Материал: Management-and-Organization-Behavior

Individual Stressors

At individual level, there are many factors that contribute to stress, most of which are role related. Role related stressors include conditions where employees have difficulty in understanding, reconciling, or performing the various roles in their lives. The four main role-related stressors are role conflict, role ambiguity, workload, and task control.

Role Conflict

Role conflict occurs when people face competing demands. Interrole conflict exists when employees have two roles to play which are conflicting. For example, people in supervisory cadre in organizations face this kind of conflict as they have to meet the expectations of management on the one hand and the expectations of workers on the other. Role conflict also occurs when an employee receives contradictory messages from two superiors about how to perform a task or work with organizational values and work obligations that are incompatible with his or her personal values. The working women often experience role conflict between their job responsibilities and family obligations.

Role Ambiguity

Role ambiguity exists when employees are uncertain about their job duties, performance expectations, level of authority, and other job conditions. This ambiguity tends to occur when people enter new situations like joining as a manager in an organization accepting a foreign assignment. This is because they are uncertain about task and social expectations that go with the new positions.

Workload

Workload is a well-known job stressor. But you remember that work under-load, receiving too little work or having tasks that do not sufficiently use your talents, is also a possible stressor. Now -a-days, employees have either too much to do in too little time, or they work too many hours on the job. Long work hours may lead to unhealthy lifestyles, which, in turn, cause heart disease, back pain or eye sight. For instance, work overload is a problem in most of the software organizations in India

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leading to health problems.

Occupational Differences and Stress

Several studies have attempted to identify which jobs have more stressors than others. You may note that one problem with rating occupations in terms of their stress levels is that a particular occupation may have considerably different tasks and job environments in different organizations and societies. The job of a police officer may be less stressful in a small town than in a large city where crime rates are higher and the organizational hierarchy is more formal.

Another important point for you to remember is that a major stressor to one person may be insignificant to another. We cannot conclude that people in high-stress occupations actually experience higher stress than people in other occupations. Some jobs expose people to more serious stressors, but careful selection and training can result in stress levels no different from those experienced by people in other jobs.

Individual Differences and Stress

You have already understood that individuals differ in their personality characteristics. These differences determine the stress levels experienced by the people. Two people may be exposed to the same sources of stress like meeting a deadline for achieving a goal. However, in terms of stress levels they may be different.

Some individuals are more prone to stress than others. It may be on account of demographic differences and cognitive differences. Demographic differences are related to age, health, education and occupation. Age causes stress because as people go through the life stages, certain things are expected of them. As they grow, they have to shoulder greater responsibilities. Health is another factor influencing stress. Healthy people can cope with stress more than sick people. Education is also important in this context. If the person is not educated, he feels unworthy and that may cause stress. Coming to occupation, it is needless to say that every occupation involves some kind of stress or other.

Cognitive differences are satisfaction, locus of control and type of personality. Persons having greater urge for satisfaction work hard and try

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to excel others. This may lead to overwork and also burnout. Locus of control refers to one’s feeling of the extent to which he is able to control the surrounding world. The greater the person’s perception of control over the environment, the lesser is his proneness to stress. Another cognitive factor is personality. As explained earlier, there are two types of personalities – Type A and Type B. Type A personalities are involved in struggles to get more and achieve more. Therefore, they are more prone for stress. On the other hand, Type B personalities are more patient and easy going. They are interested in achieving goals but follow different ways for the purpose. As a result, they are less prone for stress.

Consequences of Stress

Stress has serious consequences on health as well as job performance. Stress results in a variety of physiological, psychological, and behavioral consequences.

Physiological Consequences

Stress takes its toll on the human body. Studies have found that students who are anxious about their exams are more susceptible to colds and other illnesses. As you are aware, many people experience tension or headache due to stress. Others get muscle pain and related back problems. These physiological ailments are attributed to muscle contractions that occur when people are exposed to stressors.

Psychological Consequences

Stress results in various psychological consequences like job dissatisfaction, moodiness, and depression. Emotional fatigue is another psychological consequence of stress which is called job burnout.

Job Burnout

Burnout is the process of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment resulting from prolonged exposure to stress. The term “job burnout” was not known 50 years ago; but it’s a much talked about phenomenon these days. Job burnout is a complex process that includes the dynamics of stress, coping strategies, and stress

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consequences. Burnout is caused by excessive demands made on people who serve or frequently interact with others. Interpersonal and rolerelated stressors cause burnout.

There are three components of job burnout. The first one is emotional exhaustion, which plays a key role in the burnout process. It is characterized by lack of energy and a feeling that your emotional resources are exhausted. Emotional exhaustion is sometimes called compassion fatigue because the employee no longer feels able to give as much support and caring to clients.

The second one is depersonalization, which is identified by the treatment of others as objects rather than people. Employees subjected to burnout become emotionally detached from clients and cynical about the organization. This detachment reaches the point of callousness far beyond the level of detachment normally required in execution of tasks, more particularly in service sector. Depersonalization can be seen when employees strictly follow rules and regulations rather than try to understand the client’s needs and search for a mutually acceptable solution.

The third component of job burnout is reduced personal accomplishment. It refers to the decline in one’s competence and success. In other words, the person’s self-efficacy declines. In these situations, employees develop a sense of learned helplessness, as they no longer believe that they make a difference.

Behavioral Consequences

When stress becomes distress, job performance comes down and workplace accidents increase. High stress levels impair your ability to remember information, make effective decisions, and take appropriate actions. You probably experience this kind of distress in exams. You are likely to forget important information and commit mistakes.

Overstressed employees also tend to absent from work frequently. This is because stress makes people sick. Sometimes absenteeism is used as a stress coping mechanism. Normally, we react to stress through fight or flight. Absenteeism is a form of flight-temporarily withdrawing from the stressful situation so that we find time to re-energize ourselves.

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Sometimes workplace aggression may be the consequence of stress. Aggression represents the fight reaction to stress. In its mildest form, employees engage in verbal conflict. They are not likely to empathize with co-workers. Occasionally, it may lead to more dangerous levels of workplace hostility.

Managing Work-Related Stress

In managing work related stress, both the organization and the employees have joint responsibility. Stress management often includes several strategies. These are shown in the following diagram.

Figure 18.2: Stress Management Strategies

Remove the Stressor

An important way companies can effectively manage stress is by removing the stressors that cause unnecessary tension and job burnout. Other stress management strategies may keep employees. “Stress-fit”, but they don’t solve the fundamental causes of stress.

In managing stress, organizations have to investigate the main causes of stress in their workplace. For example, you may ask employees to complete confidential questionnaires to identify when and how they experience stress. You may remember that one of the most powerful ways to remove workplace stressors is to empower employees so that they

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