Thus, a person’s occupation or profession represents a major cause of stress-related problems at work. “If there is any truth to the adage that ‘man’s greatest enemy is himself,’ it can be found in these data-it is the responsibility which organizational members have for other organizational members, rather than the responsibility for impersonal aspects of the organization, which constitutes the more significant organizational stress.” 13 Responsibility for people was found to be a greater influence on stress than responsibility for nonpersonal factors such as budgets, projects, equipment, and other property. Studies in the United States and abroad indicate that managers and supervisors consistently have more ulcers and experience more hypertension than the people they supervise. Indeed, responsibility for others may be the greatest stressor of all for managers. These stressors range from task ambiguity and role conflict to overwork and the possibility of failure. Table 18.2 (Attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license) It can therefore be concluded that a major source of general stress emerges from the occupation at which one is working. As shown, high-stress occupations (firefighter, race car driver, and astronaut) are typified by the stress-producing characteristics noted above, whereas low-stress occupations (musical instrument repairperson, medical records technician, and librarian) are not. 10 The study results are presented in Table 18.1.
In general, available evidence suggests that high-stress occupations are those in which incumbents have little control over their jobs, work under relentless time pressures or threatening physical conditions, or have major responsibilities for either human or financial resources.Ī recent study attempted to identify those occupations that were most (and least) stressful. 9 These differences do not follow the traditional blue-collar/white-collar dichotomy, however. The work roles that people fill have a substantial influence on the degree to which they experience stress. We seldom talk about jobs without stress instead, we talk about the degree or magnitude of the stress. In fact, it is difficult to find jobs that are without some degree of stress. Stress is experienced by workers in many jobs: administrative assistants, assembly-line workers, foremen, waitresses, and managers. you want to say, ‘Hey, why did you double-park your car? So now you’re going to blame me if you get a ticket, ’cause you were dumb enough to leave it there?’ But you can’t. (Laughs.) The type of person who will walk in and say, ‘My car’s double-parked outside. “Some days, when you’re aggravated about something, you carry it after you leave the job.
Most of the drivers, they’ll suffer from hemorrhoids, kidney trouble, and such as that. Most of the time you have to drive for the other drivers, to avoid hitting them. You have someone who cuts you off or stops in front of the bus. Sometimes maybe you get a disgruntled passenger on there who starts a big argument. Sometimes you come close to having an accident, that upsets you. Consider, for example, the following quotes from interviews with working people. Tension and job stress are prevalent in our contemporary society and can be found in a wide variety of jobs.
We will consider each of these factors in turn. These are (1) occupational differences, (2) role ambiguity, (3) role conflict, and (4) role overload and underutilization. Although many factors in the work environment have been found to influence the extent to which people experience stress on the job, four factors have been shown to be particularly strong. We begin with organizational influences on stress. Exhibit 18.3 Major Influences on Job-Related Stress (Attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license)