Job Stress

From Theory to Suggestion

John M Ivancevich, Daniel C Ganster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780866566308
• eBook ISBN: 9781317735823
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Leading theorists and researchers explore the concept of stress in this relevant and well-timed volume. Physicians, psychologists, sociologists, and social psychologists who have been engaged in stress-related projects offer exciting and practical suggestions for applying organizational behavior management principles to the problem of stress. They share timely discussions on the causes and implications of job stress, which affects all levels of employees in business and industrial settings. This stimulating volume addresses the major theoretical perspectives and interpretations of job stress--from the diverse fields of medicine, clinical psychology, engineering psychology, and organizational psychology and proposes stress measurement and stress management interventions. A fascinating review of the empirical research on stress indicates the present state of study on the subject and emphasizes the need for more applied research using OBM principles. There is currently a great deal of disagreement about the meaning of job stress, its effects on people and organizations, and strategies for coping with the phenomenon. The effects of stress on individuals and organizations are thoroughly explored in this timely volume.

Part I: Introduction

The Current Debate About the Meaning of Job Stress

Terry A. Beehr
Thomas M. Franz

SUMMARY. There is currently a great deal of disagreement about the meaning of job stress. This probably has happened in part because the topic has its roots in several diverse fields, including medicine, clinical psychology, engineering psychology, and organizational psychology. The differences among these fields in their interpretations of job stress are seen in both their choices of labels and in the substance of their theories and approaches to treatments. There are many specific controversies in the field, of which four are especially central to the meaning of job stress: the existence and nature of first mediators, awareness as a necessary component of stress, the possibility and effects of "good" stress, and acute versus chronic stressors.

Stress, including job or occupational stress, is currently both an object of massive scientific research and a term so loosely defined that there have been recommendations that the use of the term be abandoned altogether. Ivancevich and Matteson (1980) have even compared stress with sin, as both topics are considered important by many people even though different people are not always talking about the same thing when they use the word.

Stress has commonly been defined in one of three ways: as an environmental stimulus often described as a force applied to the individual, as an individual's psychological or physical response to such an environmental force, or as the interaction between these two events (Ivancevich & Matteson, 1980; Mason, 1975a). These differences in the use of the word have been discussed so often in recent literature that they will not be discussed at length here.

There are more important controversies in this topic area than the choice of labels or terms, however, and journal space is better used on them. What can be agreed upon is that the term stressor, when it is used, refers to the environmental stimulus (e.g., Beehr, 1984; Beehr & Bhagat, 1985; Fried, Rowland & Ferris, 1984; McLean, 1979; Selye, 1975; Sharit & Salvendy, 1982), and that the term strain, when it is used usually refers to the individual response (e.g., Beehr, 1984; Caplan, Cobb, French, Harrison & Pinneau, 1975; Kahn & Quinn, 1970). Strains can be physical, psychological or behavioral, but they are by definition indicators of ill health and/or well-being of the individual. A job stressor is an environmental condition or event in the workplace that causes strain. When the words stressor and strain are used in the literature, they are nearly always used in these ways, making these definitions easily understood by most people. The word stress is not used for one of these specific elements but is reserved as a general term referring to an area of work or study that includes stressors and strains.

Selected Early Works on Stress in General

The physiologist, Walter Cannon (1914), in his work on homeostasis, had used the term stress to describe emotional states that had possible detrimental physical results on organisms. In 1935, Cannon (c.f., Mason, 1975a) modified the use of the term to describe physical stimuli and used the term strain to mean the organism's response.

Cannon's contributions to the understanding of stress lay almost dormant for decades, until Selye began working in this area. In the classic, The Stress of Life, Hans Selye (1956) described efforts to isolate a new sex hormone. The hormone was not found, but a phenomenon he labeled the General Adaptation Syndrome was observed. It was described as the bodily response to prolonged debilitating circumstances. The responses or symptoms resulted from injections of purified hormones, X-rays, forced exercise, cold, etc. In fact, Selye "could find no noxious agent that did not produce the syndrome" (p. 35). Initially Selye yielded to the opinions of others and refrained from using the term stress in discussion of the GAS. The term stress at that time was equated with "nervous strain" and implied a psychological rather than a physical state.

Selected Historical Works on Job Stress in Particular

Although Selye and even Cannon occasionally referred to occupational or work-related stress, their actual research never focused on it; indeed, much of their ground-breaking work was done with animals. A major source of the current interest in occupational stress probably can be traced instead to a book reporting research results from non-experimental studies done with American workers in the early 1960s (Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek & Rosenthal, 1964). Using survey methods, these social and organizational psychology researchers estimated one-third or more of the employees in their national sample were experiencing some occupational stress.

