The optimum amount of stress is referred to as ‘eustress’ – a positive force in our lives that is equivalent of finding excitement and challenge in life. As shown in Fig. 2, the eustress will provide people with extra energy to meet external or self-imposed demands. (Cooper, 1981) The wrong amount and type of stress is called distress. It usually results in negative outcomes for the individual and organization.
The causes of stress
The causes of occupational stress have been defined as those people and things who or which induce conflicting forces or create incompatible demands.
Organizational and environmental sources of stress
Stress responses result from the interaction between an individual’s predisposition to stress and the force exerted by the environment. The term “environment” includes all factors and forces external to the individual. Here, the organizational portion of the environment is emphasized.
There are a large number of possible organizational and environmental sources of stress at work, as you can see from Fig. 2. Each of these is now discussed in turn.
Sources of stress at work
Fig. 2. How Stress Influences Job Behavior & Performance
(From Cary L. Cooper, Industrial Organizational Psychology Volume II, p. 268. 1991, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.)
Factors intrinsic to a particular job
Factors intrinsic to the job were a first and vital focus of study for early researchers in the field. Stress can be caused by poor physical working conditions, work overload or underload, excessive and inconvenient hours, physical danger, etc.
A great deal of work has been done linking the working conditions and its relationship to occupational stress. Kornhauser (1965) found, for example, that poor health was directly related to unpleasant working conditions, repetitive and dehumanizing environments (e.g. paced assembly lines), and the necessity to work fast and to expend a lot of physical effort. In such situations, stress can result from a lack of stamina to meet the demands of works. That is, people’s physical resources were inadequate to meet the demands of the work.
On the other hand, research into work overload has been given substantial empirical attention. French and Caplan (1973) have differentiated overload in terms of quantitative and qualitative overload. Quantitative refers to having “too much to do”, whilst Qualitative means work that is “too difficult”. Employees at all levels sometimes find themselves faced with excessive work demands. Tightly scheduled workdays, cost cutting, and simultaneous demands act as sources of distress. In an attempt to cope with the multiple demands, people opt to perform their paperwork at home. This approach to time management succeeds in freeing much of the workday, but it creates conflict in most family situations. Stressors are thus not eliminated but are displaced from the office to the home.
Work underload is another potential source of stress. Repetitive, boring, routine work causes errors, inefficiency, disputes, absenteeism and ill health. It is often boredom that drives people to drink too much or take drugs. Moreover, feeling of not being challenged, of one’s intellectual abilities and formal education being wasted, and of being overqualified for present job responsibilities represent an omnipresent complaint of dissatisfied employees. For example, an executive may assign very little work to do as a way of encouraging him/her to resign. Such political tactics may take place after a merger or acquisition. Combining the two companies results in excess executives, yet the acquiring firm is hesitant to lay off redundant managers because of a preacquisition agreement.
Excessive and inconvenient hours means long working hours and shift working. Both of them are potentially stressful because they causes:
- Severe disturbance of circadian rhythms,
- Physical and psychological ill-health, and,
- Social and domestic disruption (Tetterdell et al. 1995).
What is more, people working in excessive or inconvenient hours staggers their holidays or leisure time to the others. Then, they will have less/no time to spend with their relatives and friends. Consequently, these people will be more prone to depression and anxiety.
Role in the organization
Another form of organizational stress extensively studied is that of role conflict and ambiguity. Role conflict exists when an individual in a particular work role is torn by conflicting job demands or doing things he/she really does not want to do or does not think are part of the job specification. (Cooper, 1991) There is four types of role conflict have been identified: (Dubrin, 1984)
- Intrasender conflict occurs when one person asks another one to accomplish two objectives that are in apparent conflict. For example, a manager asks his subordinate to hurry up and finish the work but also decrease the mistakes; the subordinate will experience this type of conflict.
- Intersender conflict occurs when two or more senders give an employee incompatible directions. For instance, Mike’s immediate superior may want him to complete a crash project on time, but company policy temporarily prohibits authorizing overtime payments to clerical help.
- Interrole conflict results when two different roles one play are in conflict. Joe’s company may expect him to travel 50 percent of the time (to be promoted) while his spouse threatens to divorce if he travels more than 25 percent of the time.
- Person-role conflict results when the role(s) that one’s organization expects him/her to occupy are in conflict with his/her basic value. Mary’s company asks her to fire substandard performers, but this could be in conflict with her humanistic value.
Role ambiguity is closely related to role conflict. It exists when an individual has inadequate information about his/her work role, that is, where there is lack of clarity about the work objectives associated with the role, about work colleagues’ expectation of the work role and the scope and responsibilities of the job.
