Stressor, Stress And Performance:

Stressor, Stress and performance:

StressвЂ"performance relationship

With

Moderating Effect of Loc and Type-A

Bilqees Majeed

International Islamic University Islamabad

INTRODUCTION:

In this modern world organizations, work environment and jobs become complex. This complexity raise a high level of stress induced in the organizational members (Brockner et al., 1992; Champy, 1995). Job related stress can be defined as the feelings of misfit by an individual вЂ?who is required to deviate from normal or self-desired functioning in work place as the result of opportunities, constraints, or demands relating to potentially important work related out-comes’(Parker and Decotiis, 1983, p.165). Work-related stress result in negative out comes and well being of individual for example health problems, decreased job performance, usefulness for organization, and increase cost (Sosik, 2000) dissatisfaction, burnout, high absenteeism, organizational commitment etc (Jamal 1999). Job stress increased in Western industrialized societies and it is most costly. In US this cost reached $150 billion per year and in UK Ð'Ј3000 million.

STRESS:

Job related stress can be visualized as imbalance between employee work and work environment. Stress arises in incongruence between work and its environment. Job stress is an individual's reactions to work environment components that appear threatening to the individual. It is a poor fit between the individual's abilities and the work environment, in which either excessive demand are regularly made of the individual or the individual is not fully equipped to handle a particular situation (Caplan, Cobb, French, Harrison, & Pinneau, 1982; Jamal & Ahmad, 1985).

Stress has been defined as “any circumstance that places special physical and/or psychological demands on a person such that an unusual or out-of-the- ordinary response occurs” (Dipboye, Smith, & Howell, 1994, p. 290). Psychological stress is the negative emotional and cognitive states that occur when individuals believe that the demands placed on them surpass their ability to cope (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). In other words, negative stress may occur if an individual feels that he or she is unable to adapt to his or her situation (Hayes & Weathington, 2007). According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH; 2002), job stress has become a common and costly problem in the workplace. (Fisher,1985; Sauter, Hurrell,& Cooper, 1989). job-related stress results in organizational problems of employees' job dissatisfaction, burnout, high absenteeism and turnover, low organizational commitment, and marginal job performance (Jamal, 1984; Jamal, 1985; Jamal & Baba, 1997; Jamal & Badawi, 1995; Westman & Eden, 1996).

Managerial work is also considered to be a highly stressful occupation (NIOSH); however, for managers, job-related stress is generally caused by being overloaded with work as opposed to not being in control of the job (Glowinkowski & Cooper, 1986)

Stress has two forms i.e. acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is the form of stress which prevails for a short time and has temporary effects on the individual. For example stress to complete an assignment in due time, to meet dead lines, as faced by accountants at the end of the fiscal year or departmental clerks with the Christmas and New Year shopping rush. (Jamal & Pareena, 1998)

Chronic stress is the form of stress which last for a prolonged period of time and it has some serious kind of effects on individual e.g. dysfunctional, disease (Rick, Acton, & Payne, 1988)

STRESSORS:

Stressors can be understood as “stimuli that evoke the stress process” (LePine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005: 764). Stress has different causes that are called stressors. Stressors are work related environmental conditions which can affect work outcome of an employee/worker (Nurrac, Nelson & Simmon, 1998).

Stressors are of so many types it can vary with persons to person, environment to environment and culture to culture but Generally there are four types of stressors i.e. role ambiguity, role conflict, role over load (Berrman and perreault 19984; Belasco 1966; kahn et al. 1964; Jamal and Badawi 1995) and Resource inadequacy (Jamal and Badawi 1995).Role conflict occurs when an individual believes that the expectations and demands of two or more members of his or her role set (e.g., boss and client) are incompatible. Role ambiguity relates to the perceived lack of information a person needs to perform his or her role adequately (e.g., effort instrumentalities) and his or her uncertainty about the expectations of different role set members. Role overload occurs when the person perceives that the cumulative role demands exceed his or her abilities and motivation to perform a task. Resource inadequacy occurs when a person feels that he/she has inadequate resources to fulfill task assigned (e.g. computer developer and computer software)

There are some other kinds of stressor which are related to individuals’ personal characteristics. I have divided these stressor in two forms: Perceived stressor which are influenced by persons psychological, dispositional and sociological characteristics and Persistent Stressors are those which has the ability to over power the person’s resources and thereby have dysfunctional input on his or her behavior and psychological out comes e.g. job performance.

I will discuss some of the work related stressor which can affect individual’s performance and job out comes. I have consider the following stressors in this study i.e. Work-family conflict, work environment, Occupational stress, Specific role stress, work force diversity/employee relocation stress, job scope stress, and work overload stress.

Work-family conflict is the serious issue of the modern age especially in the case when both the partners (Husband, wife) are doing job. Greenhaus and Beutell(1985) has defined work-family conflict as incompatible pressures arising simultaneously from the intersection of work and family roles. There are two main types of work-family conflict: time based conflict and strain based conflict. Time based conflict is experienced when the time devoted to one role makes it difficult to fulfill the requirements of another role. Tightly structured nature of jobs and inflexible