Stress and Organisational Behaviour

STRESS AND ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
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(19, June, 2010)
Outline
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Causes of stress on the job
3.0 Effects of stress
4.0 Managing Stress in the Workplace
5.0 Conclusion
Stress and Organisational Behaviour
1.0 Introduction
Stress is a mental, physical and emotional reaction that result from demands in ones life exceeding personal and social resources and which when experienced cause physical and emotional tension. Stress affects ones emotions, though process, behaviors and ones physical conditions. At the work place the effect of stress cannot be underestimated. Stress leads to increased absenteeism, increased medical bills, poor performance and low production. According to a report by Karasek and Theorell, the collective cost of stress in the 1980s was estimated at$150 billion, while stress related absenteeism was 10 times higher than other related causes of absenteeism in U.K. (Cartwright and Cooper 1997). It is therefore important for organizations to reduce the effects of stress in the work place. This essay will discuss how negative stress affects organizational behavior. It will discuss the causes of stress in the work place, the effects of stress and how to manage stress.
2.0 Causes of stress on the job
The primary cause of stress is change related, high workload and poor or lack of control.
To be more specific, these causes of stress at the workplace include work overload, time pressures, poor supervision, and insecure job, differences between employee’s values and organization values, and using of new technology without adequate training.
The causes of stress at the job can be divided into hindrance stressors and challenge stressors. Stressors are the specific demands that lead to a person to experience stress. Hindrance stressors can be work related or non work related hindrance stressors. The work hindrance stressors include role conflict. This is where there is conflicting expectations from other people on the employees. This may cause the employee to be confused on who to please and this may cause stress. The employee may also be met by an ambiguity and unpredictability of the consequences of performance in that role and lack of enough information on what is required in the specific role. Role overload and daily hassles are other work related causes of stress. Role overload occurs when too many roles are placed on one person to an extent that the employee cannot handle these roles effectively.
Non work hindrances include work family conflict where the work is too demanding it hinders the fulfillment of family demands. Negative life events that happen to an employee are non work hindrances that may cause stress to an employee as they are associated with negative emotions. These negative life events maybe, divorce, a critical sickness in the family or death of a close member of the family. Workaholics are a group of employees who are highly prone to stress. They have a tendency to place too high expectations on themselves and on everyone else. They have no work balance and as such when their high expectations are unmet, they become anxious and become depressed. This leads to stressful behavior.
Challenge stressors are also in two categories; work challenge stressors and non work challenge stressors. Time pressure, work complexity and work responsibility are the work challenge stressors. Time pressure happens when the employee feels that the time allocated to perform a task is not enough to accomplish it effectively. Work complexity happens when the requirements to perform a task exceed the skills, knowledge and ability of the person who has being given the task. Work responsibility refers to the nature of the obligations one has to others. The employee may feel overwhelmed to perform these challenges effectively and therefore causing the employees some stress. There are challenge stressors that are not related to work but they affect the employee ability to perform at work. These include time demands with the family and on family activities which may lead to stress at work. Where an employee is engaged in personal development activities, such as attending part time classes, the combination of the job and classes may be strenuous and may cause stress. Weddings and pregnancies are positive events that are grouped under non work challenge stressors since they demand time and other resources and because the resources are limited the employee is stressed.
To the organization the effect...