Job Stress: Boon as well as Bane
| Published date | 01 January 1989 |
| Pages | 21-26 |
| Date | 01 January 1989 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425458910133950 |
| Author | A.J. Geare |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
JOB STRESS:
BOON AS WELL AS BANE
by A.J. Geare
University of Otago, New Zealand
Over the past half century, the literature on the broad topic of "stress" has grown at an
impressive rate and indeed, nearly a decade ago, Selye [1] claimed he had collected 120,000
publications on the subject. The earlier publications were almost entirely in the medical field,
but more recently the subject has been researched from many perspectives, and there is now
a significant social science literature on job stress. This article argues, however, that a large
proportion of this literature suffers from one, or both, of two fundamental deficiencies.
The first deficiency is the tendency to portray stress
as highly undesirable — an ever-present bane, with
a corresponding failure to accept that stress can
also be a boon. This article argues that this
approach creates a totally false impression of
reality. Many managers want job stress, and a
significant proportion believe that their job
performance and their enjoyment of their work
would be increased if they had more stress.
Certainly, some writers pay lip-service to the
beneficial aspects of stress, making passing
reference to the "Inverted-U Law" (see Figure 1)
or an aside about "eustress" [1]. Unfortunately, it
is only lip-service as the overwhelming emphasis
is on the harmful effects.
The second deficiency is the failure to use a
reasonable and adequate definition of job stress.
Definitions that "make" job stress undesirable,
either overtly or by implication, clearly suffer from
the first deficiency. However, even some neutral
definitions are inadequate for social science
research since they are so at variance with popular
usages of the term. Since research frequently
involves gathering the views of managers or
workers as to the level of stress they are under,
it is clearly necessary that both they and the
researcher are talking about the same concept.
Medical and biological researchers, experimenting
on rats, are possibly able to define stress virtually
as they choose. Social science researchers are not.
The "Stress is Undesirable" Syndrome
The "stress is undesirable" syndrome is manifested
in two ways. The first is to use a pejorative
definition of the subject — which clearly makes
it difficult to discuss possible benefits of stress
later. There is a range of such definitions from
those implying that stress is a problem, to those
openly stating that it is an
evil.
The milder versions emphasise that stress is "a
(perceived) substantial imbalance (in either direc-
tion) between demand and response capability
with resulting adverse consequences" [2] (p. 20).
However, if there is an imbalance, then there is a
clear implication that something must be wrong.
This is, of course, emphasised by reference to
"adverse consequences". A more overt approach
is to state that stress results only in strain. This
approach is followed by Kavanagh et al. [3],
Margolis and Kroes [4], and earlier by Hall and
Mansfield [5].
Others list the symptoms of stress [6] or the "stress
responses" [7], which apart from some short-term
physiological effects (increased heart rate, release
of adrenaline, noradrenaline, etc) are consistently
"bad".
No suggestion is made that stress could
result in "good" outcomes, such as increased
performance or increased self-esteem, in the
actual list of symptoms or responses.
Definitions which are openly pejorative include
those used by Gupta and Beehr [8], that stress is
"a demand from any aspect of the work role that
has extreme or noxious characteristics, the
extremity or noxiousness distinguishing stress from
other job characteristics which may result only in
mild effects, such as job dissatisfaction" (p.374),
and Welford [9] who defines stress as a demand
which "requires effort or the toleration of
unpleasantness beyond what he is willing to bear"
(p.
2). These definitions leave no doubt that stress
ER 11,1
1989
21
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