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a.
II. Stress at Work
A. Introduction
1. Exhibit 18-7 shows work is, for most people, the most important source of
stress in life.
B. What Is Stress?
1. Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an
opportunity, constraint, or demand related to what he/she desires and for
which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important.
2. Stress is not necessarily bad in and of itself.
at or near their maximum.
3. Recently, researchers have argued that challenge stressors—or stressors
associated with workload, pressure to complete tasks, and time urgency—
job responsibilities).
a. Evidence suggests that both challenge and hindrance stressors lead to
strain, although hindrance stressors lead to more.
performance than hindrance stressors.
ii. Hindrance stressors, on the other hand, appear to have more of a
negative effect on safety compliance and participation, employee
engagement, job satisfaction, organizational commitment,
performance, and withdrawal than do challenge stressors.
of stress exists.
i. It appears that time pressure and learning demands both act as
challenge stressors that can help employees learn and thrive in
organizations.
4. Hindrances serve to block goal attainment (e.g., a lack of resources to
complete your job), and should be distinguished from threats, which can result
demands.
a. Demands are responsibilities, pressures, obligations, and uncertainties
individuals face in the workplace.
to resolve the demands.
c. To the extent you can apply resources to the demands on you—such as
being prepared, placing an event into perspective, or obtaining social
support—you will feel less stress.
demands when demands and resources match.
i. If emotional demands are stressing you, having emotional resources in
the form of social support is especially important.
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increasing it.
5. Allostasis. All this may give you the impression that individuals are seeking a
steady state in which demands perfectly match resources. While early research
By allostasis, we work to find stability by changing our behaviors and
attitudes.
6. So, much like organizations are in a constant state of change and flux, we
C. Potential Sources of Stress
stressors: environmental, organizational, and personal.
2. Environmental factors.
organization.
b. Changes in the business cycle create economic uncertainties.
of time.
3. Organizational factors
a. Pressures to avoid errors or complete tasks in a limited time period, work
a few examples.
b. Task demands are factors related to a person’s job.
i. They include the design of the individual’s job (autonomy, task variety,
layout.
c. Role demands relate to pressures that are a function of the role an
individual plays in an organization.
satisfy.
ii. Role overload is experienced when the employee is expected to do
more than time permits.
understood.
d. Interpersonal demands are pressures created by other employees.
i. A rapidly growing body of research has also shown that negative
coworker and supervisor behaviors, including fights, bullying,
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strongly related to stress at work.
4. Personal factors
and inherent personality characteristics.
b. National surveys consistently show that people hold family and personal
relationships dear.
financial resources.
5. Stressors are additive.
a. When we review stressors individually, it’s easy to overlook that stress is
an additive phenomenon—it builds up.
camel’s back.
c. To appraise the total amount of stress an individual is under, we have to
sum up his or her opportunity stresses, constraint stresses, and demand
stresses.
D. Individual Differences
1. Four individual difference variables moderate the relationship between
potential stressors and experienced stress: perception, job experience, social
support, and personality.
a. Perception: Moderates the relationship between a potential stress
who focus on immediate circumstances.
ii. Stress potential doesn’t lie in objective conditions; it lies in an
employee’s interpretation of those conditions.
b. Job experience: The evidence indicates that experience on the job tends to
be negatively related to work stress.
i. Two explanations:
with stress.
c. Social support: Relationships with coworkers or supervisors can buffer the
impact of stress.
i. Social support acts as a palliative, mitigating the negative effects of
even high-strain jobs.
d. Personality trait
neuroticism, discussed in Chapter 5.
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ii. As you might expect, neurotic individuals are more prone to
experience psychological strain.
resolve them.
e. Workaholism is another personal characteristic related to stress levels.
i. Workaholics are people obsessed with their work; they put in an
enormous number of hours, think about work even when not working,
and create additional work responsibilities to satisfy an inner
compulsion to work more.
compulsively.
v. Workaholics are not necessarily more productive than other
employees, despite their extreme efforts.
vi. The strain of putting in such a high level of work effort eventually
begins to wear on the workaholic, leading to higher levels of work-life
conflict and psychological burnout.
E. Cultural Differences
across cultures.
2. One study revealed that whereas U.S. employees were stressed by a lack of
training.
a. It doesn’t appear that personality effects on stress are different across
cultures, however.