Relationships at work
The third major potential source of occupational stress has to do with the nature of relationships with one’s boss, subordinates, and colleagues. French and Caplan (1973) define poor relationship as “those, which include low trust, low supportiveness, and low interest in listening to and trying to deal with problems that confront the organizational members”. What is more, behavioral scientists have long suggested that relationships between members of a work group are positively related to job satisfaction and work commitment.
Career development
Two major clusters of potential occupational stressors can be identified in this area:
- Lack of job security: fear of redundancy, obsolescence or early retirement, etc;
- Status incongruity: under – or over-promotion, frustration at having reached one’s career ceiling, etc.
They have both psychological and financial roots. Loss of income, unpaid bills, and abandonment of luxury items constitute only part of the problem of a person being unemployed. Embarrassment, shame, guilt and emptiness are intertwined with the financial loss. Self-images in most cultures are in part dependent upon the type of work an individual performs. The development of one’s career thus affects the self-image of those afflicted.
Organizational structure and climate
Problem areas, such as little or no participation in the decision-making process, no sense of belonging, lack of effective consultation, poor communications, restrictions on behavior, and office politics, are some of those with the most impact here.
Home – work interface stresses
It is unrealistic for the employees to leave their troubles at the office gate. Events in one’s private life can also lead to stress which spills into the workplace. In fact, the division between organizational and non-organizational stress is seldom distinct; each can influence the other. This source of stress is more of a “catch-all” for all those interfaces between life outside and life inside the organization that might put pressure on someone: family problems, life crises (Dohrenwend and Dohrenwend, 1974), financial difficulties, conflict of personal beliefs with those of the company, daily hassles, and the conflict of company with family demands (Cooper, 1981).
Generally, people have two main problems vis-à-vis his/her family:(Pahl, 1971)
The first is that of “time-management” and “commitment-management”. Not only does his busy life leave him/her few resources with which to cope with other people’s needs, but in order to do his/her job well one usually also needs to support from others to cope with the “background” details of house management, etc., to relieve stress when possible, and to maintain contact with outside world.
The second, often a result of the first, is the spillover of crises or stresses in one system, which affects the other. And these two are inseparable.
The consequences of occupational stress
Stress can have both functional and dysfunctional consequences to the individual and the organization, as shown in Fig. 2. Of concern here are the latter ones.
Physical and mental illnesses
Medical experts generally agree that many illnesses, both physical and mental ones, are stress-related. Carter’s lawsuit I have mentioned in the first part is the best example. Research has shown that chronic stress lowers resistance to illness and intensifies its impact. (Kornhauser, 1965) Some stress-related illnesses are killers, such as coronary diseases. Other physical effects are less severe. People may experience non-specific pain or just generally feel unwell. The impact of stress depends on the severity and duration of the pressure and one’s own vulnerability.
Absenteeism
Stress is best escaped by absenting oneself from the stressful situation. Absenteeism is thus a common sign that a person is under stress. Part of the psychological dynamics underlying common colds, alcoholism, and minor psychosomatic disorders is the fact that these problems create conditions that legitimise being absent. Even the light-headedness and dizziness that characterize mild attacks of anxiety are sufficient to keep one home from a stressful job situation. However, the problems that caused stress in the first place are still likely to exist when he/she returns.
Errors in concentration and judgment
People experiencing stress make frequent errors in attention and judgment. Most of us can probably recall locking ourselves out of cars or homes, or losing keys, while under the influence of heavy stressors. An explanation has been provided of the physiology behind such errors. (Marks, 1967) We know, first of all, that stressors bring about a heightened amount of bodily chemical reactions, including the secretion of hormones from the endocrine glands. Second, the adoption energy extracted by a higher than normal level of endocrine activity must be replenished sooner or later, and the involuntary “let-down” which seems to be necessary for such replenishment may show up in such trivial, apparently unrelated symptoms.
Become over-emotional
Under sufficiently severe stress, people regresses to a more primitive level of functioning and often lose control of the situation. A person may refer to outbursts of temper, excessive worry of feeling upset as a reaction to stress, and to allowing themselves to remain in this emotional state. In this state, people may feel he is on a knife-edge, or in crisis, and he is likely to transmit this tension to others. The result can be an impulsive decision (such as firing competence employees to squeeze out additional profits) that overcompensates in terms of the reality of the situation.
Become obsessional about achieving routine work
Many people expend time and energies on routine or unimportant tasks while crucial problems go unresolved. Crucial problems are anxiety provoking and stressful; making decision about office landscaping is less anxiety provoking than is dealing with creditors. People looking for a behavioral escape from the stresses of dealing with important matters can find example trivial meetings to attend and unimportant memos to read and sort.
Lower job satisfaction
Considerable evidence has been presented that job pressure and job satisfaction are negatively related. Kahn and his colleagues (1970) found that individuals who perceived conflicting role and duties being demanded by their positions were less satisfied with their jobs. People who work under pressure are less enthusiastic about their work, and said that most of the time they have to force themselves to work. Therefore, their work performances are worse than the people work without stress.