A totally different approach to occupational stress, meanwhile, had already been initiated by researchers from an experimental and engineering psychology point of view. Here, physical stressors such as noise were studied for their effects on job performance or on performance of laboratory tasks (e.g., Broadbent, 1954). In addition to job performance as a criterion, physiological responses were also studied as outcomes. Often, however, this was done on the grounds that these physiological responses would be related to performance.

Four Approaches to Job Stress

These different historical antecedents to today's job stress theories and practices have no doubt contributed to the current state of confusion about the topic. Even if everyone used the terms the same way, there would still be observable differences in approaches to the topic. There are currently at least four identifiable approaches to studying and treating occupational stress, and these are outlined in Table 1. For convenience these four approaches have been labeled by the profession in which they have their strongest historical roots. Today's practitioners and researchers in these disciplines — as there are people in each of these fields today who work in a multidisciplinary fashion.

The table indicates the type of stressors and strains (or other outcomes, such as job performance) on which each approach typically focuses, and in addition, it indicates something about the type of treatment that each approach is prone to recommend for alleviating problems due to job stress. The primary target of treatment refers to the element in the job stress process (usually stressor or strain) that the professional tries to alter directly. Two categories of primary target are used: individual targets and organizational targets. Individual-target treatments indicate that there is an attempt to change some characteristic or response of the individual directly. Most of these types of treatments are aimed at changing the strains directly (e.g., administering biofeedback training for hypertension or traditional psychotherapy for depression). Organizational-target treatments are attempts to change some aspect of the organization or the

Table 1
Four Approaches to Occupational Stress

Approach	Typical Stressor	Typical Outcome	Typical Primary Target of Treatment
Medical	Physical	Physical Strain	Individual
Clinical/Counseling Psychology	Psychological	Psychological Strain	Individual
Engineering Psychology	Physical	Job Performance	Organization
Organizational Psychology	Psychological	Psychological Strain	Organization

individual's immediate work environment, usually the stressors (e.g., reducing conflict or noise levels in the workplace).

The approach labeled "medical" clearly has its historical roots in the tradition of Cannon and Selye, described previously. The stressors and strains tend to be physical. The typical primary target of treatments for this approach is the individual, for example treatment of the person through application of medication. It is noteworthy for our purposes that this approach did not develop from a primary interest in occupations or the workplace, although it is occasionally applied to them.

One of the psychological approaches to occupational stress closely parallels the medical model approach, but it emphasizes psychological causes and consequences instead of physical ones. This is labeled the clinical/counseling psychology approach in Table 1. Most of the treatments are aimed directly at the individual, for example, treating depression or anxiety through counseling or psychotherapy. As with the medical approach, this approach was not developed specifically for dealing with workplace stress, but it has often been applied there. Treatments based on this approach have recently been recommended through Employee Assistance Programs (Winkelpleck, 1984).

The two approaches above the dotted line in the table, the medical and the clinical/counseling psychology approaches, have in common the fact that they tend to focus on the individual more than on the organization. The field sometimes known as medical psychology spans these two viewpoints by using treatments developed in psychology (e.g., variants of relaxation training) to treat what are conceived as physical strains (e.g., hypertension). This is a natural integration of these two approaches, since both focus on the individual more than on the organizational. These two do not as frequently overlap with the engineering or organizational psychology approaches, however.

As can be seen in Table 1, a third approach can be identified that has traditionally focused on physical characteristics of the work or workplace as stressors and on job performance as the primary outcome. With roots in the previously mentioned engineering and experimental psychology efforts, this has implications for the physical design of the work and workplace as treatments. It is a very different approach from any of the others in its preferred choice of outcome, since job performance does not fit the definition of strain usually offered by the other approaches. This approach has, however, often been applied specifically to the work setting.

Table 1 also outlines an organizational psychology approach in which psychological stressors are found to influence psychological strains, and the organizational or workplace characteristics are the indicated targets for direct treatment. This approach, receiving pioneering impetus from the 1964 book by Kahn et al., was developed with a specific interest in workplace stress.

The four views in the table obviously have different historical antecedents. The views indicate some of the typical approaches to job stress by people involved in the field, and the entries in the body of the table are intended to direct readers to categorize stressors, outcomes, and treatments in three particular ways: First whether stressors are physical or psychological characteristics of the work environment, second, whether the outcomes are strains (psychological or physical) on performance; and third, whether treatments are aimed at changing some aspect of the individual directly (usually at a strain response) or at changing some part of the organization (usually at something conceived as a stressor). People working in the job st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• GUEST EDITORIAL
• PART I: INTRODUCTION
• PART II: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
• PART III: STRESS MEASUREMENT
• PART IV: ORGANIZATIONAL STUDIES OF STRESS
• PART V: STRESS MANAGEMENT INTERVENTIONS
• PART VI: CONCLUSION