Occupational Stress E-Book

Peter Y. Chen

• Herausgeber: Hogrefe Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Advances in Psychotherapy - Evidence-Based Practice
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 199

Beschreibung

The workplace can be a major source of stress, and this can cause health problems that have a negative impact on the individuals, organizational, and society. This concise, evidence-based volume, written by a leading occupational health psychologist, explores how work conditions and organizational characteristics pose threats and harms to people's wellbeing through the lens of occupation stress theories and models. The author then summarizes the potential adverse impacts of major job stressors across individuals, families, organizations, and nations. In a final section, several evidence-based prevention strategies targeting individuals, management, and organizations are explored, including recovery from work, job crafting, and supervisors as change agents. Practitioners can modify and tailor these actionable strategies to assist employees and organizations in managing Occupational Stress. This book is essential reading for clinical and occupational psychologists, managers, supervisors, and anyone interested in making the workplace a healthier place.

Leseprobe

Advances in Psychotherapy – Evidence-Based Practice, Volume 51

Occupational Stress

Peter Y. Chen

Department of Psychological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL

About the Author

Peter Y. Chen, PhD, was awarded a doctoral degree in 1991 from the University of South Florida with a major in industrial and organizational psychology. He is a professor of psychology at Auburn University, a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, past editor of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, and past president of the Society for Occupational Health Psychology. He has published more than 100 articles and two books, and his work has been cited over 10,000 times. One of his articles was deemed one of the eight most influential papers in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. In addition, he was ranked 29th among the most-cited authors between 2000 and 2004, in 30 management journals. The overarching aim of his research is to understand the process of change at the individual, organizational, community, and industry levels, and to develop ways to facilitate changes, with the goal of building a healthy workplace and society.

Advances in Psychotherapy – Evidence-Based Practice

Series Editor

Danny Wedding, PhD, MPH, Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri–Saint Louis, MO

Associate Editors

Jonathan S. Comer, PhD, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of Mental Health Interventions and Technology (MINT) Program, Center for Children and Families, Florida International University, Miami, FL

J. Kim Penberthy, PhD, ABPP, Professor of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Kenneth E. Freedland, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO

Linda C. Sobell, PhD, ABPP, Professor, Center for Psychological Studies, Nova Southeastern University, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

The basic objective of this series is to provide therapists with practical, evidence-based treatment guidance for the most common disorders seen in clinical practice – and to do so in a reader-friendly manner. Each book in the series is both a compact “how-to” reference on a particular disorder for use by professional clinicians in their daily work and an ideal educational resource for students as well as for practice-oriented continuing education.

The most important feature of the books is that they are practical and easy to use: All are structured similarly and all provide a compact and easy-to-follow guide to all aspects that are relevant in real-life practice. Tables, boxed clinical “pearls,” marginal notes, and summary boxes assist orientation, while checklists provide tools for use in daily practice.

Continuing Education Credits

Psychologists and other healthcare providers may earn five continuing education credits for reading the books in the Advances in Psychotherapy series and taking a multiple-choice exam. This continuing education program is a partnership of Hogrefe Publishing and the National Register of Health Service Psychologists. Details are available at https://www.hogrefe.com/us/cenatreg

The National Register of Health Service Psychologists is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The National Register maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Library of Congress of Congress Cataloging in Publication information for the print version of this book is available via the Library of Congress Marc Database under the Library of Congress Control Number 2023937867

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Occupational stress / Peter Y. Chen, Department of Psychological Sciences, Auburn

University, Auburn, AL.

Names: Chen, Peter Y., author.

Series: Advances in psychotherapy--evidence-based practice ; v. 51.

Description: Series statement: Advances in psychotherapy--evidence-based practice ; volume 51 |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20230441394 | Canadiana (ebook) 20230441408 | ISBN 9780889375086

(softcover) | ISBN 9781613345085 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781616765088 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Job stress.

Classification: LCC HF5548.85 .C44 2023 | DDC 158.7/2—dc23

© 2024 by Hogrefe Publishing

www.hogrefe.com

The authors and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information contained in this text is in accord with the current state of scientific knowledge, recommendations, and practice at the time of publication. In spite of this diligence, errors cannot be completely excluded. Also, due to changing regulations and continuing research, information may become outdated at any point. The authors and publisher disclaim any responsibility for any consequences which may follow from the use of information presented in this book.

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Format: EPUB

ISBN 978-0-88937-508-6 (print) • ISBN 978-1-61676-508-8 (PDF) • ISBN 978-1-61334-508-5 (EPUB)

https://doi.org/10.1027/00508-000

Citability: This EPUB includes page numbering between two vertical lines (Example: |1|) that corresponds to the page numbering of the print and PDF ebook versions of the title.

