Role conflict is defined as when there is a contradiction between authorities, messages, and responsibilities (Kawiana et al., 2018). An extant body of knowledge realized RC as a job stressor due to its negative influence on psychological and behavioral aspects of individuals (Schmidt et al., 2014). COR theory of Hobfoll (1989) argues that resources play a key role in coping with stress and strengthen the ability to enthusiastically perform work tasks.

Role conflict results in work-related strain, which not only hampers intangible perspectives (Van Dyne et al., 2002) but also causes loss in a spiral of resources (Hobfoll et al., 2018). When individuals are exposed to stressors, they seek coping strategies (Decker and Borgen, 1993). This process of searching for coping strategies restricts them to feel vital (Latack and Havlovic, 1992). Moreover, the stressors impede the process of acquiring knowledge and skills (LePine et al., 2004), which acts as an obstacle to employees' learning (Kleine et al., 2019).

Palomino and Frezatti (2016) stated that RC causes the loss of resources which hampers the accomplishment of job tasks. It also decreases the satisfaction with one's job due to a higher level of anxiety (Tarrant and Sabo, 2010). When individuals face conflict in their job roles, they will not be able to retain resources and also lose the existing pool of resources. Spreitzer et al. (2005) suggested that individuals may not experience a sense of thriving without resource availability which works as an engine of thriving. Past studies have shown that stressful events cause the loss of resources which restricts the individuals' ability to feel vital and learn at work (Flinchbaugh et al., 2015; Cullen et al., 2018).

Work overload is referred to performing such tasks that require extra hours to be accomplished. This situation creates a burden on employees, and they are unable to perform the basic tasks (Allen et al., 2008). Ilies et al. (2007) commented that work overload creates disturbance not only in individuals' behavior at work but also in family times. Kim et al. (2010) stated that employees with heavy workloads feel emotionally burdened that causes psychological distress. Schaufeli et al. (2008) suggested that work overload is a root cause of distress in employees, which affects their working ability (Nguyen et al., 2018).

Work overload bears negative consequences which can cause the loss of individuals' resources. A strong association of work overload with burnout has been evidenced among healthcare employees (Deodhar and Goswami, 2017). A heavy workload as a stressor can make individuals physically and emotionally exhausted. Previous research states that stressors cause loss of resources, which hampers individuals' thriving (Porath et al., 2012; Marchiondo et al., 2018). Hobfoll (2002) commented that individuals with fewer resources face a loss of resources termed as “loss cycle.” This loss cycle means that job stressors make individuals lose their resources, and they do not feel thriving. Excessive time demands and work overloads can lead to declined intrinsic motivation (Chen et al., 2015), which is central to enabling thriving.

Spreitzer et al. (2005) stated that resources play an important part in enabling individuals' thriving. While different types of stressors entail role stressors, hindrance stressors had a negative adverse relationship with thriving (Cullen et al., 2018; Rehmat et al., 2021). Shirom et al. (2006) observed that individuals are not able to attain desired performance while facing stress due to different reasons. Spreitzer et al. (2005) delineated that negative affective resources hamper the individuals' way toward thriving. Employees experiencing conflict in roles and heavy workload may not perceive fairness, due to which they may not thrive at work (Abid et al., 2015).

H1: Role conflict has a negative influence on TAW.

H2: Perceived workload has a negative influence on TAW.

Thriving employees are in a better position where they utilize their energy and acquire knowledge to perform their assigned tasks efficiently (Frazier and Tupper, 2018). Task performance is an in-role behavior, defined as performing the formal job requirements by following the set organizational procedures. Moreover, it is a nondiscretionary role that has to be performed efficiently and effectively since most of the tasks are included in the routine work of employees (Yu and Frenkel, 2013). In line with the phenomena explained by Griffin et al. (2007) about performance efficiency, Porath et al. (2012) conceptualized performance as an effective way of meeting the organizational expectation of employees at work.

