Antecedents of stress and well-being at work for French Civil Servants

Overview & Synopsis

The NOTRe law (2015) profoundly transforms the competences of the local public sector and improves the tasks of civil servants without additional resources. We are interested in the antecedents of stress and well-being at work among French civil servants following this reform. To this end, we study the impact of Paradoxical Leadership, particularly adapted to the public sector (Backhaus et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2012) in application of the JD-R model (Demerouti et al., 2001) and Motivation in Public Service (De Simone et al., 2016; Perry, 1996; Perry & Wise, 1990)on their well-being and performance (Santini et al., 2020; Simon et al., 2015) with mediated variables such as burnout and work engagement. The results of our investigation show a profound link between paradoxical leadership, motivation for public service and well-being at work, respectively, mediated by work commitment or burnout. Finally, we found an interaction between paradoxical leadership and motivation for public service that has an impact on civil servants' well-being through work commitment or burnout.