Seminar

Organizational Behavior

Theme

Organizational Stress as Positive Factor In the Job

Environment

written from: Anna Mindova

matriculation number: 3023348

telefonnumber: 017631207607

Adress: Dammerstockstraße 15

76199 Karlsruhe

submitted to: Prof. Dr. Christiane Schwieren

duty date: 7.07.2018

semesternumber: 12
Structure of the paper

1.Motivation

2.Stress in organization

3.Stressors and strains

4.Challenge stressor framework

4.1 Stressors and psychological strain

4.2 Stressors and job performance

5.The HRD model

6.Conclusion

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 Stress is a major problem in our modern society and affects
agents all around the world (Graphic1). More major issue is
that there is an increase in the number of people experiencing
physical or psychological troubles because of stress

(Graphic2). The American institute of stress as well as the

European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and
Working Conditions are some of the many institutions that are
constantly researching in the field of stress for causes or how to
overcome it and various other related to stress questions.

Graphic 1

Graphic 2

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According to resent survey made from the American institute of
stress, nearly 46% from the American adults are feeling
stressed and the main factor about those numbers is work.
Challenging and overwhelming situation, a manifestation of
negative emotions is the first that comes to mind for most of
the people when they hear about stress. But why stress has to
be necessarily a bad experience? Is it not just a matter of
perception? Our understanding of the world shapes our reality
and when a challenging situation for our capabilities occurs it
could be seen either as destructive or as an opportunity to
grow and learn from it. Most of the papers researching stress
are looking only the negative side to it, the negative impact
that it has on people, stress is described as a villain in our
reality. There are also still many researchers, in the field of
stress, that are thinking outside of the box and recognizing that
every coin has two sides and explore the possible existence of
positive benefits from work stress and not only negative ones.
The main problem that I want to address with my paper is:
Could stress actually be good for us, specifically for agents, to
grow as individuals and improve our performance at work? In
order to be able to discuss this topic we have to understand
what actually organizational stress is. Clarity will be provided
about the concept of stressors and psychological strains. For
better understanding of the difference between negative and
positive side of stress I will introduce you to the both types of
stressors: hindrance and challenge and to some studies made
to investigate the relationship between them and psychological
strains and job performance. I will present a theoretical model
of organizational environment that incorporate positive stress
and challenge stressors: HRD model. After some stress coping

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techniques, a conclusion will be made if there it is really a
reason to believe that job stress could be beneficial for agents.

Stress in organizations is a very wide topic and it is an object of

various academic researches, but despite this fact there is
actually much more to be understood and researched about
stress and its impact on the individuals. The paper from Randall
S. Schuler 1980 reviews some of the many definitions given to
the organizational stress through time from various authors in
order to achieve a better conceptualisation of this
phenomenon. One of the definitions to job stress mentioned:
"Stress involves an interaction of person and
environment...which presents a person with a demand, or a
constraint or an opportunity for behavior" (McGrath 1976).
Most of the definitions although different have the same main
idea incorporated in the definition from Randall S. Schuler
1980: "when the demands of the environment exceed (or
threaten to exceed) a person's capabilities and resources to
meet them or the needs of the person are not being supplied
by the job environment." Correspondently to those definitions
of organizational stress agents have the choice to either accept
those conditions, demands or interactions as an opportunity to
develop their abilities, to conquer their fears and reach the
desired outcome or see them as a potential threat to their
physical or psychological wellbeing, to accept those conditions
as something that will completely destroy them. Sadly, most of
the stress definitions not only in organizations but generally do
not take under consideration the possibility that stress could be
also a positive factor. Stress is more subjective phenomenon
than objective (Lazarus 1990) it depends mostly on the
perspective that each employee has about the work
environment and its demands and also on the coping

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mechanisms that each employee refers to in particular
situations.

