Organizational Behaviour - Managing Stress and Work-Life Balance (Questions for Review)

Chapter 9: Managing Stress and Work-Life Balance

Q1. Why are opportunities such as job promotion stressful for some people?
- Stress is the experience of opportunities or threats that people perceive as important and also perceive they might not be able to handle or deal with effectively
- A person will be stressed if he perceive that the job promotion, an opportunity which is important to him and he wont be able to handle or deal with it effectively

Q2. Why might excessively high levels of stress lead to turnover?
- Relationship between stress and performance can be summarized in terms of an inverted ‘U’
- Up to a certain point, increase in stress enhance performance (positive stress) and beyond that point further increase in stress impair performance (negative stress).
- Beside enhanced or diminished performance other potential behaviour consequences of stress include strained interpersonal relations, absenteeism and turnover

Q3. Should managers try to eliminate all or most role conflict and ambiguity? Why or why not?
- Job related stressor (source of stress) are role conflict, role ambiguity, overload, underload, challenging assignments, promotions and conditions that affect employees’ economic well being
- Role conflict occurs when expected behaviours or tasks are at odds with each other
- Role ambiguity is the uncertainty that occurs when employees are not sure about what is expected of them and how they should perform their jobs
- Eliminating these will help to remove the stressor for an employee, thus reducing his stress levels.
- As been described in Q2, negative stress or over stress could diminish employee performance

Q4. Is underload as stressful as overload? Why or why not?
- Underload and overload are among the sic work related stressors as underlined in Q3.
- Underload is not having enough work to do.
- Underload can also result in stress as overload
- Underload which will lead to borednees. Most employees like to use different skills on the job and feel like they are doing something worthwhile
- A certain level of positive stress will increase performance and level of motivation

Q5. Do organization have an ethical obligation to guarantee their members job security? Why or why not?
- Stressors that affect employees’ economic well-being and job security are also powerful sources of stress
- Studies have shown that when organizations lay off employees, unemployement stress can be very damaging to employees and their families which may result in physiological and mental illness
- Despite the fact that CEOs and top managers are being paid record high salaries, the lower-level employees are not guaranteed any job security
- Lower level employees which are laid off make ends meet on fraction of the pay they used to earn
- This is a troubling ethical concern

Q6. How can managers help their subordinates learn how to cope with stressors in a problem-focused way?
- Extent which stress is experienced and whether it is positive or negative depends on how people cope, manage or deal with stressors
- There are 2 basic types of coping: problem focused coping and emotion focused coping
- Problem focused coping relates to the steps take to deal directly with and act on the source of stress
- Some problem focused coping for organizations are job redesign and job rotation, reduction of uncertainty, job security, company day care, flexible work schedules, job sharing and telecommuting
- Jobs redesign or job rotation can be used to reduce role conflict, role ambuigty, overload, underload and to improve working condition

Q7. What should manager do if he or she thinks a subordinate is using a dysfunctional form of emotion-focused coping (such as abusing drugs)
- Emotion focused coping relates to the steps people take to deal with and control their stressful feelings and emotions
- Some functional form of emotion-focused coping strategies are: excercise, meditation, social support and clinical counselling.
- Employee assistance programs can be used to help the subordinate
- Identifying the stressors will be the important part of resolving this dysfunctional form of emotion-focused coping

Q8. Is a certain level of stress necessary to motivate employees to perform high level? Why or why not?
- One way to summarize relationship between performance and stress is in terms of an inverted U
- Up to a certain point, increases in stress enhance the performance
- Beyond that point, further increase in stress impair performance
- Stress is important to increase performance and motivation

Q9. Why might some employees be reluctant to use an employee assistance program?
- Employee assistance program is a company sponsored programs that provide employees with counselling and other kinds of professional help to deal with stressor such as alcohol and drug abuse and family problems
- Employees might be reluctant due to their concern on the confidentiality as it might jeopardize their job or carrier

Q10. Why should an organization care whether its members eat well or exercise daily?
- Illness is one of the personal source of stress
- Personal stress would definitely affect the workers performance. Encouraging healthy lifestyles thru eating well & daily exercise will reduce the chances of falling sick thus reducing the stress level