Dedication

To my wife, Minehwa, for her unconditional support and love over 40 years.

To my son, Liwei, for his understanding and acceptance of who I am.

To my granddaughter, Marisol, for the joys she has brought to my life, and the time she spent with me while I was writing this book.

Contents

Preface

1  Description

1.1  Terminology and Definitions

1.1.1  Occupations

1.1.2  Occupational Stress

1.1.3  Job Stressors

1.1.4  Causal Relations: Job Stressors and Strains

1.1.5  Consequences of Job Stressors

2  Theories and Models

2.1  Role Stress Theory

2.2  Transactional Theory

2.3  Person–Environment Fit Theory

2.4  Job Demands–Resources Theory

2.4.1  Effort–Reward Imbalance Model

2.4.2  Demands–Control Model

2.4.3  Demands–Control–Support Model

2.4.4  Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) Theory

3  Job Stressors and Their Impacts

3.1  Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity

3.1.1  Role Overload

3.1.2  Illegitimate Tasks

3.2  Work–Family Conflict

3.3  Workload

3.3.1  Workplace Telepressure

3.4  Lack of Control or Autonomy

3.5  Organizational Constraints

3.6  Organizational Justice

3.7  Organizational Politics

3.8  Workplace Mistreatment

4  Preventive Interventions

4.1  Promoting Recovery From Work

4.2  Improve Well-Being by Job Crafting

4.3  Supervisor as a Change Agent

4.3.1  Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors

4.3.2  Supportive Supervisor Behaviors and Job Crafting

4.3.3  Improve Well-Being by Reducing Workplace Mistreatment

4.4  Redesigning Work to Promote Job Control

4.5  A Final Note

5   Case Vignette

6  Further Reading

7  References

8  Appendix: Tools and Resources

|ix|Preface

I started the journey of studying occupational stress when I was a graduate student. Immersed in theories, hypotheses, data analyses, and publications, I rarely spent time worrying about the employees behind each datapoint I collected ... until 1999.

Fast forward to 2007, Prof. Irvin Schonfeld asked me, as president of the Society for Occupational Health Psychology, to write an article in its inaugural newsletter. In the article, I reflected on what I had learned that day in 1999.

It was a colorful New England fall afternoon. A colleague stopped by my office and told me he had lost his job due to company-wide layoffs. He had worked at this company for about 20 years, and it had been his first job after he graduated from university. I walked with him in the company garden, and listened to him as he expressed frantic disbelief, anger, and fear. After approximately 30 minutes had passed, he told me his stomach was starting to ache badly. His physical and emotional pain struck me hard that day!

This incident and its impact, which I witnessed more than 2 decades ago, is one of the main reasons I decided to write this book that provides scientific reviews of the evidence regarding occupational stress, and which offers practical as well as evidence-based preventive management strategies to combat different job stressors (e.g., workplace misstatement, work–family conflict) that employees inevitably face daily.

Peter Y. Chen

May 2023

Auburn, Alabama

|1|1Description

No one should have to die while trying to make a living.

Smallwood (2007)

Work provides employees with pride and a sense of purpose, and reinforces beliefs of being independent and resourceful. Yet, more than 60% of employed adults in 2019 identified work as a major source of stress in a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (2019). It is not surprising that occupation stress has long been considered a national health problem by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Sauter et al., 1990). This view has also been held by the International Labour Organization (ILO) (2016) and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (2018).

Because of the prevalence of stressful incidents encountered by people at work, the World Health Organization (WHO) (2019) recently included job stressors and their adverse outcomes in the 11th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases. Similarly, a new diagnostic category of trauma and stress-related disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorders resulting from encountering traumatic events at work (e.g., bullying), has been added into the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Indeed, workplaces are constantly filled with psychosocial health hazards that paradoxically attenuate the expected benefits that the jobs could have offered.

A moral and ethical question is, how can our professionals put joint efforts into building a psychologically safe and healthy workplace for hardworking people around the world? Imagine an employee in Victoria, Australia, being constantly insulted and called ugly and fat by her coworkers. That was what 19-year-old waitress Brodie Panlock had experienced before she died by suicide (Brodie’s Law, 2011). Also imagine the sanitation workers in Alabama who wore diapers to work because they were denied bathroom breaks outside of their sole 30-minute break per 8-hr shift (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). Imagine too, a female worker whose supervisor repeatedly made sexually explicit comments to her and other female coworkers. The supervisor also made lewd and vulgar gestures, and physically harassed his staff, for example, by pressing his private parts into one female worker’s back. When she stood up to her supervisor, her hours were cut, she lost pay, and within a week she was fired (US EEOC v. New Breed Logistics, 2015). These cases may seem extreme, but similar cases continue to occur.

|2|For instance, a series of workplace sexual harassment and assault cases have been revealed since the 2016 #MeToo movement, involving, for example, Roger Ailes at Fox News, Charlie Rose at PBS, Matt Lauer at NBC, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the US Army. Recently, an executive at Imperial Pacific International (IPI) instructed a female employee to escort a drunk male customer to his villa, where she was forcefully kissed and subjected to unwelcome sexual propositions. IPI had a practice of retaliating against female employees for complaining about sexual harassment by terminating them or forcing them to quit (US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2021).