3. One study of employees in Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom, Israel, and
stress equally well across countries.
4. A study of 5,270 managers from 20 countries found individuals from
individualistic countries such as the United States, Canada, and the United
Kingdom experienced higher levels of stress due to work interfering with
family than did individuals from collectivist countries like Asia and Latin
America.
a. The authors proposed that this may occur because, in collectivist cultures,
working extra hours is seen as a sacrifice to help the family, whereas in
individualistic cultures, work is seen as a means to personal achievement
that takes away from the family.
F. Consequences of Stress at Work
1. Physiological symptoms
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a. Most early concern with stress was directed at physiological symptoms
because most researchers were specialists in the health and medical
sciences.
i. Their work led to the conclusion that stress could create changes in
metabolism, increase heart and breathing rates and blood pressure,
bring on headaches, and induce heart attacks.
ii. Evidence now clearly suggests stress may have harmful physiological
effects, including backaches, headaches, eye strain, sleep disturbances,
dizziness, fatigue, loss of appetite, and gastrointestinal problems.
b. A study of hourly care works showed that negative interactions with their
supervisors lead to heightened blood pressure and poor recovery from
work. Still another study conducted with Canadian day-shift workers
found that higher levels of psychological demands and overcommitment
were related to significantly higher levels of cortisol variation.
c. Many other studies have shown similar results linking work stress to a
variety of indicators of poor health.
d. The effects of stress and strain on sleep (see also Myth or Science?) have
piqued the interests of researchers in particular, with the majority of
studies suggesting that it has a moderate impact on job attitudes
(especially when it comes to sleep quality over quantity).
e. A variety of different types of work-related stressors have been shown to
impair sleep quality, including unfinished work tasks and social stressors
college students.
f. Additional research suggests that beyond the obvious solution of getting
more, good quality sleep, physical activity and recovery experiences with
your social support groups can help.
2. Psychological symptoms
stress and dissatisfaction.
3. Behavioral symptoms
a. Research on behavior and stress has been conducted across several
countries and over time, and the relationships appear relatively consistent.
b. Behavior-related stress symptoms include reductions in productivity,
disorders.
c. A significant amount of research has investigated the stress–performance
relationship.
d. The most widely studied pattern of this relationship is the inverted U.
(Exhibit 18-9)
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ii. Individuals then often perform their tasks better, more intensely, or
more rapidly.
result in lower performance.
e. In spite of the popularity and intuitive appeal of the inverted U model, it
doesn’t get a lot of empirical support.
i. So we should be careful of assuming it accurately depicts the
stress–performance relationship.
related to job performance.
h. There is also evidence that challenge stress improves job performance in a
supportive work environment, whereas hindrance stress reduces job
performance in all work environments.
III. Managing Stress
A. Introduction
them.
2. Employees, however, are likely to perceive even low levels of stress as
undesirable.
a. It’s not unlikely, therefore, for employees and management to have
different notions of what constitutes an acceptable level of stress on the
job.
B. Individual approaches
1. An employee can take personal responsibility for reducing stress levels.
2. Individual strategies that have proven effective include time-management
techniques, increased physical exercise, relaxation training, and expanded
social support networks.
3. Many people manage their time poorly.
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(b) Prioritizing activities by importance and urgency.
focusing efforts on immediate goals and boosting motivation even in
the face of tasks that are less desirable.
c. Physicians have recommended noncompetitive physical exercise, such as
aerobics, walking, jogging, swimming, and riding a bicycle, as a way to
deal with excessive stress levels.
work-related levels of stress.
d. Individuals can also teach themselves to reduce tension through relaxation
techniques such as meditation, mindfulness, and deep breathing.
i. The objective is to reach a state of deep physical relaxation, in which
you focus all your energy on release of muscle tension.
greater if relaxation techniques are employed.
f. Even very short micro-breaks have been demonstrated to have an effect on
employee stress relief and energy.
(a) You might be tempted to think that complete detachment from
substantial decrease in stress.
g. As we have noted, friends, family, or work colleagues can provide an
outlet when stress levels become excessive. Expanding your social support
network provides someone to hear your problems and offer a more
objective perspective on a stressful situation than your own.
mutually beneficial.
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