Conservation of resources as a motivational theory state that acquisition and COR are key factors that explain human behavior (Hobfoll et al., 2018). Since thriving individuals possess enough resources which make them fulfill their task performance in a better way, employees using thriving as a gauge for self-development tend to behave agentic and in this course control their destiny in a responsible way which turns into an enhanced performance mechanism (Grant et al., 2011). Individuals acting genetically gain more resources which strengthens their behavior (Hobfoll, 2012). The tendency of thriving employees in gaining more resources creates more knowledge and strong relationships and develops meaning while executing job tasks (Spreitzer et al., 2005). Vitality and learning glean an extended pool of resources, which turns into a better performance (Bruch and Ghoshal, 2003).

When employees thrive at work, by the means of having a pool of resources, they tend to commit to the organization, which makes them perform their jobs in a more attached way (Walumbwa et al., 2018). Moreover, past studies confirmed that when employees thrive at work, their tendency of performing job tasks becomes more efficient and effective (Paterson et al., 2014; Frazier and Tupper, 2018; Walumbwa et al., 2018).

H3: TAW has a positive influence on task performance.

Thriving is a psychological state comprising a joint experience of learning and vitality (Spreitzer et al., 2005). Individuals need psychological resources to experience learning and vitality. Stressors play a negative role in affecting individuals' personal, social, and work-life (Polatc and Özyer, 2015). We postulated that stressors (RC and perceived workload) affect thriving adversely which leads to a declined task performance. Due to the reason that stressors tend to reduce the motivation to learn and better performance (LePine et al., 2004), this perception of negative factors (RC and perceived workload) will lessen the possibility of learning and vitality (Flinchbaugh et al., 2015) and result in lower task performance. Past literature suggested that TAW is a strong mediating mechanism between negative elements and employees' performance.

The COR theory underscores the mechanism of behavioral outcomes at work due to stressful features (workload and RC), which cause in loss of resources (Hobfoll et al., 2018). COR suggests that workplace stressors, i.e., RC and perceived workload have negative effects on task performance by depleting the resource stock (Quinn et al., 2012; Halbesleben et al., 2014). Previous studies have postulated that stressors affect employees' work performance adversely (Tang and Chang, 2010).

Role conflict and work overload tend to result in a loss in the spiral of resources, which affects thriving adversely. Cullen et al. (2018) explored the adverse effect of role on thriving. This means that individuals, with confusion about whom to receive orders from and with the heavy workload, may not feel thrived.

Individuals with no positive sentiments may not gain a pool of resources that play a vital role in making task performance effective (Beal et al., 2005). On the one hand, learning improves the intellectual competencies of individuals which results in better performance (Rose et al., 2009). Shan et al. (2016) stated that fewer learning opportunities cause a decline in individuals' performance. Extant literature has investigated and confirmed the strong association between learning and employees' effective performance at work (Škerlavaj et al., 2007). Frazier and Tupper (2018) also corroborated that thriving employees are in a better position to perform their tasks effectively. Moreover, Walumbwa et al. (2018) stated that thriving promotes commitment in employees which in turn makes employees centered on performing job tasks effectively.

On the other hand, depletion of resources does not only target the human brain's activation but also physical abilities, so they are less likely to perform with energy and may not learn at the workplace (Mullins et al., 2014), in turn, the efficiency required for performing tasks is declined along with information processing. This suggests that people with low thriving will not be able to perform their tasks effectively and efficiently (Frazier and Tupper, 2018). Putting together, employees exposed to workplace stressors will not be experiencing TAW, which consequently will be exhibited with ineffective task performance.

H4: Thriving mediates the relationship between (a) RC, (b) PWL, and task performance.

Along with thriving, we posed that individuals' ability to cope with stressors, such as RC and perceived workload, is contingent on their level of RES (Flinchbaugh et al., 2015). RES is defined as a psychological resource that acts as a buffering mechanism and allows individuals to bounce back and cope with the negative circumstances (Masten, 2001). COR explicates that RES in individuals not only stops the loss of spiral of resources but also helps them to gain a pool of resources to cope with the negative elements in their environment (Hobfoll et al., 2018). Recent literature evidenced the vital role of RES as a moderator for suppressing the negative association between stressors and thriving (Flinchbaugh et al., 2015). RES has been examined in a variety of life segments and tested for being successful or as a failure, i.e., in a workplace setting (Luthans et al., 2005) and also in the academic domain (Cappella and Weinstein, 2001). In a study of nurses, Tusaie and Dyer (2004) stated that since their job is characterized by stress due to their job routine, that is why RES was much needed to deal with adversity.

