Coping With Stress In An Organization Term paper
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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
beside the air conditioner, they both can lead to stressful situations. Light
can cause stress because of being to high, to low, or the wrong type. Any of
these can make a person strain their eyes thus make them more susceptible to
stress. When you put all the individual and physical stressors together you can
see why job stress is drawing more and more attention.
IV. HOW TO HANDLE STRESS
Although every person handles stress in their own particular way they
all basically go through the same stages. Professor Hans Selye called these
stages the 'general adaptation syndrome'.5 He says that the body adjust to
stress in three stages; (1) alarm reaction, (2) adaptation, and (3) exhaustion.
Alarm reaction is where a person first becomes aware of whatever the stressor is.
In this stage the body activates its defensives. Some of the notable traits
are higher blood pressure, rapid breathing, faster heart rate, and muscle
tension. In the adaptation stage the body tries to identify which system it
needs to use to deal with the long term effect of what ever is causing stress.
Then the body moves into the exhaustion stage. This is where the body is
totally depleted of its adaptive energy. The body also can revert back to the
symptoms of the alarm reaction stage.6 From having a basic understanding of how
a person's body reacts to stress, managers have a better insight on what to look
for when trying to figure out what the limits are of their personnel.
V. RECOGNIZING STRESS
The best way to learn how to notice signs of stress in other people is
to become aware of your own types of symptoms. There are many warning signs
available to us. A few of them include dryness of the mouth, insomnia, chest
pain with no known cause, rapid breathing, stomach pain, and...
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