Task idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) refer to employees' successful negotiations with their supervisors to obtain unique arrangements to alter their job content (Liao et al., 2016). Such task i-deals are highly coveted resources that improve employee motivation, performance, and wellbeing. Integrating relative deprivation theory with research on gender discrimination, we hypothesise differential outcomes for men and women who bargain for task i-deals. Women tend to be deprived of valued opportunities at work (Triana et al., 2019). Hence, when they successfully negotiate task i-deals, they will experience lowered anger toward their employment, resulting in improved mental health. For men, the provision of task i-deals is unlikely to change their experiences of anger towards their job because men tend to receive more work opportunities than women. Hence, we expect women to benefit more than men when task i-deals are higher (than lower) because it diminishes anger toward their employment and enhances their subjective mental health.
We tested our hypotheses in two studies. Study 1 examined task i-deals amongst surgeons (N = 372). Female surgeons who successfully negotiated task i-deals experienced less anger toward their employment than men (B = -.22, SE = 0.09, t = -2.45, p = .02). For higher (+1SD) levels of task i-deals, women reported less anger than for lower (-1SD) levels (B = -0.22, p = .001; Figure 1), which was non-significant for men (B = 0.01, p = .94). This was further positively related to subjective mental health (Index = 0.06, 95% CI = [0.01, 0.11]). In Study 2, we experimentally replicated our results (N = 94 with MTurk Prime workers). We manipulated levels of task i-deals (high vs. low) and denied i-deals. The experimental results were consistent with the survey (Study 1) findings in that the successful negotiation of task i-deals for women diminished their experiences of anger toward employment (B = -0.98, SE = 0.44, t = -2.21, p = 0.03) and bolstered their subjective mental health (Index = 0.29, 95% CI = [0.001, 0.74]).
Relative deprivation refers to the "inwardly directed feelings of entitlement to a better job" (Luksyte et al., 2022, p. 25), which aligns with our examination of why task i-deals might influence affective relative deprivation for women. Our two-study research showed that the diminished experiences of anger toward work explained why women who negotiated task i-deals reported better mental health than those who reported having negotiated lower levels of task i-deals.

1. Explicating why women who successfully negotiate task i-deals may experience less anger towards their employment situations than men, lending on relative deprivation theory.

2. Illustrate the potential utility of task i-deals as a means of addressing the mental health crisis in organisations, particularly amongst women.

3. Discuss the nuances of successful, partially successful, and unsuccessful task i-deal negotiations and employee perceptions of the success of such i-deal arrangements.