Career Stress in Changing Times

Robert E Hess

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317736394
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

In terms of time, energy, and money, a career is one of the most important investments that a person makes during his or her lifetime. Career Stress in Changing Times is an exciting volume that covers the entire career cycle, from beginning through mid-career dilemmas to the retirement transition. Many key career issues and stressors--as they are experienced during each stage of one's career--are examined. Experts also explore the major social and cultural forces that influence careers and will continue to do so in the next century, including women's influx into the workplace, the decline of blue-collar labor, the changing demographics of our nation, and the movement toward a world economy.Career Stress in Changing Times is ideal for individuals involved in career planning activities, professionals counseling people engaged in career planning transitions, and educators involved in teaching career planning seminars. This volume is unique in that it blends the work of academic researchers with that of practitioners on the firing line; it blends theoretical and conceptual work with empirical, data-based research as well as with the results of in-depth interviews and reports from the direct experience of practitioners.

III. The Mid-Career Issues

Work and Non-Work Issues in the Management of Occupational Careers in the 1990s

Rabi S. Bhagat
Memphis State University

David L. Ford, Jr.
University of Texas at Dallas

SUMMARY. Western culture has traditionally separated work and non-work roles with the belief that personal issues are not relevant to the work environment or career. Recent research challenges this belief, identifying important intersections between work and non-work roles. Findings suggest that personal stressors may affect work performance and career progress as well as health and well-being. Three organizational strategies for preventing distress associated with work/non-work interactions are to create options for home-based workers, to train workers in effective coping skills, and to initiate changes in the organizational culture to provide for greater work/non-work role integration.

In modern society, work and non-work roles are becoming increasingly interdependent. Given the importance of these two roles, it is not surprising that considerable research attention has been directed to their behavioral and organizational aspects. However, while considerable knowledge exists concerning the effects of variables specific to each of these roles on the psychological well-being of individuals, relatively little research attention has been directed to the nature of the interactions that exist between them. It is only in the past decade that researchers have become interested in the relationship between work and such non-work related issues as family interaction patterns and child rearing.

Perhaps the major reason why the interaction between work and non-work issues has received little attention is that managers of work organizations have generally attempted to separate the two domains. A common belief is that events in the personal lives of employees should not effect their job performance.

Academic researchers have also contributed to the perception of the separate worlds of work and non-work. Organizational psychologists, industrial sociologists, and industrial relations specialists have focused on work and organization-specific effects on employees while family-oriented specialists from fields such as clinical psychology and social work have tended to focus on processes that originate primarily from the domain of family and non-work related sources. Few scholars have concerned themselves with both family and work related variables in terms of their conjoint effects on both work and non-work related outcomes.

Still another reason as to why the separation of work from non-work exists lies in the value systems of employees themselves. Bartoleme and Evans (1979), for example, have found that most male managers uphold the view that professional and private lives ought to be kept both separate and independent. Similar findings are reported by Piotrkowski (1978), Dyer (1964), and Renshaw (1974). Respondents in these studies denied linkages between work and family and preferred to act in one domain as if the influences from the other domain did not matter.

Kanter (1977) has advanced the intriguing notion that the continuation of the perception of the separate worlds of work and non-work fits the interests of modern corporations. However, this view is gradually changing and it is becoming increasingly clear that the work and non-work lives of individuals interact in significant ways. In addition, it is also being recognized that these interactions have important bearings on experiences in each of these domains.

Effects of Work on Family

Work has a significant impact on the family lives of employees. Hoffman (1986) has reviewed the research in this area and provided a comprehensive overview of the effects of work on the family.

1. Work provides financial and material resources that affect the family’s economic well-being.
2. The status of being employed or not employed and the occupational prestige associated with one’s work affects the family’s status in the community, the worker’s status in the family, and the worker’s own self-concept.
3. Behaviors learned in the work role are likely to be repeated in the home. For example, patterns of authority associated with the work role are likely to affect the pattern of authority in the worker’s family.
4. Work has a significant impact on the worker’s personality and intellectual functioning. Such effects influence the worker’s behavior in the family.
5. There is a spillover of both positive and negative experiences associated with work to the family.
6. An individual’s family can often be a complementary source for the satisfaction of various work related needs. Some workers may attempt to satisfy those needs which remain unsatisfied in the context of their work role by making them more salient in the context of their non-work role.
7. Involvement with work and excessive involvement with one’s work role can lead to a significant amount of role overload and inter-role conflicts. This issue is particularly salient for working women with strong familial responsibilities such as child care.
8. One’s work can be either dangerous in terms of safety or intrinsically unfulfilling and thus can be a source of ongoing stress.

It is clear that an employee’s work related experiences can and do significantly affect non-work behaviors in the context of the family. It is important to also examine the other side of the equation, the effects of non-work and family related factors on work, to begin to gain a more complete understanding of the interaction between work and non-work roles.

Effects of Family on Work

The family of the worker can affect his or her work role in a number of different ways.

