Job Stress and Organizational Communication

significant physical and mental health problems. In the 1980s,

stress began to be implicated in areas beyond the bounds of physical and mental health. In the organizational environment, stress has been implicated in the deterioration of performance efficiency by both managers and subordinates (Gibson, 1993, p. 15). When performance efficiency suffers, the quality of the overall organizational environment deteriorates, and organizational productivity deteriorates (Fox, 1993, pp. 289-318). A deterioration of the organizational environment is accompanied by a deterioration in organizational communication (Gilberg, 1993, pp. 8-9).

Stressors in organizational environments have been investi-gated within the context of occupational, or on-the-job, stress (Edwards, 1992, pp. 238-274). Two primary sources of occupational stress have been identified. The first source of these stressors is the job itself. The specific characteristics of a job are the source of what are called task-related stressors (MacBride, 1984, pp. 1-24). The second source of occupational stressors is the organizational environment itself. Stressors associated with the organizational environment are referred to as context-related.

Context-related stressors are external to the tasks associated with a job (MacBride, pp. 1-24). Context-related stressors typically develop as a result flawed organizational structur

. . .
he ways in which an individual perceive occupationally-related stressors are also affected by the non-occupational stressors in an individual's life (Laker, 1992, pp. 99-107). A major occupationally-related stressor is the introduction of change (Sullivan and Bhagat, 1992, pp. 353-374). Change must be carefully planned, employees must be educated as to the nature and purpose of the change, and implementation of change must be non-threatening, if debilitating stress associated with the change is to be avoided. A separate class of stress research has emphasized the determination of how stressors develop in organizations, as opposed to the identification of additional stressors, or the assessment stressor quality or quantity (Schaubroeck, pp. 1-25). This research identified three groups of occupational stressor antecedents. These antecedent groups are contextual variables, role variables, and task variables. Contextual variables were associated with organizational subsystem; role variables were associated with job levels; and task variables were associated with autonomy, complexity, interdependence, routinization, and closeness of supervision. This same body of research classified the occupational stressors, which stemmed
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Approximate Word count = 1659
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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