Learning Outcomes

• Describe the model of occupational stress.
• Review the model of burnout, and highlight the managerial solutions to reduce it.
• Explain how social support and the coping process can help to reduce stress.
• Discuss the personality characteristic of hardiness.
• Discuss the Type A behaviour pattern and its management implications.

Chapter Summary

1. Describe the model of occupational stress. Perceived stress is caused by four sets of stressors: individual level, group level, organizational level, and extraorganizational. In turn, perceived stress has psychological/attitudinal, behavioural, cognitive, and physical health outcomes. Several individual differences moderate relationships among stressors, perceived stress, and outcomes.

2. Review the model of burnout, and highlight the managerial solutions to reduce it. Burnout develops in phases. The three key phases are emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feeling a lack of personal accomplishment. Emotional exhaustion, the first phase, is due to a combination of personal stressors and job and organizational stressors. The additive effect of the burnout phases is a host of negative attitudinal and behavioural outcomes. Managers can reduce burnout by buffering its effects; potential buffers include extra staff or equipment, support from top management, increased freedom to make decisions, recognition for accomplishments, time off, equitable rewards, and increased communication from management. Managers can also change the content of an individual's job or assign the person to a new position. Sabbaticals and employee retreats are also used to reduce burnout.

3. Explain how social support and the coping process can help to reduce stress. Social support, an important moderator of relationships between stressors, stress, and outcomes, represents the amount of perceived helpfulness derived from social relationships. Cultural norms, social institutions, companies, groups, and individuals are sources of social support. These sources provide four types of support: esteem, informational, social companionship, and instrumental. Coping is the process of managing demands (external or internal) that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person. The coping process has three major components: situational and personal factors that affect perceptions of the stressor, cognitive appraisals of the stressor, and coping strategies.

4. Discuss the personality characteristic of hardiness. Hardiness is a collection of personality characteristics that neutralizes stress. It includes the characteristics of commitment, locus of control, and challenge. Research has demonstrated that hardy individuals respond less negatively to stressors and stress than unhardy people. Unhardy employees would be good candidates for stress-reduction programs.

5. Discuss the Type A behaviour pattern and its management implications. The Type A behaviour pattern is characterized by someone who is aggressively involved in a chronic, determined struggle to accomplish more and more in less and less time. Type B is the opposite of Type A. Although there are several positive outcomes associated with being Type A, Type A behaviour is positively correlated with coronary heart disease. Management can help Type A individuals by not overloading them with work despite their apparent eagerness to take on an ever-increasing work load.