Stress management in the work organization.

By
Udeagha F.C. (M.Sc) Clinical Psychology
&

Okoroafor C.O. (B.Sc) Psychology

Abstract

It has been greatly observed that the biggest problem plaguing employees in the
workplace today is stress. This has also gone a long way to affect employee health
as well as organizational advancement in the production of quality output. This
article is to examine these stressors, their effects and also to proffer preventive
measures as well as methods of intervention.

Workplace stress is the harmful physical and emotional response that occurs
when there is a poor match between job demands and the capabilities, resources,
or needs of the worker. A variety of factors contribute to workplace stress such as
negative workload, isolation, extensive hours worked, toxic work environments,
lack of autonomy, difficult relationship among coworkers and management,
management bullying, harassment and lack of opportunities or motivation to
advance in one’s skill level. A large amount of research has been conducted across
many disciplines on workplace stress. Researchers have examined the causes,
symptoms and consequences of workplace, as well as interventions designed to
reduce its effect on individuals.

Due to the many issues related to stress, researchers have proposed conceptual
models of stress designed to integrate a diverse array of research findings. The
most useful model is been developed by Kahn & Byosiere (1992). Research on the
organizational antecedents to stress is generally directed toward understanding
how broad-based and abstract factors induce stress. Brenner and Mooney (1983)
and also Sandra Costa in her PHD thesis examined the relationship between
economic conditions and job insecurity and social indicators of health. From
Brenner & Mooney’s examination of variables in what was called “lagged
relationship”, change in economic conditions produce changes in health several
years later. They examined the relationship between economic change and
mortality in nine countries: Australia, Canada, England, Denmark, Finland, France,
Germany, Sweden, and the United States. Unemployment and business failures
predicted death from heart disease in eight of the countries, with a one-year to
four –year lag, with controls for such variables as alcohol consumption.

What are stressors?

Stressors are seen as stimuli that are generated on the job and have negative
consequences, physical or psychological, for significant proportions of people
exposed to them. Kahn & Byosiere (1992) reduced stressors to two major types:
Task content and role properties. Task content includes such dimensions as
simplicity-complexity and monotony- variety. Role properties refer to the social
aspect of the job and include supervisory relationships and role conflict. Research
findings have demonstrated relationship between ill health (mostly heart disease)
and jobs that are characterized by highly repetitive, monotonous work and
sustained vigilance. Shift work also produces stress. Ill health has been associated
with working in air-conditioned offices, a phenomenon referred to as the “sick
building syndrome.” Hedge et al (1992) reported sick building syndrome produces
the following symptoms: sensory irritation; skin irritation; neurotoxic effects such
as headache, nausea, and drowsiness and hyperactivity reactions such as runny
nose, runny eyes, and asthma-like symptom. Research has demonstrated that sick
building syndrome is not caused solely by indoor pollutants but may be related to
the electromagnetic fields from video displays terminals, which attract irritating
fibers and particles to the screens. The syndrome may be related to respiratory
ailments associated with recirculated air. Soine et al (1995) suggest that women
are more susceptible than men to sick building syndrome. However, it is with
regards to role properties that most organizational stressors have been identified.
Role conflict refers to perceptual differences regarding the content of a person’s
role or the relative importance of its elements. Such differences occur between
the individual and other people in a work group who do not hold the same role
expectations. Role conflict generates negative affect, tension, and often physical
symptoms on the part of the focal person. Conflict among the demands of
different roles filled by the same individual can also occur. Such conflict has been
reported mostly in occupations such as the police, military and teaching , where
the compartmentalization of time between work and family cannot be easily or
dependably arranged. Role overload is a variant of role conflict in which conflict is
experienced as a necessity to compromise quantity, time schedule or quality. For
example, consider a supervisor who says to an employee, “I want this report
finished by tomorrow and I want it done well.” Here there is the conflict of time
deadline and a well done work.

Human beings react differently to stressors that are objectively the same.
Stressors encountered in the work organization are often embedded in complex
situations. Lazarus & Folkman (1984) proposed two processes of appraisal which
are; primary appraisal and secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal consists of the
determinants of a stimulus (which can either be a person, event, and situation) is
positive, negative or neither in its implications for well being. Secondary appraisal
is a judgment about what can be done to minimize damage or maximize gain. The
appraisal process may be cyclical as the individual takes into account a previous
coping strategy or some new information.
Researchers have identified three major categories of possible response to stress,
they are: physiological, psychological and behavioural. The physiological response
is concerned with the medical health of the employee. Stress can generate over
time health issues like cardiovascular symptoms such as increased blood pressure
and cholesterol level, biochemical measures such as catecholamines and uric acid
and gastrointestinal symptoms such as peptic ulcers. Faster heart rates have been
reported under conditions of role conflict, ambiguity regarding future
developments on the job and overall reported stress at work. The level of
catecholamines changes rapidly and responds to a variety of stimuli.
Unpredictability at work, loss of control over pace and method, and distracting
noise has all been associated with increased levels of catecholamines. For
example, air traffic controllers show significant associations between daily levels
of cortisol secretion and work variables such as load and pace. Research on
gastrointestinal symptoms has shown less consistent results compared with the
other two types of physiological response.