1. Satisfaction with one’s work role is often a function of familial demands and conflicts as well as the adjustment of the family members, particularly one’s spouse, to the demands of the work role (Nieva, 1979). In overseas assignments the adjustment of one’s spouse to the demands of the foreign setting is especially important in sustaining both satisfaction and performance in one’s work role.
2. Satisfaction with the family role can be an important predictor of progress in an occupational career. How one will eventually perform in one’s occupational career and the extent to which one’s career will be a continued source of satisfaction depends largely on the nature of the social support offered by the one’s family.
3. Behaviors learned in the family can also spill over into the domain of work. In the case of educational spillover, something learned at home is used to improve some aspect of functioning in the work or organizational domain. In the case of psychological spillover, involvement with family-related roles affects the employee’s moods, feelings, and involvement at work. (Crouter, 1984)

There are other ways in which the family influences the affective reactions and performance of employees in their work roles. Of particular importance are the effects of stressful personal life events on work.

Stressful Life Events and Experiences at Work

All employees experience a variety of events or life changes in the course of daily living. This list includes such diverse events as the death of one’s spouse, separation and divorce, additions to the family, and serious illness in the family. These events are stressful because they often require significant social adjustments and adaptations. They can have major effects on an employees work in both a psychological and physical sense.

An especially significant study of the effects of stressful life events on illness was conducted by Holmes and Rahe (1967). They showed that significant life changes are associated with the onset of illness and various symptoms of illness. Life stress precipitated by a combination of several stressful events has been found to be predictive of sudden cardiac death (Rahe & Lind, 1971), myocardial infarction (Edwards, 1971; Theorell & Rahe, 1971), menstrual discomfort and pregnancy and birth-related complications (Siegel, Johnson, & Sarason, 1979), as well as other major health problems such as tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and a variety of other minor physical conditions (Rabkin & Struening, 1976). Life stress has also been found to be correlated with various indices of psychiatric disorders, anxiety, and depression (Dekker & Webb, 1974; Vinokur & Slezer, 1975).

Given the etiologic significance of life stress, it is important to focus on the significance of stressful life events on work and careers. Systematic information in this area has only recently emerged. Vincino and Bass (1978) found, for example, that life stability, as measured by low life stress scores on an abridged version of Holmes and Rahe’s social readjustment scale, significantly correlated with managerial success and the experience of task-challenge in the careers of a sample of Exxon-affiliate managers. Managers, who reported higher life stability also scored higher on assessment batteries forecasting job success. Life stress has also been found to be negatively correlated with indices of academic performance (Harris, 1972) and with measures of teaching effectiveness (Carranza, 1972).

These studies clearly indicate that stressful life events can not only affect the physical and emotional well-being of an individual, but also his or her performance and related indicators of success in the occupational role. Bhagat (1980, 1985) has used the results of these studies to develop a model which links the effects of stressful life events to various organizationally valued outcomes. In his model, he presents a series of linkages between stressful life events and the development of personal life stress. Personal life stress is hypothesized to cause a series of impairments in one’s work role via emotional, cognitive, and behavioral effects.

Perhaps the most important linkage in Bhagat’s model in regard to occupational careers is between life strains and the involvement that one experiences in the work role. Several moderating variables are introduced which are hypothesized to either strengthen or weaken the effects of such life strains on behavioral outcomes. Figure I provides a simpler version of the model showing that coping and adaptation skills, social support mechanisms, type of organizational control systems and culture, and job/organizational based stresses can moderate the direct effects of life stresses on such valued organizational outcomes as job involvement, performance effectiveness, job satisfaction, absenteeism, and turnover intention.

Empirical research demonstrating the efficacy of these moderating variables is not yet reported in the literature; however, support for the existence of a construct called the “total life stress” (a combination of work and non-work related stresses) is found in the work of Bhagat and his colleagues (Bhagat, McQuaid, Lindholm, & Segovis, 1985). They report significant negative relationships between negative personal life stress (measured in terms of the total number of negative stressful life events in a span of three years) and a series of work outcomes. These outcomes include job satisfaction, organizational commitment, absenteeism, and turnover intention. In addition, they report that when the effect of total life stress is considered, these relationships become even stronger. They conclude that individuals do not separate their personal lives from their job lives and that there is a spillover of non-work related stress to work related outcomes.

Earlier research findings by Sarason and Johnson (1979) provide additional support for the notion that personal life stress has an effect on important work outcomes. However, additional research on the role of moderating influences, as shown in Figure I, would be helpful in the development of theory in this area. Especially in need of understanding are the effects of one’s career stage on such linkages.

FIGURE I

Work, Non-Work, and Career Decision-Making

It was noted earlier that individuals can cope better with work related demands if they feel that they are well supported by the people around them (Schuler, 1980). The presence of effective social support systems in one’s work and non-work lives enhances career-related decision making processes.

Kahn and Antonucci (1980) conceptualize social support to include the following key elements: affect, affirmation, and aid. Affect is the expression of linking, admiration, respect, or love; affirmation is the expression of agreement or acknowledgement of the other person as an individual in terms of his or her rights; and aid is assisting the other person with tangible and intangible assets such as money, time, labor, and information.

Caplan (1976) describes a number of ways in which families function as effective social support mechanisms. His description of the types of resources provided by families lays the groundwork for understanding the relevance of these resources for coping with various difficulties as well as in enhancing career effectiveness.

1. The family can function as a collector and disseminator of valued information which is needed for effective functioning in one’s work role.
2. The family can act as a guidance system by providing non-threatening feedback to its members when they experience distress and ambiguities in their organizational and occupational lives.
3. The family can serve as source of ideology by providing values which can greatly aid its members during confusing ti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• I. INTRODUCTION
• II. THE BEGINNING
• III. THE MID-CAREER ISSUES
• IV. THE END GAME