Stress is a natural corollary of living. Indeed, envisaging life without some sort of stress is almost impossible. Work or home, job or business, rearing children or looking after parents, no aspect of living is free of stress. This book concerns one aspect of this phenomena i.e. the stress caused to people by virtue of their working for organizations. The pressure to deliver goods, desire to overtake competition, shuttling between different and non-compatible roles, unsatisfactory work conditions, feeling of insecurity and such other factors can exert a lot of strain (even burnout) on people. The level of stress encountered by an individual, in recent years, has gone up significantly. “The last half-century has witnessed enormous changes in the society and of the workplace in particular. Sustained recession, privatization of public sector, and information technology revolution have laid groundwork for the most profound changes in the workplace since the industrial revolution”. Downsizing, delayering and flattened structures, information overload and accelerating pace of work impinge seriously on the health and welfare of the workmen. Moreover, the very nature of work is undergoing change. “Work today is driven by technological imperative rather than by holistic perspective that also considers personal, social and cultural issues.” In era of rapid change, hostile market conditions and external turbulence, new information technologies have come in handy for the organizations. Outsourcing, networking and use of part-time or short time employment contracts is becoming increasingly popular. There are fewer permanent jobs in the organizations. “The individual must now focus less on long term employment within an organization and concentrate more on their general employability across varied clientele”. This has marked impact on job security and can be extremely threatening to many people. In addition, in India, high unemployment rates, high social inequalities and existence of dual economy, breakdown of joint family system leading to reduced social support, and changing work culture are also taking their toll.
Despite widespread acknowledgement of detrimental impact of stress on individuals and organizations, the amount of attention given by the employers to understanding the causes of work-related strain and to alleviating stressful work conditions is relatively small. Even where the organizations recognise its importance, its interventions are limited to providing training to individuals (secondary intervention) on handling stress or treatment (tertiary intervention) for limiting the damages suffered. Most organizations do not realise the importance of altering work environment (primary intervention) to prevent the occurrence of stressful environment. The study of organizational stress, under these circumstances, assumes tremendous importance.
This book is meant for researchers. The authors have undertaken painstaking efforts in compiling and putting in proper perspective all the works undertaken in this field. This begins with the very definition of stress itself which the authors rightly point out ‘is not just an exercise in semantics’. The way in which stress is defined has fundamental impact on how the research is conducted. Early definitions of stress were piecemeal in nature and focussed on one or other component of the stress process. Response based definitions had their origin in medicine. It treated stress as an outcome of demands made on the body. Stress is used as a generic term that subsumes manifestations such as loss of appetite, motivation, weight and strength. This approach has physiological bias and tends to ignore psychological impacts. Stress is assumed to have only negative connotations. The fact that a certain level of stress may be considered desirable for motivation, growth and development is not taken into account. It is only on crossing manageable limits that it is damaging and disruptive. In contrast, stimulus-based definitions focus on the other side of stress process and have their roots in engineering. The stress is viewed as “some external force exerted on an individual”, which if it exceeds his tolerance level, results in temporary or permanent damage to him. The impetus to such approach was provided by rapid industrialization. Identification of potential sources of stress in the work environment to provide optimum working conditions to the workers was the central theme of such an approach. These models were simplistic in nature. They fail to capture the essence of stress process and as also to account for individual differences. The ‘interactional approach’ considers stress as a statistical cause and effect relationship between the person and his environment. However, it was also limited by its essentially static approach. Currently, stress is perceived as a dynamic transaction. “It is embedded in an ongoing relationship that involves individuals transacting with their environment, making appraisals of these encounters, and attempting to cope with the issues that arise.” One of the most significant implications of such an approach is that coping itself is treated as a key component of stress process. The outcome of efforts, made by an individual to cope with the stress, has an important bearing upon his future encounters with stressors. The application of Transaction model is not free of controversies, though. The model argues that stress essentially occurs at the individual level. Hence, we need to focus on intra-individual processes. This marks a shift in focus from stressful work conditions to the individual, who is made to feel guilty for his ‘inability to handle work pressures’. Though, it is possible to generalize by identifying common stressful features, in practice, correcting this tacit shift in burden of responsibility becomes an uphill task. This has made some researchers to argue that they can better fulfil their social responsibility by focussing on ‘stressful work conditions’ (stimulus model) rather than on ‘intra-individual processes’ (transaction model). The debate in this respect is far from settled. To sum up, though, transaction model is an advance over previous models, much work still needs to be done.
