Workplace Stressors' Impact on Employee Performance in SMEs with Moderating Role of Social Support: A Conceptual Review

Abstract

Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are central to Malaysia’s economy, yet many struggle to sustain employee performance under persistent workplace stress. In SMEs, limited resources and informal structures often intensify pressure, making four stressors salient: role ambiguity, role conflict, excessive workload, and job insecurity. This study presents a concept-centric conceptual review of how these stressors influence employee performance in Malaysian SMEs and identifies social support as a key moderating condition. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources model, the Demand-Control-Support tradition, Stress and Coping theory, Conservation of Resources theory, and Social Exchange Theory, the review integrates fragmented insights into a coherent Malaysia-focused framework. Constructs are anchored to established measures to ensure definitional precision and enable rigorous operationalization in future empirical work. This study argues that these stressors deplete cognitive and emotional resources, thereby undermining task performance, reducing contextual contributions, and constraining adaptive performance in dynamic SME environments. In contrast, well-matched social support from supervisors, coworkers, and the organization can buffer these negative effects by replenishing resources, strengthening coping capacity, and reinforcing reciprocal commitment. This study advances explicit moderation pathways and testable propositions for empirical validation, while translating the framework into practical priorities for SME leaders. Recommendations emphasize clarifying expectations, reducing incompatible demands, calibrating workload to capacity, communicating transparently about employment conditions, and institutionalizing credible support routines. By linking dominant SME stressors to multidimensional performance through resource-based mechanisms and support contingencies, this review offers a focused roadmap for future research and for strengthening performance in Malaysian SMEs.