. He is a remarkable scholar and an equally thoughtful mentor who gave me the patient latitude to find my research footing. He invested in me before there was anything to show for it. Margaret Luciano played a significant role — to say the least — in sculpting my research trajectory. I turned to her often, and she never turned me away. James LeBreton and Russell Barton provided a much-needed statistical foundation to my program of research through both coursework and coauthorships. Semin Park and Rui Zhong generously supported my dissertation and second-year-paper journeys, respectively. I also acknowledge Federico Aime and Maartje Schouten, whose theorizing I have learnt deeply from. I thank Madan Pillutla and Sarang Deo for steering me toward Penn State in the first place, and John Hollenbeck for building the multiteam systems lab infrastructure that gave me my first laboratory experience. Finally, I acknowledge the role of my seminar course instructors at Penn State who exposed me to the know-how of theorizing and the theories I now draw upon.
Personally, I thank my parents and my sister Aayushi — had they not given me the support to build an overseas research career in the United States, this journey would not have happened in the first place. A Ph.D. is a bet with a long horizon and uncertain payoffs; they underwrote that bet without hesitation. And, Sakshi — the only person who closely traced (and lived) both the benefits and costs of this journey — for holding my hand through the ups, downs, and plateaus.
Committee
- Stephen E. Humphrey, Alvin H. Clemens Professor of Management & Organization, Dissertation Advisor, Committee Chair
- Margaret M. Luciano, Associate Professor of Management & Organization
- Semin Park, Assistant Professor of Management & Organization
- James M. LeBreton, Professor of Social Data Analytics & Psychology
Abstract
Dominant stress frameworks, including the Job Demands-Resources model, treat multiple job demands as additive inputs to psychological strain, overlooking how the structural relationships among concurrent demands shape strain outcomes. This dissertation develops and tests a configurational theory proposing that demand architecture — specifically, the degree of (mis)alignment among demands, their relative intensity, and their operational separation — independently influences strain by generating configuration-induced demands for resource allocation and negation handling. Drawing on Gestalt psychology’s principle of Prägnanz, I theorize that individuals simplify complex demand relationships into fundamental categories: aligned (synergistic), orthogonal (distinct but competing for resources), and misaligned (directly conflicting). A pilot study (N = 156) established baseline equivalence of constituent demands. Study 1 (N = 181) employed a between-subjects experiment with a 3 (Misalignment) × 2 (Incongruence) × 2 (Separation) factorial design using an immersive essay task. Study 2 (N = 514; 24,672 observations) employed a within-subject policy-capturing design across 48 scenarios. Results consistently demonstrated that misalignment elevates strain, with opposite configurations producing stronger effects than orthogonal configurations, supporting the proposition that configuration-induced demands operate additively. Demand intensity incongruence reduced strain in both studies and attenuated misalignment effects in Study 2. Task separation reduced strain in Study 2 but did not moderate misalignment effects in either study. These findings advance theory by identifying configuration-induced demands as previously invisible sources of cognitive burden and by demonstrating that strain emerges not merely from how much is demanded but from how demands structurally relate to one another.