Another field that needs further exploration is that of identifying and pinpointing determinants of strain. It is generally accepted that strain occurs when environmental demands are perceived by an individual to exceed his resources or capacities. There are various factors that can cause such a perception to an individual. These are grouped into three major categories: job related, organization pertinent and individual specific sources. Intrinsic job characteristics factors such as job complexity, task variety, discretion and control over job, exposure to risks, noise, pollution, work overload/ underload, role ambiguity, nature of responsibility, work relationships, opportunities for career development and job security play an important role in determining level of stress. Organizational factors basically relate to culture and management styles. Lack of participation in decision-making, negative communications and overly formalised procedures tend to cause strain. Of late, inter-role conflict, especially between job and family demands, has also gained prominence as a major source of strain. All the commonly reported stressors have been discussed in the book. The authors have also mentioned that the combined impact of various stressors may be more than sum of their parts. However, the exact relationship between different factors and their combined impact needs to be further explored. “Future research also needs to differentiate between the stressors that are short-term or one-off events (episodic) and those that are ongoing (chronic).” It will further our understanding of the phenomenon and its impact. This takes us to the issue of types of strain caused by these stressors.
Strain is generally classified into three categories: physiological, psychological and behavioural. Surprisingly, it is only recently that the researchers have begun to study the physiological strain. “It is not because the researchers considered it unimportant.” Being psychologists, the researchers have tended to concentrate on psychological strain such as job dissatisfaction and anxiety. Behavioural responses are the least studied. “This is ironic”, since from an organizational point of view, these may be most important. Absenteeism, employee turnover, job performance, alcoholism and such other responses may impose substantial cost on an organization. This neglect needs to be corrected in future.
Burnout, an extreme form of strain, has been treated in detail. Most researchers agree on ‘emotional exhaustion’ to be its core component. There is, however, no agreement on other characteristics of burnout. Whether burnout is also characterised by detachment from work, cynicism and reduced work accomplishment, is hotly debated and disputed. “Another issue that warrants systematic investigation is whether burnout is contagious i.e. can the experience of burnout spread throughout a work group or even an organization, ultimately resulting in organizational burnout.”
All individuals exposed to same stressors don’t experience same level of stress. Factors such as personality disposition, situational variables and social support available tend to either aggravate or alleviate the strain. Behaviour pattern (type A or B), self-esteem, optimism, hardiness and locus of control are personality factors having a bearing upon strain level experienced by a person. Perceived control over environment is considered to be a major situational moderator. This is almost by definition since strain results only when an individual perceives environmental demands to exceed his capacity. If this is true, then why should ‘perceived control’ be treated as moderator? Research is not very clear on this issue. Social support, especially that from work supervisors, has been shown to be effective in reducing strain. However, the impact of support varies across individuals, situations and type of stressors. This requires to be examined in detail.
Though the book discusses issues like definition and measurement of coping behaviour, it does not provide any information on the specific responses or coping-strategies employed by the individuals. It would have been a good idea also to consider issues relating to the strategies employed by the people to cope with stress, their effectiveness and impact on organisations.
Finally, most of the research has been done in individualistic western societies. This has left many culture specific issues unexamined. For example, in a collectivist society like India, people may desire a higher level of social support and a lesser level of control over their jobs. Indeed, stress and its level may have different meaning to people hailing from different cultures. To conclude, this book presents a panorama of research opportunities. For a person interested in carrying out research in the field of organizational stress, it would be ideal to begin with this book. Others may skim-and-skip the book rather than read it from cover-to-cover.
Punit Arora is an expert on management and public policy in developing countries. He can be reached at pun8max@gmail.com.
