BUS 318, Organizational Behavior
Jodi Feikema
27 April 2016

Stress by book definition is defined to be a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc: something that causes strong feelings of worry or anxiety: physical force or pressure. (Merriam-Webster, 2016) According to McGrath stress is an imprecise term that usually defined in terms of the internal and external conditions that create stressful situations, and the symptoms that people experience when they are stressed. “So there is a potential for stress when an environmental situation is perceived as presenting a demand that threatens to exceed the person’s capabilities and resources for meeting it, under conditions when he expects a substantial differential in the rewards and costs from meeting the demand versus not meeting it.” (McGrath, 1976) His definition implies that the degree of stress is correlated with a person’s perceived inability to deal with an environmental demand. Stress is correlated with a person’s fear in failure. (McGrath 1976) Stress can effect just about anyone in many different ways, there can be allot of stress that is associated with organizational behavior, different people deal or cope with their stress in different ways during work which can determine how that person produces throughout the day. Stress in the work place is very common among people who work for a living; powerlessness is a universal cause of job stress. When a person feels powerless they start to feel helplessness and hopelessness as well, they don’t tend to alter or avoid the situation, because they nothing can be done. Work setting can be a major contributor to someone being stressed in the work place, because of noise, lack of privacy, poor lighting, poor ventilation, poor temperature control or inadequate sanitary facilities. Another example of something that may cause work place stress is when there is organizational confusion or an overly authoritarian managerial style. (APA, 2016) Some causes that have been researched to cause work place stress are juggling work and personal lives, lack of job security, work load, and people problems. Stress is a highly personalized phenomenon and can vary widely even in identical situations for different reasons. The severity of job stress depends on the magnitude of the demands that are being made and the individual’s sense of control or decision making latitude he or she has in dealing with them. (AIS, 2016) An example of that type of situation can be when someone gets stress level is high over having to write a paper or complete a test, compared to the low stress level that they have when it comes to something dangerous. Some common signs and symptoms of stress are frequent headaches jaw clenching or pain, neck and back pain, muscle spasms, insomnia, difficulty in making decisions and there are many more. Stress can affect anyone, but working in an environment that causes you stress can be a very difficult place to work and can affect a person in many different ways. For example in one of my precious jobs I used to work very well with the other employees and had great customer service when it came to the costumers, but I did not always see eye to eye with the leadership. It caused allot of work place stress among myself and many of the other employees that worked in the same shop. We did our jobs to the best of our abilities despite having poor leadership that we did not trust and always having to deal with stress from having to take on extra responsibilities due to the lack of leadership and constant work flow that always came into the office. The positive things that helped to deal with the stress was having co workers around that you trusted to talk to and always being professional when a situation occurred. Dealing with stress at work can sometimes drag into someone personal life, which can cause some negative impacts if a person cannot control the stress in their work place. Making the environment around you while you work comfortable can minimize office stress, because it gives you that since of comfort to help you focus on work and not what is going on around you. The feeling of being powerless was a main factor in why working at this particular job was so stressful. You could be the best at your job and does everything right, but only the bad things went noticed. The problems that occurred could be brought to higher ups attention, but that did not necessarily mean that the problems were going to be taken care of. After so many times of trying to fix the problems many people just stopped caring which made the morale in the office pretty much disappear. Many people just felt that the problems were never going to be fixed because of previous attempts that failed and felt like no matter what they did nothing got done so they quit trying. Having to work in a stressful environment can seem like it is the most horrible experience in the world and you hate having to get up and go work every day. If you take the necessary steps that are needed to avoid or eliminate the stress and nothing helps and the working environment remains stressful it may be time to start looking or thinking about getting a new job. Job hunting can be stressful, but maybe it is just time for you to start something new and be in a different environment. Having learned from actually being in a stressful environment you know how to avoid certain things to keep your environment stress free. I believe that stress plays a big part in a person’s behavior and attitude in the work place and how well the work gets done. If a person works in a stressful work environment they tend to have a bad attitude and the production of work lacks from being distracted by other issues. When a person works in a less stressful environment or even a stress free in environment they tend to have better attitudes and work well with other people and have a higher work production. Stress can affect the way that people behave while having to work with other employees to complete something. A group of people who are all stressed out will have allot of tension and negative vibes and the task may take longer to complete or may not even get completed compared to a group of people of are stress free and can freely work without having tension in the group and be able to communicate with the other group members to complete the task. After having learned so much about how to identify and deal with stress in the work place I can take that knowledge and apply it to the way that I deal with things in my career in the future. I will be able to identify the signs and symptoms of stress in myself and in other co workers or leadership. The situation should be easier to deal with if any work related stress does happen, because of experience know how to cope with the stress and help others to be able to do the same. Stress does affect everybody, but not everybody is affected in the same way by stress and has to use different methods to deal with the situation then another people may use to deal with their own situation. In conclusion stress is a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life, work, etc: something that causes strong feelings of worry or anxiety: physical force or pressure. (Merriam-Webster, 2016) Stress does affect everybody, some people more than others, it can affect people in many different ways and may take more than one method of relief to help someone free themselves of stress related problems.

References

Schermerhorn, J., Osborn, R., Uhl-Bien, M., & Hunt, J. (2012). Organizational behavior. (12th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN: 9780470878200
McGrath, J. E. (n.d.). Causes and Cures of Stress in Organizations. Retrieved April 27, 2016, from http://www.statpac.org/walonick/organizational-stress.htm
Miller, L. H., PhD, & Smith, A. D., PhD. (n.d.). Stress in the Workplace. Retrieved April 27, 2016, from http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/workplace-stress.aspx
Workplace Stress. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2016, from http://www.stress.org/workplace-stress/

Stress Effects. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2016, from http://www.stress.org/stress-effects/