Currenlty jobExecution#stop() is implemented by setting the "terminateOnly" flag on all step executions created so far. Therefore in case stop() is called e.g. in StepListener#afterStep(..) it has no effect on the following steps. Also the terminateOnly flag is checked only in ItemOrientedStep so a job consisting of arbitrary number of TaskletSteps can't be stopped unless the Tasklet implementations support interruption.