Role conflict and workload as stress factors tend to affect employees' psychological states negatively which develops negative emotions. Resilient individuals possess the capacity to recover from stressors and to adjust themselves to the changing work requirement (Niitsu et al., 2017). The damage due to negative stressors can be recovered through RES, which protects from destructive behaviors and diseases (Ryff and Singer, 1996). Connor and Davidson (2003) suggested that resilient individuals buffer the negative consequences arising from negative events by strengthening their physical and psychological health. In the presence of stressors, the reactive measures of RES enable individuals to go above the adverse effects of negative factors (Tugade and Fredrickson, 2004).

It is suggested that the tendency of resilient individuals will be high to prepare for hardships to be faced at the workplace, buffering the negative effects on themselves of any such stressful factors by utilizing the spiral of psychological resources (Fredrickson et al., 2008). In this course, we postulated that the presence of RES as a pool of psychological resources buffers the negative effect on individuals' psychological states.

H5: Resilience moderates the relationship between {(a) RC, (b) PWL}, and thriving, such that these negative relationships will be weaker at higher levels of RES (vs. low).

The participants are the front-line hotel workers in the Chinese hotel industry. A simple random sampling technique was used for data collection from 3-star and above hotels. Front-line employees are considered to be in a more advantageous position to have information about customers' preferences (Wu and Chen, 2019). The participants of the study varied from but were not limited to front desk services, customer handling, porters, food, and beverages to housekeeping.

A descriptive research design named a cross-sectional survey design was used for this study. As the first step, we seek consent from the hotel organizations to participate in the survey. Furthermore, the participants who agreed to take part in the survey were approached and explained to them the purpose of the survey. The participants were assured about the confidentiality of their information. The survey questionnaire included demographics (i.e., gender, age, span of employment, and education) and the main variables of this study. To avoid the common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003), the collection of data was carried out at two points of time and from two sources, i.e., employees and their immediate supervisors. The average number of workers being supervised by each supervisor varied from 8 to 12.

The survey was administered to 400 employees to record their responses about RC, perceived workload, thriving, and RES. In total, 348 questionnaires were received out of which 331 were useful. At time 2, we got the responses from supervisors about employees' task performance, yielding a response rate of 82.75% through matching supervisor-employee questionnaires. This study used a researcher-generated code strategy to match the responses from employee-supervisor dyads. Each participant was given a unique code, and the same code was provided to his/her supervisor for compilation of the responses by employees and supervisors by matching these unique codes.

We controlled the effects of demographic variables. We coded these variables as gender (1 = male, 2 = female), age (1 = 21–25 years, 2 = 26–30 years, 3 = 31–35 years, 4 = 36–40 years, and 5 = 41 and above), education (1 = middle school, 2 = high school, 3 = college, 4 = bachelors, and 5 = master or higher), and tenure (1 = 1–5 years, 2 = 6–10 years, 3 = 11–15 years, 4 = 16–20 years, and 5 = 21 and above years).

This study uses a mature scale and takes great care while designing the survey ensuring the quality of the study. We used the back-translation method (Brislin, 1970) because the original language of the measures was English. A five-point Likert scale ranges from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. We controlled the effects of the demographic variables due to the chances of their dominance of individuals' behavioral aspects (Ng and Feldman, 2012).

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics as mean, standard deviations, and correlations. As expected, RC (r = −0.372, p < 0.001) and PWL (r = −0.361, p < 0.001) were negatively related with thriving. TAW was positively related with TP (r = 0.439, p < 0.001).

The CFA was performed to assure the validity of constructs. We checked several model fitness indexes for our measurement model in AMOS (Kline and Kline, 1998). A good model fit was observed for 5-factor χ² = 579.832, df = 454, χ²/df = 1.277, SRMR = 0.055, TLI = 0.977, CFI = 0.979, and RMSEA = 0.029. The composite reliability (CR) showed the values 0.819–0.937 which are >0.70 (Hair et al., 2011). Moreover, results showed “α” values varying from 0.812 to 0.941, which are >0.70.

