Economic stress has been recognized as a major threat to the well-being and performance of
workers, especially during times of global economic crisis. An interesting and relatively unexplored
research topic concerns the associations between economic stress and employee job outcomes such
as innovative behaviors, indispensable for business survival. The aim of the present study was to
investigate the relationship between economic stress, absenteeism and innovation. We considered
both a direct and a mediation hypothesis and hypothesized that economic stress can have a negative
influence on innovation directly and indirectly through increased absenteeism. A cross-sectional
study was performed during 2018 and 2019 in an Italian food factory. A sample of 578 employees
completed the Stress Questionnaire, the Janssen’s nine-item scale and a single-item regarding absenteeism. All relationships are supported by empirical data. As expected, the results indicated that
economic stress is negatively related to innovation and positively related to absenteeism, which, in
turn, plays a mediating role in the relationship between economic stress and innovative behavior.
Herewith, those employees with higher levels of economic stress show higher levels of absenteeism
contributing at the same time to a decrease in innovative behaviors. These findings show the importance of economic stress in understanding individual work outcomes and highlight the need to
promote adequate intervention programs