Sources of Stress

Stress is a result of the transactions and interaction between the person and the environment. Some stressors are in the objective environment while most are part of the psychological environment. Work factors and non-work factors are sources of stress.

Work Factors

From the organization’s point of view, work-induced health problems, both physical and mental, may create serious financial liability. It has been estimated, for example, that about 95% of workers compensation claims, resulting from mental stressors may be due to accumulating psychic workplace trauma, which is caused by employee abuse by manager. Major- work Setting stressors are —

Occupational factors: Some jobs are more stressful than others. Blue—Collar workers have more chances of being exposed to working conditions that lead to physical health problems because, many of their jobs are mostly physically dangerous or they are exposed to more toxic substances. Studies have shown that, those who work in routine jobs have high levels of estrangement from work and boredom, and that machine paced work was more strongly related to tension, anxiety, anger, depression and fatigue than non-paced work. High-risk jobs make greater psychological demands and offer low decision control. People in these jobs are always under pressure from others as they must react in a way that the other person wishes, not in the way they would like to.

Role Pressure: Robert Kahn and a group of researchers at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research examined the extent of role conflict and role ambiguity in organizations, their causes, how they relate to personal adjustment and how personality might modify the effects of role strain. This research is based on the premise that individuals are more efficient at work roles when it is explicitly known what is expected of them and when they do not have major conflicting demands.

Role conflict: It happens when a person is in situation where there are pressures to act in accordance with different and inconsistent elements. If the person fulfils one demand, it is problematic to comply with other demands. The particular type of role conflict depends on the basis of the demands. An intercentral role conflict is contradictory with expectations from a single person. For e.g. a manager may expect subordinates to increase production but does not give them added resources

Participation Opportunities: Managers who report higher levels of participations in decision making feel much lower stress, job anxiety and threat than those who report low participation. Participation is significant for two reasons. First, it is connected to other stressors. Participation is associated with low-role conflict and low-role ambiguity. Second, high participation gives a person the feeling of some control of the stressors in the environment, reducing the effect of stressors compared to when a person has no real or perceived control.

Responsibility for people: Responsibility for others may cause stress at work. As a manager, efficiency depends on those who work for you. If for any reason, you do not have confidence in them, then it is possible to experience stress, because you do not feel you have control over the situation. In addition to that responsibility for others means making decisions about pay, promotion opportunities and career paths of others and having a good deal of influence over their lives.

Organizational factors: The organization itself affects stress. For example: Many believe that the mechanistic form of organization is too restrictive and also does not develop human performance potential, whereas an organic structure is more likely to release human productive capacity. Four characteristics of organizations have been shown to be stressors.

• Organization level may be related to stress: Executive play multiple roles, executives have responsibility for others and a good deal of conflict and ambiguity is present in the job. Managers are inclined to have more time constraints and efficiency problems. Workers at lower levels have a higher chance to have role overload and role conflict due to conflicting demands from supervisors are introduced along with lack of resources.
• Organizations complexity refers to the rules, requirements and complicated networks that are present in large organiz Role strains are apt to become increasingly problematic as work becomes more specialized, more levels of supervision are introduced and more complexity is added.
• Organization change may be another important stressor. Organizations in unstable environments must always modify the jobs and responsibilities of employees as they must accommodate to different external pressures. Some changes reduce a person’s job security status and power.
• Organizational boundary roles are stressful because the role incumbent is faced with role conflict which comes from internal and external sources. For Example: Sales personnel must meet customer demands at the same time they must satisfy company requirements.

Non – Work Factors

Stress also responses to some of the non-work environmental factors such as:

Life Structure Changes: Some of the natural flows of life can evoke stress as a person goes through the transition periods of life and career stages. Each of us faces the possibility of changing jobs. High life stress is related to how individuals seek information to face the stress-inducing event. When faced with work stress, people tend to seek help from others at work, looking for help from workers and supervisors. Personality influences the way managers handle stressful life events. Those executives who experience high stress but low levels of illness had different personality characteristics from those who suffered high stress situation and had high illness rates. These managers are robust. Hardy managers tended to feel more in control: were less estranged from themselves new more oriented towards challenge and adventure.

Social Support: Losing a job is stressful and it has been related to such effects as arthritic symptoms, cholesterol elevation and heavy drinking. Nonetheless, these effects ever reduced, or buffered, when a person had a social support system to help deal with the situation. Social support is the communication of favourable feelings of liking, trust, respect, acceptance along with beliefs and sometimes, assistance from others who are meaningful people in one’s life. Social support is significant because it affects a person’s psychological environment. When a person has social support, situations may seem less stress inducing because the resources that one draws on are greater — help from others —. and therefore the demands of the environment can be met. It is perhaps as simple as the fact that you have some help in dealing with pressure.

Perceived Environmental Control: To have real or perceived control over stressors is related to reduced stress levels and positive coping responses. Specially, the locus of control has been shown to moderate stress relations. Persons with an internal locus of control believe that, they have some bearing on their environment that what they do and how they do it determines what they attain. Those with an external locus of control believe that they have little bearing over the environment and that what happens to them is a matter of luck, fate or due to the action of others. Internal’s coping strategies are distinct from externals. Anderson showcased these differences in a study of entrepreneurs whose business were adversely affected by a hurricane. The storm resulted in severe flooding problems in Pennsylvania. In one community, 430 small businesses were badly damaged. Over 100 of the owner managers of these business were interviewed to determine how they adapted to this situation, which most would agree to be stress inducing. Internals perceived the situation as less stressful than the externals. Entrepreneurs who were external were inclined to be more defensive. The internals were more efficient in bringing their business back from the disaster where the internals faced a potentially stressful situation, they acted in a way to take control of events by being involved in more task-oriented coping Behaviors. This is more likely to solve the problem than emotional defensive actions. Not only do internals cope differently, it seems they also manifest stress in different ways from externals. Internals faced with a stressor are more likely to believe that they can have a important effort on outcomes while externals are more likely to submissive, to be passive and to see events as more stressful. When faced with stressors, internals report lower stress levels and are less likely to fall sick.

