UCF’s Nathan Bowling studies organizational constraints—factors that hinder an employee’s ability to perform their job, such as inadequate training, poor supervisory or coworker support, and lack of access to needed tools or equipment. “Organizational constraints are strongly linked to negative outcomes like anxiety, depression, insomnia, fatigue, and even physical symptoms,” says Bowling.

These factors can lower job performance and eventually affect an organization’s bottom line. Researchers typically treated organizational constraints as a single, general category, but Bowling has developed a self-reporting tool that organizes them into distinct dimensions. “The tool allows organizations to pinpoint specific sources of stress that may be hurting employee performance and take action accordingly.”

• Nathan Bowling