Ans. Intra Organisational Factors
Individual Factors
:
Individual factors, which cause stress include: personality and individual
differences, family problems, economic problems, life styles and role demands.
i) Personality and individual
differences:
Individual basic dispositions are the main reason for potential stress.
Introversion, extroversion, masculinity, rigidity, locus of control, personal
life, demographic differences such as age, health, education and occupation are
some of the reasons causing stress in individuals. It is found that type A
personality is prone to more stress than type B personality. Type A personality
is characterised by emotion and sensitivity to organisation goals, competitive
spirit and achievement oriented behaviour. This leads to frustration even for
small deviations from the expectations, thus feeling of more stress. Type B
personality is typically relaxed, carefree, patient and less serious in
achieving objectives. Thus, he never feels stress. Some propositions of
personality and individual stress are:
•
Age is positively related to stress. When a person grows older, his
expectations also go up. If he is unable to find avenues for realising
expectations, he feels stress.
•
Sound health enables a person to cope up stress better than unsound health.
•
Education and health are related positively and negatively. Better education
provides an opportunity to understand things in a better manner. Even the level
of maturity increases with better education. So better educated persons are
less prone to stress. Poorly educated people in relation to the jobs are likely
to feel more stress due to the poor adaptability on the jobs.
•
The nature of the occupation and stress are related. Certain occupations are
inherently stressful than the other occupations. For instance, doctors,
lawyers, politicians etc. At the same time occupation also gives enough stress
tolerance ability. Politicians are found to posses more stress tolerance
ability.
•
Strong urge for satisfaction of needs compel people to over work and may lead
to stress.
•
Greater degree of locus of control leads to stress. A person is less likely to
feel stress as he believes that he can exercise control over external factors.
•
Self-efficacy and stress are negatively related. Higher degree of self-efficacy
elevates motivation levels. Therefore people with greater self-efficacy remain
calm and effectively face stressful situation. Perception of capacity to bring
changes provides greater ability to withstand stress.
•
Another personal disposition related to stress is psychological hardiness.
Hardiness is the ability to withstand provocation from others. People with
greater psychological hardiness are able to survive and withstand stressful
environment. For instance, people who remain calm even at the provocation of
others and ignore the esteem are less likely to feel stress. Individual differences
in perception, job experiences, social support, hostility etc., are some of the
reasons that cause stress.
•
Perception helps in understanding the environment. Person possessing a positive
perception understands reality and appraises the events objectively. Thus, he
feels less stress.
•
Job experience and stress are negatively related. As one gains experience he
develops adaptability to various job and organisational demands. He realises
the job expectations. He develops a mechanism to deal with stress situations.
Therefore more experienced people remains cool, calm, and ignore stressors than
young and inexperienced employees.
•
Hostility and aggressive behaviour is positively related to stress. A person
who becomes aggressive and gets quick anger is cynical and does not trust
others. He feels more stress than others who are cool and calm.
ii)
Family Problems
: Family issues influence the personal life of individuals. Sound marital
relationships, marital discipline, early and healthy children may lead to happy
personal life. They enjoy the life and become positive in their attitudes. So
they do not tend to greater stress. On the other hand, poor marital
relationships, nagging wife, family separations, extra marital relationships,
disturbing children, poor settlement of family members, aging parents, dual
working couple, death of spouse or other close family member are some of the
reasons for greater stress in the individuals.
iii) Economic Problems: Economic
difficulties are the main cause of stress. Poor management of personal
finances, heavy family expenditure, and constant demand for money, poor
incoming earning capacity and slow financial growth in the job are some of the
economic reasons responsible for greater stress. For instance, an increasing
family expenditure, increased expenditure on children education and health
create heavy demand for income. This creates greater stress in the individuals.
iv) Life Styles: Life Styles of
individuals can cause stress. The following situations of life style cause
stress:
•
Sedentary life styles cause greater stress.
•
Individuals experiencing certain unique situations may be compelled to alter
their attitude, emotions and behaviour. These are known as life trauma. Life
trauma is potential reason for stress.
•
Faster career changes bring more responsibilities to the individuals. Persons
occupying higher positions in the younger age are likely to get heart attacks
due to greater stress. This is because of inability to adapt to the new carrier
responsibilities.
v) Role Demands: Individuals
play multiple roles in their personal life and organisations. In their personal
life, they play the roles of family head, husband, father, brother and son. In
social life they play the roles of club members, informal community group
members, members of recreation groups, religious groups and a number of other
social groups. Similarly in organisations, employees play the role of superior,
subordinate, co-worker, union leader, informal group leaders etc. Incidentally,
all these roles are performed simultaneously. Thus, they cause anxiety and
emotion. Another potential reason is role conflict. It arises because of poor
role perception, role ambiguity, role overload and role overlapping. Role
ambiguity and stress are positively related. The greater the role conflict,
individual experiences more stress.