Similarly, incidents of workplace aggression continue to occur. One afternoon in March 2021, an Uber driver in San Francisco, Subhakar Khadka, was cursed, attacked, coughed on, and pepper-sprayed by two female passengers. And just for a moment, pretend you’re Amazon warehouse worker, Jenny. She leaves her post for a 30-minute lunch break, and the clock starts counting down immediately. Jenny needs to walk across a warehouse the size of 14 football fields to access the cafeteria for a $4 cold sandwich. If she makes it within 30 minutes, she is lucky. If she does not, she may suffer adverse consequences, including a pay cut or even job loss (Associated Press, 2021).

A recent report revealed that Japan’s extreme overwork culture (working long hours, working more days, and not taking holiday leave) persists, even after the first case of karoshi (overwork death) was reported in 1969, and the Work Style Reform Bill was passed to address overwork issues in 2018. A Japanese engineer, Hideyuki, with two children aged 4 and 6 years, took only 2 days off from work in 2019, which was more than in previous years, even though he is entitled to 20 days annual leave. He was too afraid of his manager saying something for taking days off (BBC, 2020).

Occupational stress research over the past century has provided convincing evidence that stressful working conditions likely adversely affect workers’ immune systems, physical and mental health, and the well-being of their families. In addition, stressful work conditions are associated with disruption to organizational growth and societal progress (Chen et al., 2023). Hassard et al. (2018a) estimated the economic cost resulting from stressful job experience in eight developed countries: It ranged from US $221.13 million to US $187 billion per year, of which productivity loss accounted for 70% to 90% and health care costs accounted for 10% to 30%. Furthermore, the WHO and the ILO have jointly estimated that 488 million people, or 8.9% of the global population, worked more than 55 hrs per week in 2016 (Descatha et al., 2021). In addition, Descatha et al. (2021) have estimated that 745,194 deaths and 23.3 million disability-adjusted life years from ischemic heart disease and stroke combined were attributable to overwork.

Is making a living worth the risk of a worker’s well-being? It is the central question we shall contemplate throughout this book. I will first provide a description of key concepts, including occupations, occupational stress, job stressors, and consequences of job stressors in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I will discuss how work conditions and organizational characteristics pose threats or harms to people’s well-being and how organizational improvements can |3|be made, via the lens of prominent occupation stress theories or models, including role stress theory, transactional theory, person–environment fit theory, and the job demands–resources theory (including the effort–reward imbalance model, the demands–control model, and the demands–control–support model). These theoretical frameworks shed light on how exposure to job stressors adversely affect people’s well-being and the growth of an organization. Furthermore, these frameworks provide directions for how to proactively combat and manage job stressors and job strains.

In Chapter 3, I introduce the major job stressors identified by Burke (2019), Goh et al. (2015), the ILO (2016), McGrath (1976), and Sonnentag and Frese (2003). These frequently encountered job stressors include role stressors (role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload, and illegitimate tasks), work versus family and nonwork conflict, workload and workplace telepressure, lack of control or autonomy, organizational constraints, organizational justice, organizational politics, and workplace mistreatment. Adverse impacts of these job stressors are also presented primarily based on meta-analytic results when available.

Finally, in Chapter 4, I will describe organizational stress management intervention programs which are preventive in nature. These intervention programs are designed to help employees recover from work (Hahn et al., 2011); to craft employees’ job demands and resources via seeking resources, seeking challenges, and optimizing job demands (Demerouti et al., 2020); to promote supervisory support to reduce work–family conflict (Odle-Dusseau et al., 2016); to promote supervisory support to prevent abusive and uncivil behaviors (Gonzalez-Morales et al., 2018), and to redesign work to promote job control (Bond & Bunce, 2001; Holman & Axtell, 2016; Logan & Ganster, 2005).

