When Do Social–emotional Job Resources Help or Hinder? Role of Wise Emotion Regulation Ability (WERA) as a Boundary Condition

This quantitative study examined the role of Wise Emotion Regulation Ability (WERA)—a multidimensional affective personal resource—in moderating the relationship between emotional workplace dynamics and employee outcomes. Employees (N = 183) were recruited from IT sector organizations in Delhi NCR, Bangalore, and Jaipur, India. The WERA scale used in the study was deductively developed from two validated wisdom measures, with a comprehensive factor structure and psychometric evidence documented in a separate preprint currently under review and summarized in the appendix. Hierarchical moderated regression analyses revealed that perceived supervisory support significantly interacted with WERA to predict work engagement (b = -.10, p = .009; model R² = .28), with supervisor support providing greater benefit to employees with lower WERA lacking sufficient internal regulatory capacity. Furthermore, significant crossover interaction revealed that while WERA mitigated counterproductive work behavior (CWB) among employees with low susceptibility to emotional contagion (SEC), high WERA paradoxically increased CWB among employees with persistently high SEC, indicating a regulatory cost mechanism where chronic absorptive tendency strains even high regulatory capacity. The findings identify WERA as a specific personal resource and boundary condition within the Job Demands-Resources and Conservation of Resources frameworks and recommend that future studies employ longitudinal designs to capture how WERA functions dynamically across changing workplace contexts.