Type A and Type B Behavior Pattern: Those who are hard-driving, highly competitive, impatient with others, irritated when they are in situations that they believe get in the way of achieving their goals, and strive to accomplish more and more in less and less time manifest a type a Behavior pattern the type b Behavior pattern is the opposite. Those who exhibit this pattern tend to be less aggressive, less competitive and more relaxed. Different responses to stress have been linked to the TYPE A Behavior pattern and the TYPE B Behavior pattern. Physiologically, TYPE A’s are inclined have more severe bodily responses to stress and to bounce back more slowly than Type B individuals. Those who are Type A are more inclined to have a higher incidence of risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease as well as having a higher incidence of coronary disease itself. They have higher pulse rates when faced with challenging tasks and also tend to have elevated blood pressure when their self-esteem is endangered. Behavioral responses to stress for Type A individuals may lead to more extreme physiological responses. Behaviorally they are less able to handle conflict through accommodation. They smoke more and are more impatient, aggressive and time pressured. Psychologically, Type A persons experience more subjective stress in their environment that is moderately uncontrollable. Exposed to stressors they are more angry, time pressured and impatient. They also respond more cognitive to stressful situations. They are more inclined to use denial and suppression than those who are Type B. One explanation of these different reactions is that the Type A may internalize stress and perhaps shortcomings. When they fail, they try again and again to solve the problem. If they are not successful, they feel that they did not try hard enough, leading to greater discontentment. They feel ineffective and link the failure to themselves. The cost of their exposure to stressors and coping with them is very high.

Self-Esteem: Self-esteem is the way a person perceives and evaluates him or herself. An individual’s self concept can have an impact on job performance and response to stressors. Those who have a positive and a realistically accurate concept of “self’ have a high self-esteem. They usually have confidence in themselves. Self-esteem seems to effect how a person responds to stressors. In one study, workers with low self-esteem estranged psychologically from the stress of starting a new job in a new plant. People with low self-confidence are more inclined to have more intense relations to high stress than those with high self-confidence. Those executives who had a complex set of personal values, goals and capabilities have lower rates of illness than those who did not have such a self concept. People with complex self perceptions responded differently to stressful events than those who had more simple self conceptions. When they had higher reported exposure to stressful events, individuals who described themselves as having many facets to their lives were less depressed, perceived lower stress and had fewer incidents of flue and other illnesses than those with simple cognitive representations of themselves. Perhaps the impact of a negative event occurs to a smaller portion of self-representation.

Flexibility Rigidity: Flexible people experience different stressors and have different stress reactions than rigid people. Flexible people are relatively open to change, to some extent free and responsive towards others. They may exhibit some indecisiveness because they may struggle more with decisions. The flexible person does not have clear-cut rigid rules for tacking situations. The main stressors for flexible people are role overload and role conflict. Their flexibility makes them vulnerable and willing to respond to many pressures because they can be easily influenced. Flexible people try to adapt their Behavior as the situation demands in order to reduce pressures. The rigid person is closed-minded, generally somewhat inflexible in orientation towards life. Rigid people have a preference for neatness and orderliness. They are also insensitive to others, tend to be critical in judging others and not very tolerant of other’s weakness. Rigid people react differently to stressors. They are inclined to deny or reject the pressures. In other words, the rigid person simply may not react when experiencing role pressure but will take no notice of them. The rigid person sometimes pushes away those who are pressing too hard. Under pressure a rigid person may become increasingly dependent on his or her boss. A rigid person responds to work stressors by working harder. He or she may spend more time and effort on the job trying to get more done and ignore other elements of his or her life. To the extent that results are achieved, the rigid person has achieved two things, removing the stressor by completing the work and being seen as more valuable to the organization.

Ability: There is not much evidence to show how ability impacts responses to stressful situations. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to think that it does. In times of crises, experts are called in to solve problems. A physician trained in trauma medicine knows what to do in a serious automobile accident emergency, whereas a psychiatrist may not. Professional athletes are regularly involved in competition with severe time pressures and extreme performance demands. They know what to do and perhaps more importantly are able to pay attention to relevant factors, not extraneous ones. Some research does indirectly support that supervisor’s experience is positively related to performance when stress is high. The high — ability person may function better in stress- inducing situations for three reasons. First. it is less likely that he or she will experience role overload. The greater the ability, the more one can do. Second, high-ability persons tend to know their limitations. Hence, they are better able to evaluate their likelihood of success in stress—inducing situations that are uncertain and important. The high ability person will probably face less uncertainty than the low-ability one. Third, high-ability people have more control over situation than low-ability people, and situational control affects how a person reacts to stressors. Research on social facilitation suggests something about the effects of ability, performance and stressors. Social facilitation refers to the effect of the presence of other people on performance. In the presence of others some people perform very well, whereas others do not. The difference in performance has to do with the person’s ability: high-ability people tend to do better in the presence of others, whereas those with low ability seem to do worse.