Stress Management in Organization - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages In the present case I had added that how the individual personality, perceptions, job experiences, training, self efficacy, locus of control, communication skills and interpersonal relationship contributes towards deciding the impact of stress on an individuals. I had also added that apart from individual personality and specialties as well as behavioral specifications, how organization culture, environment, job assignments, role clarity, general relationship between the employees contributes significantly towards stress enhancement or reduction. In the next section I had also added how to cope up the workplace stresses by an individual as well as at the organizational level. It also includes how the management could deliberately indulge in such practices to reduce workplace stresses up to minimum level.
Almost all of us are aware that employee stress is an increasing problem in organizations. In today's ever changing global environment most of the companies often depend on downsizing and lean organizational structure. Most of the employees feel overworked and lack of job stability in today's world and this situation aggravate the stress of employees. Most of the employees complain about stress created in trying to balance work and family responsibility (Slobogin, 2001). Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important (Kahn and Byosiere, 1992). More typically stress is associated with constraints and demands. The two conditions are necessary for potential stress to become actual stress (Schuler, 1980). First, there must be uncertainty over the outcome and second, the outcome must be important. Stress is highest for individuals who perceive that they are uncertain as to whether they will win or lose and lowest for individuals who think winning or losing is a certainty. There is a model identified by D.F. Parker and T.A. Decotiis (1983) that three sets of factors-environmental, organizational and individual act as potential sources of stress. Whether they become stress depends on individual differences such as job experience and personality. When stress is experienced by an individual, its symptoms can surface as physiological, behavioural and psychological outcomes (Cartwright and Cooper, 1997). As far as organizational factors are concerned, there is abundance of factors within organization that can cause stress. Pressures to avoid errors or complete task in a limited time, work overload, a demanding and insensitive boss, and unpleasant co-workers are the few. We can categorize these factors around task, role and interpersonal demands; organizational structure and leadership, and the organization's life stage (Fox, Dwyer and Ganster1993). Individual factors like family and personal economic problems can create stress for employees but apart from these, researches established that some people may have an inherent tendency to accentuate negative aspects of the world in general.
The following underlying factors made significant contributions in the stress levels experienced by Anne who is believed to be of the Type-A personality characteristics:
Self efficacy has also been found to influence stress outcomes. Recent evidence indicates that individual with strong self-efficacy reacted less negatively to the stain created by long ...Download file to see next pagesRead More