Perceived job control mediates the relationship between organisational stressors and athlete engagement in professional soccer players

In order to compete effectively, elite sport organizations are
dependent on athletes who are psychologically connected
during training and competition, and who are willing, and
able, to invest themselves fully despite the inherent demands
of competitive sport. Specifically, sport organizations
need athletes who are engaged with their work. Using a
questionnaire-based cross sectional design, 401 professional
soccer players from the United Kingdom completed
measures of organizational stressors, perceived job control,
and engagement. The data were analyed using Hayes’s PROCESS macro for SPSS, and showed organizational stressors to be predict athlete engagement. Further, this relationship was mediated by soccer players’ perceptions of control. The findings highlight the salience of autonomy and appraisal in the stress process and it’s potential contribution to athlete engagement in professional sporting organizations. Moreover, these findings indicate that interventions aimed at promoting athletes’ perceptions of autonomy may ameliorate the potential negative impact of organizational stressors on athlete engagement with their work.