Fire fighting works are characterized by specificity, urgency, and danger. Any small mistakes may lead to damage to lives. Accordingly, firefighters are burdened with high levels of job stress and have no clue of how to resolve this issue. This study attempts to explore how leader-member exchange (LMX) and emotional adjustment reduce firefighters’ job stress. For examining this issue, this study drew 40 fire service units from the population and invited five field firefighters and their immediate supervisors in these 40 units to participate in the survey. In total, we collected 40 copies of supervisor-level questionnaire and 199 copies of subordinate-level questionnaire. This study employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to recognize the sufficient configurations leading to low levels of job stress.
The results find that LMX’s affect, loyalty, contribution, and professional respect dimensions, supervisor emotional adjustment, and subordinate emotional adjustment can form several sufficient configurations for leading to low levels of job stree. LMX’s affect, loyalty, contribution, and professional respect dimensions are one of sufficient conditions causing low levels of job stress. When LMX is not comprehensive, supervisor emotional adjustment and subordinate emotional adjustment are one of sufficient conditions causing low levels of job stress.This study expects to provide suggestions relevant to motivating and training employees as well as establishing regulations for fire department.