But what is actually a work stressor? And how we determine

that a certain environmental demand is indeed a stressor?
"Stressors are conditions that cause strains;” (Jex, 1998). With
this perspective in mind the definition is filly completed when
we also take under consideration that stressors are the stimuli
that evoke the stress process, and strains are the outcomes in
this process" (LePine Podsakoff 2005).
But what is psychological strain? The COR (Conservation of
resources theory) is based on the concept that when an
individuum is confronted with environmental demand he
gathers all of his resources in order to achieve the wanted
outcome (Hobfoll, 2002). With resources is meant everything
that an individuum possess physically and psychologically, it
could be qualities or physical possessions. Most of the early
studies are only concentrating on the negative impact that
work stressors cause, but outside the lab many real workplace
reports are claiming different outcomes from what theories
predicts, they show evidence for positive outcomes within the
employees after exposed to stress. Further investigations were
needed and made regarding the different work environmental
demands and the different outcomes.
Two types of workplace stressors are differed in the literature,
and each has a particular relation to various variables that
determent work outcomes, each of them examined in various
studies. The challenge-hindrance framework was developed
from LePine and Podsakoff and relies on the idea that some
stressors are experienced from the workers as challenges and
others as hindrances. Because it depends from each
individuum's perspective how it appraises a situation many
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researches argue tht it is possible to be accurate which
stressors are positive and which negative. Various of studies
prove that despite the agent’s differences the majority of
individuals feel the same way whether positive or negative to
similar work environmental demands and therefor the reaction
to them is consistent (Brief and George 1995). Employees
appraise time pressure, job scope, job responsibilities and high
levels of workload as an opportunity to develop themselves and
evolve their personality and those factors are some of the
many that are categorized as challenge stressors. Individuals
believe that trough greater effort they will be able to manage
the new increased demands of the environment and achieve
their goals, those feelings are causing higher levels of
motivation and confidence within the employees which helps
them to solve the problems easier and manage stress more
sufficient. On the other hand, topics like ambiguity,
organizational politics and job security are examples of
hindrance stressors because agents appraise these job
demands as harmful to their personal development and
accomplishments (Podsakoff and LePine 2007). The reason that
those topics are experienced more as a threat is that the
employees are not confident enough that they could manage to
overcome those demands through personal effort no matter
how much from themselves they put into the job which leads
to low motivation of coping or even complete lack of it.
In order to gain more clarity about the different environment
demands and how they affect different work-related outcomes
numerous of studies examined the relationship between the
most important correlations.
Abbas and Raja examined the relationship between the
different stressors and psychological strain in order to display
that both stressors are having a psychological impact on the

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agents and there for we can’t claim that challenge stressors are
not stressors because of their positive impact. The survey from
Abbas and Raja investigate the relationship between
psychological strain and different types of stressors and it is
based on 226 self-reports from many full-time employees in
different firms in Pakistan. The diversity of data that they have
collected helped them to maximize the variance of the results.
The test subjects were asked to fill out a questionnaire of how
often they felt either emotional drain and frustration or
exhaustion or physical fatigue due to work related reasons
during the past few months. The questionnaire included ten
items with five of them directly related to physical fatigue and
five to emotional exhaustion. The used scale used was "6-point
Likert scale with anchors ranging from 1 never to 6 always. The
reliability coefficient (α) for this scale was .90" Abbas and Raja
(2018). The results show that challenge stressors (β = .24, p <
.001) as well as hindrance stressors (β = .13, p < .06) correlate
positive with psychological strain (Table 1).

Table 1

Podsakoff and LePine also examined the relationship between

psychological strains and the different stressors and also had
the same results: both types of stressors are causing
psychological strain to the agents. The findings of both papers
from Podsakoff and Abbas confirm the theory of Hans Selye

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that “positive and negative stimuli produce an undifferentiated
physiological response in the body” (Selye, 1976)
How Challenge stressors and hindrance stressors affect
agents job performance is part of a study made from LePeine
and Podsakoff (2005). It aims to show that stress could be
actually beneficial for the firm and the agent as well.
Motivation or lack of it due to different stressors is viewed as a
key factor into the job performance, this is why the hypothesis
in the paper are claiming that challenge stressors have a
positive relation to motivation and there for to job
performance and hindrance stressors the opposite to
motivation and job performance. In the article the researchers
made a meta-analysis of previous work about stress and its
correlations with different factors. 101 samples from 82
manuscripts and articles were collected and categorized within
the challenge hindrance framework. The measurements that
were used to describe performance were objective evaluations
from co-workers, supervisors and self. The performance
evaluation was not only a global description, but also reflected
the quality and quantity of output, as well other qualities that
the individuals showed that affect the performance.
Measurements for motivation were overall motivation about
the job, learning, persistence and expectancy. The results are to
be seen in (Table 2) were stressors explain 6 percent of the
variance in motivation and the relationship with challenge
stressors is positive (β= .22, p < .05), and to hindrance stressors
is negative (β = -.19, p < .05). On the other side stressors
explain 8 percent of the variance in performance and the
relationship with challenge stressors is positive (β = .21, p < .05)
with hindrance stressors is negative (β = -.27, p < .05).

