Much attention has been devoted to studies on stress since the first study by Cannon in 1914 (Beehr & Franz, 1987). Stress is generally defined as “the psychological state experienced by an individual when faced with demands, constraints, and/or opportunities that have important but uncertain outcomes” (Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1986, p.38). Based on this definition, stress consists of two major elements; the source of stress and the implication of stress to an individual. Previous stress studies typically have used the definition of stress in three different ways; as a stimulus, a response (strain) or a relationship between stimulus and response (Beehr & Franz, 1987; Jex, et al., 1992). Stimuli are external forces or environmental situations which require a physical or psychological response from individuals (Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1986; Jex, et al., 1992). Stimulus is also referred to as a stressor factor. According to Jex et al. (1992), this definition originated from the field of physics and was then borrowed by other areas. A response or strain is referred to as the effect of such forces on the individual (Jex, et al., 1992) or a symptom of stress (Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1986). In other words, strain is the implication of the external or environmental events on the individual. Stress may also be defined as a relationship between stimulus and strain. Researchers who use this stress definition refer to the interaction between environmental conditions or events and individual responses to that condition or event. Some researchers use outcomes resulting from strain as a definition of stress (see, Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1986). According to them, outcomes refer to the results of that strain which have implications for individual daily life (e.g., family problems, health and job performance).
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Job stress differs from stress in general because it is organisational in nature (Montgomery, et al., 1996). It may occur when there is a mismatch between individual ability and organisational demands. Cooper and Marshall (1976) state that individual differences, psychological and/or physiological, may depart from the norm due to working environment and situation. Hence, job stress is defined as “the feeling of a person who is required to deviate from normal or self-desired functioning in the work place as the result of opportunities, constraints, or demands relating to potentially important work-related outcomes” (Parker & Decotiis, 1983, p.165). Parker and Decotiis (1983) further stated that this feeling may have physical or mental adverse consequences for the individual. Therefore, based on the above definition, stimulus or stressor’s definition of job stress is any environmental situations or conditions in the organisation or workplace that require a necessary response from the individual, physically or psychologically. The examples of environmental situations in the organisation that have been referred to in previous studies are role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload and organisational characteristics such as leadership style (Fisher, 2001; Montgomery, et al., 1996; Parker & Decotiis, 1983; Senatra, 1980). On the other hand, strain is referred to as the reaction which could affect both employee and organisation. Examples of these are low job performance, low job satisfaction and organisational commitment (Choo, 1986; Fisher, 2001; Parker & Decotiis, 1983).
Cooper and Marshall (1976) in their review of the literature on job stress and its association to coronary heart disease and mental ill health reported that job stress had been studied from two perspectives: intra organisational and extra organisational antecedent stressors, that form the basis of stressful situations. They further identified five dimensions of intra organisational antecedent stressors including factors intrinsic to a job, role in organisation, career development, relationship at work, and organisational structure and climate. On the other hand, extra-organisational antecedent stressors include family or personal problems such as financial problems and life crises. In their model, individual characteristics or personality differentiation serve as moderating variables. These individual differences moderate the stress experienced by the individual as well as the symptoms of an individual’s occupational health.
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Later, Parker and Decotiis (1983) conducted a survey using the model developed by Cooper and Marshall (1976) to investigate the relationship between job stressors and two dimensions of job stress namely time pressure and anxiety. However, their model departed from Cooper and Marshall’s (1976) model by first, excluding personality characteristics and second, excluding psychological states (e.g, anxiety, time pressure) from personality characteristics group, thus developed two level outcomes of job stress model. The first level outcome, known as “job stress”, is viewed as a short-term psychological state such as anxiety or tension. On the other hand, second level outcomes are the “consequences of job stress rather than as stress per se” (Parker & Decotiis, 1983, p. 164). Therefore, if the individual experiences a high level of stress or it continues over a prolonged period, the possibility of second-level outcomes is increased. They further argued that the concept of job stress is manifested as a response of an individual to organisation environment (stimuli), thus preventing it being treated as a characteristic of the environment (stimuli) or as an attribute of the individual. Ivancevich and Matteson (1980), in another study, developed a model similar to Cooper and Marshall (1976) with one exception, they appeared to agree with Parker and Decotiis (1983) that job stress is a result of an interaction of both, individual and environmental characteristic and not part of these characteristics. Based on Parker and Decotiis’s (1983) model, the job stress model is shown in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1:Job Stress Model
Parker and Decotiis (1983) using a mail survey questionnaire, involving 367 major restaurant managers that hold positions from trainees to regional managers, assessed their perceptions toward several aspects of the organisation. Forward and backward multiple regressions were used to analyse organisational climate; the results showed that all of the stressor antecedents (aspects of job; structure, climate, information flow;
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aspects of role; career development) were significantly associated with both job stress dimensions; time pressure and anxiety. However, the extra-organisational stressors were relatively weak. Further investigation on individual variables in each stressor category revealed that some stressors were significantly associated with both of the dimensions of job stress (stability, compensation basis, hours worked per week; concern for individual, corporate management out of touch; closeness of supervision, supply support problems; training quality, promotion basis; years of education), whereas, the others were significantly associated with one of the dimensions either time pressure (autonomy, pay-performance limit; communication openness; emphasis on individual development; support from boss, cohesiveness; age) or anxiety (formalization; role conflict).
Notwithstanding the general understanding of the definition of stress, there is still a lack of consensus of what exactly constitutes stress and indeed, the term is ambiguously defined (Beehr & Franz, 1987; Parker & Decotiis, 1983). Further, the terms stress, stressor and strain are often used interchangeably in previous literature to define stress (Jex, et al., 1992). Jex et al. (1992) examined 51 articles which had ‘stress’ or ‘stressful’ terms from 1985 to 1989. They found that, 41% of the articles meant stressor or stimulus for stress; 25% referred to strain and 14% were unclear. They also found that respondents in their surveys tended to interpret the word stress as both stressors and strain, even though the association with strain was slightly stronger than stressor. Jex et al. (1992) argued that this misunderstanding could result in confounding problems, thus the validity of the research results were questionable.
In this study, the term stressor, will be used as suggested by Jex et al. (1992) and Parker and Decotiis (1983), whereas, job stress and strain will be defined as proposed by Parker and Decotiis (1983) in order to avoid any operational confusion. Stressor or stimulus is defined as organisational conditions or environment. Job stress is defined as individual short term psychological condition as a response to organisational conditions or the environment, whereas, strain is referred to as the consequences of job stress,
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rather than organisational conditions or environment. Therefore, in this study, Parker and Decotiis’s (1983) two level outcomes will be employed. In addition to that, Jex et al. (1992) suggested not using the word ‘stress’ in survey items to avoid misinterpretation by respondents. However, due to inconsistent usage of the term in previous studies and its different meaning, the literature review of the present study will also include the studies which have used different terms for ‘stress’. The purpose is to determine whether that there is a relationship among stress factors and job related outcomes.