Burnout: A stress-related problem
Stress is often the stepping-stone of burnout. If a person experience distress for a prolonged period of time, he may suffer the amorphous condition described as burnout. Pines and Aronson (1981, p15) note that burnout is “characterized by physical depletion, by feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, by emotional drain, and by the development of negative self-concept and negative attitudes toward work, life, and other people…(it is a) sense of distress, discontent, and failure in the quest for ideals”. Thus it can be argued that burnout can serves as a stressor. If a person feels depleted, apathetic, and washed up, as a consequence he will experience stress.
Many people experience stress somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, when they begin to realize that their accomplishments have fallen far short of their aspirations. Referred to as the mid-career crisis, the condition is also related to the physiological slowing down and other life changes that occur in midlife. However, burnout is a much more specific problem. Burnout comes about when one’s anticipated rewards from working with people are not forthcoming. And it can take place at any point in a career.
The management of stress
Although different employees perceive stress differently, management can carry out actions that will be perceived by most of the employees affected as generating a healthy amount of stress. Here are several general and specific strategies useful in reducing and preventing stress.
Practice good management
Many of the sources of stress described above could be prevented by an appeal to generally accepted management principles. Axiomatic to good personnel management is the placement of people in position for which they are neither over – nor under-qualified. Several of the sources of stress described earlier result from selection and placement errors. Mention was made of the stress that results when people are given assignments better suited to the qualifications of technicians or clerks. Adherence to elemental principles of selection would have avoided this problem and have eliminated a source of stress. (Howell, 1976)
Participative decision making (PDM)
Some employees find it stressful to be left out of important decisions that directly affect the welfare. Therefore PDM is another effective stress management strategy. (Cooper, 1980) The underlying psychology to PDM as a stress reducer is perhaps that many people feel better when they believe that they are in control of their jobs. Participating in decision making is one way of gaining more control.
Clarify role prescriptions
Much organizational stress is created by role problems. Clarifying role prescriptions (a concept that includes expectations and job descriptions) can eliminate the role conflict and role ambiguity. To be more specific, the managers should make it clear to employees that what is expected of them, by whom, and when.
Improve the organizational climate
A macro approach to reducing and preventing stress is to create a healthy organizational climate – the general “feel” or psychological atmosphere of an organization. One key dimension of organizational climate for stress management is identification – alienation. Creating an organizational climate where employees at all levels feel more identified than alienated is much like practicing good management. Paternalistic practices, for example giving paycheck early around holiday time or dispensing free turkeys, may contribute to this feeling of identification with the organization.
Employee assistance programs
A comprehensive approach to stress management is the Employee Assistance Programs (Taylor, 1969). Although these programs vary in format, their general purpose is to help employees who have personal problems that may harm job performance and lower attendance. Problems such as alcohol or drug dependency, financial problems, family problems, and physical health problems are both produced by stress and cause stress. To the extent that the employee is given help in dealing with these problems, he/she can break the cycle of ever-increasing stress.
Encouraging individual awareness and physical fitness
An effective global strategy is for organization to encourage employees to take care of themselves physically and mentally. Such measures include company-paid physicals, relaxation workshops, exercise facilities, and the sponsorship of stress management seminars. Few people today would deny the importance of stress management, but they may need constant reminders to translate this general awareness into individual action.
Choosing the best method for yourself
There are many specific techniques, methods, and general strategies have been developed to help people cope with the adverse consequences of stress. Such as regular exercise, healthy diet, yoga, meditation, etc. There is no one best way for coping with particular stress. Therefore, the coping methods have to be tried until people find one that is effective.
Conclusion
Stress and its negative consequences are a major concern to organizations today. Stress is a general physiological and psychological reaction to an external force or stressor. Its purpose is to help the individual cope effectively with the environment. And the sources of stress are various which can be divided into organizational/environmental stresses (factors intrinsic to a particular job, role in the organization, relationships at work, career development, organizational structure and climate) and Home – work interface stresses (family problems, life crises, financial difficulties, conflict of personal beliefs with those of the company, daily hassles, and the conflict of company with family demands, etc.). Therefore, the consequences of stress could be positive or negative for different people. In this essay, I mainly focus on the negative ones, such as physical and mental illnesses, absenteeism, errors in attention and judgment, over-emotional type of behavior, become obsessional about achieving routine work, lower job satisfaction, and burnout. However, understanding the causes and consequences of occupational stress is only the stepping-stone of stress reduction. In the last part of the essay, I have provided several general and specific strategies useful in stress management, which is the main purpose of this essay – help organizations reducing and preventing occupational stress.
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