Organisational
Factors :
An organisation is a combination of resources, goals, strategies, and policies.
In order to make people to work, organisations create structure, process and
working conditions. In modern organisations, number of factors create an
environment of stress. The changing environmental dynamics, globalisation,
organisational adjustments like mergers and acquisitions lead to stress among
employees. In addition, a number of internal organisational factors cause
employee stress. Some of them are poor working conditions, strained labour
management relations, disputed resource allocations, co-employee behaviour,
organisational design and policies, unpleasant leadership styles of the boss,
misunderstandings in organisational communication, bureaucratic controls,
improper motivation, job dissatisfaction, and less attention to merit and
seniority. Let us learn the organisational stressors in detail.
i) Working Conditions : Working conditions
and stress are inversely related. Employees working with poor working
conditions are subject to greater stress. The factors that lead to more stress
are crowded work areas, dust, heat, noise, polluted air, strong odour due to
toxic chemicals, radiation, poor ventilation, unsafe and dangerous conditions,
lack of privacy etc.
ii) Organisational Tasks :
Organisational tasks are designed to meet the objectives and goals. Poorly
designed tasks lead to greater stress. Task autonomy, task inter-dependency,
task demands, task overload are some of the potential reasons for stress in
organisations. For instance greater the task interdependence, greater is the
coordination required. This requires employees to adjust themselves to
coworkers, superiors, and subordinates, irrespective of their willingness. They
are expected to communicate, coordinate, exchange views, with other people
irrespective of caste, creed, gender, religion and political differences. Lack
of adjustment and poor tolerance to others lead to greater degree of stress.
iii)
Administrative Policies and Strategies : Employee’s stress is related to
certain administrative strategies followed by the organisations. Down sizing,
competing pressure, unfair pay structures, rigidity in rules, job rotation and
ambiguous policies are some of the reasons for stress in organisations.
iv)
Organisational Structure and Design : As pointed out earlier organisational
structure is designed to facilitate individual’s interaction in the realisation
of organisational goals. Certain aspects of design like specialisation,
centralisation, line and staff relationships, span of control, and
organisational communication can severely create stress in organisations. For
example, wider span of management compels the executive to manage large number
of subordinates. This may create greater stress. Similarly, frequent line and
staff conflict lead to obstacles in the work performance. Inability to resolve
the conflicts lead to stress.
v) Organisation Process and Styles : A number of organisational
processes are designed for meeting organisational goals. Communication process,
control process, decision making process, promotion process, performance
appraisal process, etc. are designed for realising organisational objectives.
These processes limit the scope of functioning of employees. Improper design of
various organisational processes leads to strained relationships among the
employees. They may also cause de-motivation and job dissatisfaction.
Consequently, employee feels stress in adapting to the processes.
vi) Organisational Leaderships : Top management
is responsible for creation of a sound organisation climate and culture by
appropriate managerial style. The climate provided should be free of tensions,
fear, and anxiety. Authoritarian leadership style creates a directive
environment in which employees are pressurised to attain targets. They work
under impersonal relationships and tight controls. This creates greater work
stress to employees. On the other hand, a climate of warm and friendliness,
scope for participation in decision making, non financial motivation and
flexibility are encouraged under democratic leadership style. This relieves
stress in the employees. Therefore, employees working under authoritarian
leadership styles experience stress than employees working under democratic
leadership style.
vii)
Organisational Life Cycle : Every organisation moves through four phases of
organisational life cycle. They are birth, growth, maturity and decline. In
each of these stages the structure and the design of organisation undergoes
frequent changes. In addition, human beings are subject to metamorphosis to
adapt to the stages in the life cycle. In this process, employees are subject
to job stress. For instance in the initial stages of organisational birth,
stress is caused because of ambiguous policies and designs. In the growth
stage, employees experience stress due to failure to meet conflicting demands.
At the time of decline, stress is caused due to down sizing, retrenchment and
loss of financial rewards and changing organisational systems.
viii) Group Dynamics : Groups are omni
present in organisations. Groups arise out of inherent desire of human beings
and spontaneous reactions of people. In organisations both formal groups and
informal groups exist. A formal group exist in the form of committees, informal
group exit among different levels of organisation. Groups have a number of
functional and dysfunctional consequences. They provide social support and
satisfaction, which is helpful in relieving stress. At the same time, they
become the source of stress also. Lack of cohesiveness, lack of social support,
lack of recognition by the group and incompatible goals cause stress.
Thus
a number of organisational factors cause stress in the individuals. Now let us
learn about the extraorganisational factors.
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