Important Determinants of Job Stress

Introduction Stress is the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response (Wikipedia). The term stress was used and introduced to social sciences by Hans (Selye in the year 1950). occupational stress is likely to be sustainable higher amongst those occupations whose task is ‘person’ focused. Hingley and Cooper (1986) (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984; Edworthy, 2000) defined job stress as the discrepancy between environmental and situational factors in their work and employees’ capability and resources to handle them. When stress increases beyond the point, feelings of frustration, anxiety and tiredness start to consume energy and stress becomes dysfunctional and detrimental to performance (Muse et al., 2003; Sullivan and Bhagat, 1992).

Introduction (Contd.) Stress can be constructive or destructive. Constructive stress has a positive impact on the employee. It gives a feeling of satisfaction and self respect. Additionally it also increases their interest in their work and opportunities for rehearsing their creative ability. On the other hand destructive stress gives negative results as far the performance of the individual and organization is concerned. This type of stress leads to decrease in performance efficiency, work related carelessness.

Research Question and Conceptual Frame Work Research Question: What are the important components of the Job Stress in a university? Which component considered to be the most important one?

Methodology We cannot directly observe the job stress level. We usually rely on the self report of respondent to measure the job stress level. For this purpose we can use interview or rating scale questionnaire. We have preferred to use rating scale questionnaire because when using interviews some workers might not give an accurate representation of their levels of job stress fearing relationship from management.

Research Design This is a descriptive study. This study was carried out at University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan. Basically the focus of this study is only faculty (Lecturers, Assistant Processors, Associate Professors, and Professors) particularly from School of Business and Economics.

Data Collection Instrument The main data collection instrument in this research paper was questionnaire. The objective is to examine patterns of relationship between the variables. The questionnaire used in this research has been designed with the help of material given in Chapter 5 – Job Stress by Dail I. Fields with some modifications. This questionnaire consisting of two pages and two parts. First part consists of nine questions covering demographic factors of the respondents. Second part consists of a total of 25 statements which measure the level of faculty’ stress. Every statement has a 5 point likert scale from strong disagree to strong agree.

Study Population and sampling The total study population is more 150 faculty members. Fifty (50) questionnaires were distributed in different schools of the university (mostly in SBE). The response rate is 82 percent. A total of 15 questionnaires were distributed among females and 35 among males. Female response rate is 73.33% (11 questionnaires) while male response rate is 85.71% (30 questionnaires).

Data Processing Interpretation and Analysis SPSS Factor Analysis Factor Analysis helped us to reduce 25 variables into 4 variables. –Job Description Problems –Health and Self-Confidence –Work Place Environment –Organizaion’s Policies

Findings Results show that these four factors concludes the % of the data. Job Description related problems play very strong role to increase the job stress level (29.279%). Health and Self-Confidence make another 9.668% contribution towards job stress level. Similarly, Work Place Environment contributes another 6.912% Organization’s Policies makes it’s a cumulative of 59.94% with a contribution of 6.873%.

Findings (Contd.) So, if we re-design our model it will look like: