Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
a.
B. Organizational Approaches
demands—can be controlled by management.
2. Strategies to consider include improved employee selection and job
placement, training, realistic goal-setting, redesign of jobs, increased
employee involvement, improved organizational communication, employee
sabbaticals, and corporate wellness programs.
tend to be more prone to stress.
c. Selection and placement decisions should take these facts into
consideration.
hired are often at risk for experiencing heightened levels of stress
associated with uncertainty and role ambiguity, which can in turn affect
their chances of being hired.
lessen job strain in these situations.
3. Goal Setting. We discussed goal-setting in Chapter 7.
a. Individuals perform better when they have specific and challenging goals
stressors as challenges rather than hindrances.
c. Furthermore, the type of goal matters: when given a developmental,
target goal.
d. Personality of the employee matters as well: goal-setting and goal-focused
leadership tend to be more successful in reducing stress for the
4. Redesigning Jobs. Redesigning jobs to give employees more responsibility,
more meaningful work, more autonomy, and increased feedback can reduce
activities and lessen dependence on others.
a. But as we noted in our discussion of work design, not all employees want
enriched jobs.
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responsibility and increased specialization.
c. If individuals prefer structure and routine, reducing skill variety should
also reduce uncertainties and stress levels.
recovery experiences and increase stress.
5. Employee Involvement. Role stress is detrimental to a large extent because
employees feel uncertain about goals, expectations, how they’ll be evaluated,
and the like.
reduce role stress.
b. Thus, managers should consider increasing employee involvement in
decision making, because evidence clearly shows that increases in
employee involvement and empowerment practices reduce psychological
strain.
6. Organizational Communication. Increasing formal organizational
ambiguity and role conflict.
a. Given the importance that perceptions play in moderating the
opportunities at work is an interpretation and that interpretation can be
7. Employee Sabbaticals. Some employees need an occasional escape from the
frenetic pace of their work. Companies including Genentech, the Container
Store, Recreational Equipment (REI), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC),
consume time beyond normal vacations.
b. Proponents say they can revive and rejuvenate workers who might
otherwise be headed for burnout.
8. Wellness Programs. Our final suggestion is organizationally supported
wellness programs.
a. These typically provide workshops to help people quit smoking, control
alcohol use, lose weight, eat better, and develop a regular exercise
program; they focus on the employee’s total physical and mental
condition.
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b. Some help employees improve their psychological health as well.
c. A meta-analysis of 36 programs designed to reduce stress (including
wellness programs) showed that interventions to help employees reframe
stressful situations and use active coping strategies appreciably reduced
stress levels.
d. Wellness programs that help employees focus on developing the “good”
kind of stress and becoming challenged through their work have also been
introduced.
e. Most wellness programs assume employees need to take personal
responsibility for their physical and mental health and that the
organization is merely a means to that end.
II. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. The need for change has been implied throughout this text.
B. For instance, think about attitudes, motivation, work teams, communication,
leadership, organizational structures, human resource practices, and
organizational cultures.
C. Change was an integral part in our discussion of each.
1. If environments were perfectly static, if employees’ skills and abilities were
always up to date and incapable of deteriorating, and if tomorrow were always
relevance to managers.
D. But the real world is turbulent, requiring organizations and their members to
undergo dynamic change if they are to perform at competitive levels.
below:
1. Consider that, as a manager, you are a change agent in your organization.
the organization’s change culture.
3. Some stress is good.
rather than hindrances that prevent employees from doing their jobs
effectively.
4. You can help alleviate harmful workplace stress for your employees by
accurately matching work-loads to employees, providing employees with
stress-coping resources, and responding to their concerns.
5. You can identify extreme stress in your employees when performance
declines, turnover increases, health-related absenteeism increases, and
engagement declines.
a. However, by the time these symptoms are visible, it may be too late to be
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helpful, so stay alert for early indicators and be proactive.
Career OBjectives
How Can I Bring My Team’s Overall Stress Level
Down?
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify the potential environmental, organizational, and personal sources of stress at
work and the role of the individual and cultural differences
Learning Outcome: Discuss the effects of stress in the workplace and methods of stress management
AASCB: Diverse and multicultural work environments; Reflective thinking
My coworkers and I are under a lot of pressure because we have a huge deadline coming
up. We’re working a lot of extra hours, and tensions are starting to ramp up to arguments.
Is there any way I can get my team to chill out? —Hakim
Dear Hakim:
It sounds like you’re facing some of the core issues that produce stress at work: high
demands, critical outcomes, and time pressure. There’s no question tempers can start to
flare under these conditions. While it may not even be desirable to get your team to
relax, or chill out as you say, lowering your team’s aggregate stress level will increase
recommit to the team:
• To help minimize infighting, get the group to focus on a common goal. Shared
objectives are one of the most effective ways to reduce conflict in times of stress, and
they remind everyone that cooperation is key.
• Review what the team has done and what steps toward the goal remain. When the team
will help everyone recharge and focus.
Remember that minimizing team stress shouldn’t happen through lowering standards and
accepting lower quality work, but by reducing counterproductive organizational
behavior. A positive work environment with high member engagement will do a lot to
move the group forward. A combination of focus, progress, and perspective will
Management Journal 57 (2014): 405–21.
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Myth or Science?
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify the-physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms of stress at work
Learning Outcome: Discuss the effects of stress in the workplace and methods of stress management
AASCB: Reflective thinking
This is false. Individuals who do not get enough sleep are unable to perform well on the
drowsy drivers. More than 160 people on Air India Flight 812 from Dubai to Mangalore
were killed when pilot Zlatko Glusica awoke from a nap and, suffering from sleep inertia,
overshot the runway in India’s third-deadliest air crash.