1.1  Terminology and Definitions

1.1.1  Occupations

To better understand occupational stress, it is helpful to know first what an occupation entails, as well as the relationship between an occupation and people who work in that occupation. As an example, I will use information provided by the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) (2021) to explain what the occupation of, for example, “a mental health counselor” entails. That refers to a collection of similar job titles such as mental health specialist, mental health therapist, behavior analyst, or correctional counselor. In general, a group of people with similar job titles engages in certain prescribed tasks or work activities to achieve organizational goals. Work activities for mental health counselors may include counseling clients regarding their personal needs, or teaching clients life skills or coping strategies. These activities are often performed in face-to-face discussions with others, often working indoors and using email, and mental health counselors have quite |4|a lot of freedom to make decisions without supervision. To perform these work activities, mental health counselors are required to be knowledgeable (e.g., knowledge of principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of physical and mental dysfunctions, and for career counseling and guidance), have certain skills (e.g., be aware of others’ reactions and understand why they react as they do), abilities (e.g., to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences), job experience (e.g., the job requires extensive experience), and education (e.g., most counselors have an advanced degree).

Work activities in any occupation, as well as required knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics to perform work activities, play an import role in any understanding of occupational stress, and that includes the contexts in which the work activities are performed. There are various social and physical factors associated with those work contexts, which influence how people do their work. People in some occupations may be inherently exposed to higher risks of occupation-related physical and mental health than people in other occupations. For instance, drywall installers use their hands and arms to install big, heavy drywalls onto vertical or horizontal surfaces repetitively each day. Because their work contexts consist of physical demands, drywall installers in this occupation are at a higher risk of suffering musculoskeletal injuries or disorders in their back and shoulder areas, such as rotator cuff tendonitis or tendon strain (Chiou et al., 2000). Similarly, police patrol officers maintain order and protect life while they are exposed to life-threatening or emotionally draining events during their shift. For example, they regularly have to handle abused children or domestic violence, encounter people who have been killed or injured, or assist people in distress. The physical and social demands inherent in these work contexts put first responders at a higher risk of physical and mental illness, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity or burnout (Zimmerman, 2012).

In addition to the physical and social factors associated with work contexts, which influence how people do things, organizational characteristics affect people’s behaviors and attitudes. Imagine people in the same occupation but working in two different organizations: organization A and B. In organization A, uncivil and abusive behaviors are not disciplined or penalized, interpersonal conflict occurs frequently, and productivity and profits are valued more than employees’ health and safety. Organization B is the opposite of organization A. It does not take a rocket scientist to predict that people from the two organizations would have very different work experiences, emotions, attitudes, and interaction relationships, as well as ways of doing their work, even for people who hold the same or similar job titles.

1.1.2  Occupational Stress

Over the past century, we have witnessed an increase in occupational stress research. In a centennial special issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, Bliese et al. (2017) tallied up an increase of occupational stress research |5|from 173 articles (1917–1966), to 213 articles (1967–1996), to 220 articles (1997–2017). Since Work & Stress, a journal specifically devoted to occupational stress research, was first published in 1987, other journals with similar scopes have emerged, including Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (first published in 1997), International Journal of Stress Management (in 2003), and Occupational Health Science (in 2017).

While there are many journals devoted to occupational stress research, the term “occupational stress,” has been interpreted differently by different people, including researchers. First, occupational stress has been referred to as work-related stimuli or job stressors posing a threat to workers’ well-being or behaviors. Job stressors can be any work-related stressful event, such as being yelled at by a boss or receiving conflicting or incorrect instructions from supervisors while performing a task. Job stressors can also be characteristics of a job, such as the fast pace of cutting in a meat-packing facility, little freedom to make decisions, or a 12-hr shift in a remote area each day for a few continuous weeks followed by several days off at home.

Yet occupational stress has also been referred to as job strain or the individual response to job stressors. This view is rooted in an early view of stress as a fight or flight reaction. In sum, occupational stress is often interpreted as (1) job stressors (i.e., work-related stressful events or the characteristics of a job), (2) job strains (i.e., employees’ responses to job stressors), or (3) both job strains and job stressors (Jex et al., 1992).

To avoid confusion when using the word “stress,” I specifically refer to job stressors as stressful events at work or job characteristics, and job strains as employees’ reactions to perceived stressful events. Furthermore, I refer to occupational stress as a body of research (McGrath, 1976) or as a process: “A situation wherein job-related factors interact with a worker to change (i.e., disrupt or enhance) his or her psychological and/or physiological condition such that the person (i.e., mind-body) is forced to deviate from normal functioning” (Beehr & Newman, 1978, p. 669–670).

The effects of job stressors on workers have generally been studied in field settings. Without an adequate research design, such as manipulating job stressors in a controlled setting, it is challenging for occupational stress researchers to provide definitive evidence for causal effects in field research. Two classic stress studies, however, have provided convincing evidence regarding the negative impacts of stressful events. The first study showed that stressful life events increased the rate of infection among healthy people who reported major stressful life events (Cohen et al., 1991