Psychological responses to stress at work mostly involve affective variables, with

job dissatisfaction being common. Stress has been found to influence or trigger
more intense and aroused affective states such as anger, frustration, hostility and
irritation. More passive, but perhaps no less negative responses include boredom,
burnout, fatigue, and depressed mood. The psychological effect of work-related
stress has been found to produce lowered self confidence and self esteem. Kets
de Vries (1999) proposed that work-induced stress can produce a condition in
which individuals experience little or no pleasure. Instead there is a feeling of
emotional numbness. Kets de Vries refers to such individuals as “organizational
sleepwalkers.” A typical example of this happened to be a co-writer of this article
who due to his personality and emotional disposition was concerned more about
other people than himself. As a result he kept on overworking himself as a lecturer
in the university. He never had time for himself to relax and build up his personal
life, as such he would work from morning till night and even continue same in his
house. Of course as a result he had a poor feeding habit. The stress had been
building up over time and finally it contributed to his death. This explains the
research findings earlier stated that ‘there is a relationship between ill health
(mostly heart disease) and jobs that are monotonous in nature. Just like Kets de
Vries rightly stated, he experienced emotional numbness and he was a typical
organizational sleepwalker.

Behavioural response to stress at work has not been studied as much as

psychological responses. However, five broad categories of behavioural have
been examined: the work role (job performance, accidents drug use as work),
anti-social behaviour at work (theft, purposeful damage), flight from the job
(absenteeism, turnover), degradation of other life roles (spouse and child abuse),
and self damaging behaviors (alcohol and drugs). Some of the findings have not
been studied extensively (such as drug use at work) and may be underreported
for reasons of social acceptability or the avoidance of punishment (Muchinsky;
2003). Research by Dompierre and lavoie (1994) indicate that work-generated
stressors have behavioural effects that are manifested both on the job and away
from it.

The consequences of stress typically affect the performance of the individual on

the job and in other life roles (whether it is induced as a result of job insecurity or
organizational stressor. Other ramifications involve the health of the individual, as
affected by prolonged exposure to physical stressors and through responses to
recurrent psychological stressors. Researchers (Alfredsson & Theorell, 1983) in
Sweden, for example, developed standardized measures of job characteristics for
118 occupational groups on a nationwide basis. The findings showed that men in
jobs characterized by high demand and low control were at twice the risk for
heart attacks compared with men in the same age range (40-54) employed in all
other occupations. It is also highly plausible that nonwork stresses can affect
attitudes and behavior at work. Research findings suggest such relationships are
particularly evident for single-parent families and families in which both parents
are employed. Frankenhaeuser (1988), for example, showed that the
characteristic elevation of catecholamines levels as the stresses of the workday
accumulate is sharply reduced at the end of the workday for men but for married,
employed women the elevation persists until the household responsibilities are
also fulfilled. Lowman (1996) presented a classification of mental disorders that
are specifically work related. The classification includes patterns of
undercommitment (underachievement and procrastination), patterns of
overcommitment (obsessive-compulsive addiction to the workplace), anxiety in
the work role, and work-related depression.

Individual differences in resistance to stress have long been recognized. Two

personality characteristics have been clearly identified as moderating the effects
of stress. The first is personality type and the second is locus of control. There are
two personality types namely: type A and type B. Type A is a personality type that
intensifies the effects of job stressors. They walk, eat and talk rapidly; they are
aggressive and competitive and constantly feel under time pressure. Type B
people are less concerned about time; they play for fun not to win; and they can
relax without guilt. Type A people have a higher standing pulse rate than type B
people and are twice as likely to develop heart disease. Barling and Boswell
(1995) identified an irritability dimension to type A behavior that adversely affects
health and concentration. Wright (1988) concluded that type A people have a
high, possibly insatiable need for achievement. Type A individuals cannot control
themselves under pressure or when exposed to work-related stimuli. The second
personality characteristic that moderates stress is locus of control. Locus of
control is divided into internal and external locus of control. The internals are
those that believe that they themselves are responsible for what happens to
them while the externals believe that major events in their lives are determined
by other people. Their response pattern to stress is different from the other. The
internals are more likely to take action against the source of the stress itself or to
mitigate its effects in other ways. Those who are externally oriented are more
likely to see effective actions as beyond their powers and thus endure rather than
act.

In addition to certain characteristics of individuals, certain properties of situations

can moderate or buffer the effects of a stressor. The buffering effect reduces the
tendency of organizational properties to generate specific stressors, alter the
perceptions and cognitions evoked by such stressors, moderate the responses
that follow the appraisal process or reduce the health-damaging consequences of
such responses. The primary variable hypothesized to provide this buffering effect
is social support. Social support reduces the relationship between various job
stressors and indicators of mental and physical health (anxiety, depression, and
irritation). Social support does not reduce the relationship between job stressors
and boredom or job dissatisfaction. Sutton and Kahn (1987) proposed three other
situational variables as potential buffers against stress:

(1) The extent to which the onset of a stressor is predictable.

(2) The extent to which it is understandable
(3) The extent to which aspects of the stressor are controllable by the person
who must experience it.

Of these three proposed relationships, the strongest support has emerged for
the predictability of a stressor. If the occurrence of a stressful event can be
predicted, its absence can also be predicted. Thus the individual knows when it
is safe to relax and need not maintain a constant state of vigilance or anxiety.

For the most part stress management has been concerned more with reducing
the effects of stress than reducing the presence of stressors at work. As a
consequence, the major effort has been directed at increasing individual
resistance to stressors generated at work. Stress management initiatives that
are directed at preventing stress including onsite physical fitness, exercise,
meditation, and time management programs. Ross and Altmaier (1994)
reported a growing use of techniques designed to lower arousal to stressors
such as deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, biofeedback, and yoga.
Stress intervention initiatives most typically involve counseling, social support
groups and employee assistance programs.

In general both the quality and quantity of research on the effectiveness of

stress management programs fall short of research on other aspects of stress.
Nevertheless, there are indications that stress management programs are
stressful. Those programs that have been rigorously evaluated show significant
reductions in subjective work stress and psychophysiological indicators. Their
effects on job satisfaction and performance are less clear.
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