Sleeplessness is affecting the performance of millions of workers. According to a recent
solutions, which may be part of the reason law enforcement organizations,
SuperBowl-winning football teams, and half of the Fortune 500 companies employ
“fatigue management specialists” as performance consultants. Meanwhile, managers and
employees increasingly take prescription sleep aids, attend sleep labs, and consume
achieve alertness, which can make users jittery before the effect wears off and leave them
exhausted.
When you’re working hard, it’s easy to consider using sleep hours to get the job done,
and to think that the stress and adrenaline from working will keep you alert. It’s also easy
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Sources: M. J. Breus, “Insomnia Could Kill You—By Accident,” The Huffington Post, May 9, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
dr-michael-j-breus/insomnia-could-kill-you-byaccident_b_7235264.html; D. K. Randall, “Decoding the Science of Sleep,” The Wall
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into groups of three to five students.
it is likely to negatively affect performance.
deprivation in the workplace.
5. Finally, ask the groups to share their findings in a class discussion.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
(http://www.wimba.com/solutions/higher-education/wimba_classroom_for_higher_education),
(http://go.secondlife.com/landing/education/) and
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-k
e-anna-skipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
An Ethical Choice
Managers and Employee Stress during Organizational
Change
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Describe the individual and organizational approaches to managing stress at work
Learning Outcome: Discuss the effects of stress in the workplace and methods of stress management
AACSB: Ethical understanding and reasoning; Reflective thinking
When organizations are in a state of change, employees feel the stress. In fact, a recent
study indicated that job pressures, often due to downsizing and other organizational
changes, are the second leading cause of stress. Dealing with that stress has long been in
the domain of workers, who could turn to constructive (counselors, health professionals,
support networks) or destructive (alcohol, gossip, counterproductive work behaviors)
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options as coping mechanisms. Employees who couldn’t cope with stress suffered job
burnout and headed to the unemployment line.
Beneficent employers provided employee assistance programs (EAP) through
subcontracted counselors or in-house HR departments to counsel employees dealing with
stress. Managers simply steered individuals toward these resources when workplace
problems indicated a need for intervention. This help often arrived too late to mitigate the
negative outcomes of stress such as lost productivity and burnout—and sometimes too
late to save the employee’s job. Research suggests that continually occurring job
stressors, such as when organizations are in the midst of change, reduce employee
engagement because workers are deprived of recovery periods. Employee stress thus
needs to be addressed proactively at the manager level if it is to be effective, even before
there are negative work outcomes.
On the one hand, managers are responsible for maximizing productivity and realize that
organizations increase profitability when fewer employees perform increased work. On
employees engaged, and cutting non-workforce costs to maintain profitability. Smaller
methods, such as teaching employees stress reduction techniques and creating a
“greenery room” for a nature retreat from the office environment, can also be helpful.
Managers must make the ethical choice between spending more money now on labor
employee stress.
As research increasingly indicates, when employees react to stress, they and their
organizations suffer the consequences. Managers must, therefore, consider their
opportunity to help alleviate the stress before it’s too late.
Sources: E. Frauenheim, “Stressed & Pressed,” Workforce Management (January 2012), pp. 18–22; J. B. Oldroyd and S. S. Morris,
Psychology 97 (2012), pp. 842–853.
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into teams of three to five students each.
2. Ask the student teams to share information with each other about stress they have
experienced in school. They might mention such things as project deadlines,
their stress management skills.
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5. Ask the teams to report to the class on what they believe to be good approaches to
managing stress.
Teaching Notes
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-k
e-anna-skipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
MyLab Management
Personal Inventory Assessments
Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale
MyLab Management
Try It!
Multichapter Simulation: Change
How well can you tolerate the ambiguity that change brings? Take this PIA to learn more
about your tolerance level for this challenge.
MyLab Management
Watch It!
East Haven Fire Department: Managing Stress
to complete the video exercise.
Point/Counterpoint
Companies Should Encourage Stress Reduction
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Describe the individual and organizational approaches to managing stress at work
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Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Point
Companies make substantial investments in their employees, so the health and well-being
of the workforce is a central concern. One of the most direct ways to provide assistance
to employees is to engage in one of the stress-reduction interventions described in this
chapter.
result in very expensive medical treatments. These medical treatments, in turn, increase
employer health insurance expenses.
Reductions in employee stress can facilitate job performance. Employees who are
overburdened have difficulty concentrating, can lose energy and motivation at work, and
upon turnover are incurred.
Stress reduction programs also have an ethical component. The workplace generates a
great deal of stress for many employees, so employers have a certain responsibility to
offset its negative consequences. Stress reduction programs are a direct way to help
employees feel better. Finally, when employers show concern for employees by helping
reduce stress, employees feel more committed.
Counterpoint
expected returns on investment in wellness programs have failed to materialize. And the
time employees spend in stress reduction interventions is time they spend not working.
Another problem is that stress reduction programs are invasive. Should your boss or
other individuals in the workplace tell you how you’re supposed to feel? Many stress
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A final concern is that it is too hard to draw the line between stress from work and
general life stress. A company’s stress reduction program may try to target problems of
181481/company-wellness-programs-bust.aspx; A. Frakt and A. E. Carroll, “Do Wellness Programs Work? Usually Not,” New York
Times, September 11, 2014, ttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/upshot/do-workplace-wellnessprograms-work-usually-not.html.
Class Exercise
1. Choose two teams of three to five students each. (The rest of the class will act as a
jury.)
Point or Counterpoint.
3. Create a controlled debate, giving each side up to 8 minutes to make its case, 3
minutes to cross-examine the other side, 5 minutes in class to prepare a 3-to-5
minute rebuttal, and then a final 1-minute closing argument.
4. Have the remainder of the class vote on who made the stronger case.
positions.
6. This will take approximately 45-60 minutes.
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