The value of average variance extraction varied from 0.532 to 0.613, which is >0.50 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). The condition of discriminant validity was fulfilled first, the square root of AVE was greater than the correlation coefficient of other variables (Fornell and Larcker, 1981), and second, the correlation coefficients were below 0.85 (Kline, 2005).

The hypotheses for this study were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) due to its ability to examine the multiple variables at the same time. As the first step, we tested the multicollinearity among variables through the value of (VIF = 1.237-1.464). Table 1 which was less than the standard value of 3. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 were tested through SEM (AMOS). H1 and H2 proposed that RC and PWL are negatively associated with thriving. H3 proposed that TAW is positively related to task performance. The results provide support for these relationships (β RC→TAW = −0.274, p < 0.001), (β PWL→TAW = −0.279, p < 0.01), and (β TAW→TP = 0.500, p < 0.001) (Figure 1).

H4a and H4b proposed that thriving mediates the link between (a) RC, (b) PWL, and TAW. We employed the bias-corrected method with 5,000 bootstrap samples at a 95% confidence interval (CI) (Hayes, 2013). The results showed support to the proposed hypotheses (β RC→TAW→TP) = −0.137, [CI: −0.211, −0.080], and (β PWL→TAW→TP = −0.140, [CI: −0.237, −0.063]. The CI does not include any zero between BOOT CI [LLCI, ULCI], which evidences the significant indirect effects (Table 2). The result showed a good fit for the mediation model χ² = 402.239, df = 295, χ²/df = 1.364, SRMR = 0.081, TLI = 0.976, CFI = 0.978, and RMSEA = 0.033.

To test the moderating effects of RES (H5a and H5b), we used PROCESS macro 3.3 model 1 (H5a and H5b) with 5,000 bootstrap samples at 95% CI (Hayes, 2013). For RC and PWL, we tested the separate moderating effect of RES. Results show that RES significantly moderated the relationships among RC, PWL, and thriving (β RES X RC → TAW = 0.367, [0.261, 0.474], p < 0.001) and (β RES X PWL→TAW = 0.288, [0.177, 0.398], p < 0.001), thus supports H5a and H5b (Figure 1). The results show that the negative relationship between {RC and perceived workload} and thriving was significant at low level of RES {β = −0.949, t = −9.310, p < 0.001}, {β = −0.671, t = −7.331, p < 0.001} rather than high level of RES {β = −0.0915, t = −1.509, ns}, {β = 0.001, t = 0.011, ns}, respectively. Figures 2, 3 show the plotting of interaction graphs.

Based on our results, several theoretical implications can be seen. It is the first study to our knowledge that explores the potential impact of RC and perceived workload on TAW. By employing COR theory, it advocates that individuals need a pool of resources to accomplish their jobs and to gain more resources. RC and perceived workload, in this regard, play the role of stressors, which cause a loss in a spiral of resources which ultimately reduce the individuals' potential to sense learning and vitality.

Second, we examined that thriving enhances the task performance of employees. Thriving employees are nurtured with vitality and learning that helps them to show an enhanced task performance. Third, TAW mediates the link between RC and perceived workload and task performance. It suggests that RC and perceived workload affect the TAW in an adverse way which leads to lower task performance. Fourth, we examined the crucial role of RES as a coping strategy to moderate the negative relationship between RC, PWL, and TAW. Finally, it signifies its contribution by utilizing key implications of COR theory along with the data collected from two sources which helped to avoid common method bias (CMB) (Podsakoff et al., 2003).

Along with the theoretical implications, our study offers practical implications too. First, the results showed that RC and perceived workload have a negative association with TAW. It suggests that the hotel managers clarify the roles of each employee and clarify the hierarchy and reporting system and also what type of activities should be assigned and by whom, to avoid this situation. Second, the managers should take care of employees' workload to make them more resourceful so that they not only can manage their tasks but also feel thrived at work. The managers can devise the workload according to the individuals' capacity and compensations. Third, managers should conduct training for all levels so that everybody gets on the same level and to address the gaps arising from the RC and workload so that employees can thrive and exhibit their task performance effectively.

Finally, as previous studies stated that hotel organizations are characterized by heavy workload (Wu and Chen, 2019), and managers should be able enough to provide resources in such a way that every employee should possess a pool of resources so that their learning ability and vitality should be boosted and they can perform well at their jobs.