Coping With Stress In An Organization Essay

, Research Paper

Coping With Stress In An Organization

26 November 1994

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. Defining Stress

III. Types of Stress

IV. How to Handle Stress

V. Recognizing Stress

VI. The Military and Stress

VII. Summary

I. INTRODUCTION

Since the beginning of mankind there has always been some kind of stress

affecting how people feel, act and cope with situations. In this paper we will

look at the definition of stress and what causes people to have stress. Then we

will see how different people handle stress and show how not all individuals

have the same tolerance for stress. The next thing that will be discussed is

how managers in organizations can recognize and reduce the negative effects that

stress has on the worker and the organization. Finally we will consider what

kind of stresses there are in military organizations and how they can be

controlled.

II. DEFINING STRESS

Robert C. Dailey, in his book Understanding People In Organizations,

defines stress as .any demand made on the body that requires psychological or

physical adjustment.. Many people think of stress as always being something bad.

However, stress sometimes can be good. Stress is part of our every day life.

It can have a motivating effect or a demotivating effect. Each of us have our

own level of how much stimulation or stress we need in our lives to keep us from

getting bored.1 Others however, have a much lower tolerance for stress stimuli.

So managers must be able to look at each individual and decide if the individual

has a high or low tolerance for stress. Managers can do this only if they have

a good understanding of what causes stress.

III. TYPES OF STRESS

Stress can come from a multitude of different reasons, but for

simplicity lets break it down into two forms: individual induced stress and

physical environment stress. Individual stress includes things such as role

conflict, role ambiguity, work overload, and responsibility for others. Role

conflict occurs when accomplishing one job inhibits or greatly reduces the

chance at completing another assigned task. In this case the person who is

tasked to do the jobs will incur some type of stress while trying to figure out

how to get both tasks accomplished in the given amount of time. How much stress

and if it will impact the individual positively or negatively will depend on the

experience level of the individual. Role ambiguity is when an individual is not

sure of what their job entails. It makes it hard for a person to decide on what

their priorities are and how to manage their time. Ambiguity can come from a

number of different things. A transfer, promotion, new boss, or new co-workers

can all cause an individual to experience some type of role ambiguity and added

stress. Both role conflict and role ambiguity relate to job dissatisfaction,

lower level of self-confidence, and sometimes elevated blood pressures.2 When

these occur an individual’s motivation decreases, family problems surface, and

depression sets in.

Another form of individual induced stress is work overload. There are

two forms of work overload: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative occurs

when a person has too many things to accomplish and not enough time to do them

in. Qualitative overload on the other hand is when the individual doesn’t have

enough experience or expertise to accomplish the task(s) at hand. Both of these

type of stressors are very detrimental to an individual’s health. In fact

because employees feel as if they are doing two or more jobs at once and have no

time to themselves they experience elevated cholesterol, blood pressure, and

pulse rate.3 Another factor which affects employees is when they have or feel

they have the responsibility for other co-workers. This can happen not only to

managers but also to other employees who may be group leaders or even union

leader. When you start adding up all of these individual responsibilities the

potential for employees having some sort of job related stress is very high.

Now lets move on to physical work environment stressors.

When people think of physical work environment they usually think of

some type of hard labor. But its not confined only to physical labor, it also

encompasses other factors such as noise, temperature, lighting, and pollution.4

So that means even people in business and people in construction both have some

kind of physical work environment stressors. Stress from noise doesn’t have to

be caused from loud sounds. It could be the sound of the air conditioner or

maybe even the silence of some one who is sitting next to you and you know they

are watching what you do. Temperature also adds to frustration and therefore

causes stress. Whether its from working out in the blazing sun or from sitting

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