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Table 2

Those test results provide more certainty to the already

existing theory which brings significant benefits to the field of
management research where performance is a key variable.
Challenge hindrance framework was also tested to examine
team performances after exposed to the different stressors
(Pearsall Stein 2009). In a controlled and simulated
environment, the work of 83 teams was observed which
included 332 Students. The results were correspondent to the
results of the individuals from other papers and to the theory
about performance and the relation to the different stressors.
The effect that challenge stressors have on the agents could be
called eustress or the “good stress” because Quick, Nelson, and
Hurrell (1997) “identified the concept of eustress as essentially
good health and high performance.” Eustress could also be
seen as the positive appearance of the response itself especially
when an individuum was exposed to environmental demands
and this response is being “channelled into positive and
constructive outcomes.” (Nelson and Simmons 2007)

The central idea and job of the Human resource development

(HRD) is to research and find the best strategies that could
improve agents performances and as a result to boost the

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organizational positive outcomes. An HRD testable theoretical
model was developed from (Hargrove Becker and Hargrove
2015) which is relative new and its developed around the idea
that positive stress- eustress should be generated in an
organizational environment in order to increase the
performance of the agents, not every work environment could be
reframed like this. The HRD model recognizes that agents in their
workplace do not experience only eustress but also distress (bad
stress), both of this outcomes are present, but for the purposes of my
paper I will not further discuss distress. There are four main variables
evaluation, relatedness, task achievement, and personal
development that are in focus when its talked about inducing
challenge stressors, which challenge and motivate agents to
accomplish tasks and evolve their personalities.

This model differs between primary, secondary and tertiary

interventions within the organizations Table 5

All dark grey boxes are representatives of the methods that HRD is
using. Primary interventions are those methods used to
provoke challenge within the agents. When all the points like
job analysis, job design, and selection etc. are carefully thought

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through then managers are able to create a work environment
that pushes the individuals to grow, to motivate them to cope
with the job demands and accomplish bigger goals. The
secondary interventions that are made within the HRD model
are in order to lead the agent, when the demand it is being
appraised to the eustress outcome. With the implementation
of wellness programs, flexible schedules, coaching and
counselling etc. An environment has been created which helps
agents to feel no pressure, to relax and be in a state of mind
that could help them to correctly cope and engage and
experience the challenges as eustress and not as distress.
Ofcourse, it has been said that too much stress either positive
or negative could lead to very bad outcomes, like the athletes
need now and then a rest from practises. The tertiary
interventions of eustress are focused on the idea to extend the
benefits of eustress to the maximum.
Developed employee recognition programs and compensation
programs based on the employee's performance can help
managers to achieve a promotion of positive outcomes from
stress with a recognition so the motivation of the agents can
grow. Naturally this acknowledgment only has an effect when
it’s a result of a real accomplishments. With this HRD model we
now better could understand the role that human resource
development is having in the firms. This HRD model lead us to
the conclusion that personal effort to deal with stress in not
enough, the managers have a very important position in paying
attention to the agent's well-being, not only setting high
standards for them. Too much of anything could be harmful
and cause permanent psychological and physical damages to
the agents and the financial cost for the firms are very high,
when there is a loss of human capital.

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 Many firms invest in stress relive programs and practises for
the work environment in order to spare the costs of losing
valuable human capital. Meditation rooms, Qi Gong practices,
Yoga or Fitness, are some of the many encouragement that
managers could establish in the work environment in order to
reduce stress within the agents.
Stress response is very complex theme to be researched
because each person has its own perception of the world and
own response to stress and depending on the mood it changes.
All the literature with empirical and theoretical models that
studies this relationship between stress and agents in order to
give more clarity and help people and institutions to cope
better with this phenomenon have to really concentrate more
on the benefits of stress on the work place. There are enough
evidences that stress has a positive side and could be beneficial
to the firm and to the employee but only under the right
circumstances. It is important for the agents to pay attention to
themselves, to their health, but also it is very important for the
managers and the leaders of the firm to protect the employees
from a very bad work environment.

Literature:
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Washington DC: Taylor and Francis

Hargrove and Becker The HRD Eustress Model: Generating Positive Stress With Challenging Work
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Hobfoll, S. E. (2002). Social and psychological resources and adaptation.Review of General

Psychology, 6(4), 307–324. .

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