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Essay: Stress is defined as pressure or worry

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Literature Review

Stress

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s English – Chinese Dictionary (2002), stress defined as pressure or worry resulting from mental or physical distress, difficulties circumstances and et cetera. Arnold et al. (2005) stated that stress is a word derived from the Latin word stringere which means to draw tight. Often, work stress, job stress and occupational stress can be used interchangeably (Dollard, Winefield & Winefield, 2003).

In addition, Arnold et.al (2005) mentioned symptoms of stress in two types, that is, physical and behavioural. The examples of physical symptoms of stress includes lack of appetite, headaches, cramps and muscle spasms, frequent crying or desire to cry and so on. Whereas the examples of behavioural symptoms includes lack of interest in life, loss of sense of humour, difficulty in concentrating and et cetera. Some disease often relates to stress are hypertension, migraine, asthma and menstrual difficulties. Collins and Turunen (2006) claimed that, “when people become stressed, psychological, behavioural and physical symptoms can follow”. Thus, stress can increase job dissatisfaction, anxiety and depression. In addition, relationships and interactions with colleagues, friends and families will be affected.

The tertiary level of education institutions like universities and colleges has traditionally been regarded as a low stress occupation. Even though academics are not highly paid, but they have been envied because of they enjoyed tenure, light workloads, flexibility, and other benefits such as overseas trips for study or conference purposes, and the freedom to pursue their own research interests. For the past 20 years, these advantages have been eroded in many countries. Academic salaries have fallen, for example in United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, many academic positions are now untenured, workloads have increased and academics are under pressure to attract external funds for their research (Winefield, 2003).

A study on college based placement co-ordinators in United Kingdom by Collins and Turunen (2006) has identified that those individuals have a demanding task, liaising with students, tutors and agency training sections so that an appropriate learning opportunities are provided. Some placement co-ordinators concentrate narrowly on placement organization, while others occupy additional roles such as lecturing and tutoring. According to them, as from the experience of one of them, placement co-ordinators have been concerned, for example, about the demands and difficulties of finding sufficient placements, matching student learning needs to placements and at the end of each placement reports and portfolios should be obtained. Placement co-ordinators who have focussed on placement finding may have found themselves in marginalized roles in some academic settings which attach more importance to teaching, research and publication attempts. In addition, they identified some social work agencies seems to view placement finding to be another low-priority demand on top of many others and decision making can be a slow process. Besides, complaints on social work programmes which provide only little information to agencies about students and courses those students take.

Apart from above paragraph, Collin and Turunen (2006) identified in their study that, challenge and pressure can actually improve individual’s work performance. But, continuously increased level of pressure can tend towards stress, whereby quality of one’s work experience and health can be affected. Physical, psychological and behavioural symptoms can follow, when a person become stressed. Other than that, stress also gives impact on an individual’s relationships with colleagues at work and interactions with friends and family members. The general physical problems that often linked to stress are like heart disease, gastrointestinal conditions, allergies, skin complaints, sleep problems and headaches. Thus, these physical problems can lead to absences of such individuals at workplace.

According to Steyn and Kamper (2006), studies on educator stress in South Africa, which were similar to other countries, proclaim that educators encounter various stressors in their work. They also identified something new after they a research had conducted. For instance, inclusive education, the abolition of corporal punishment, additional mediums of instruction, lack of discipline, learner problems, unmotivated learners, large learner-educator ratios, redeployment and retrenchment of educators, time pressure, threat of redundancy, inadequate salaries and the new curriculum system are common reasons to critics for the increasing levels of stress among South African educators.

Further on, Steyn and Kamper (2006) proposed occupational stress among educators is defined as the negative or unpleasant result of task demands that educators face in performing their professional roles and responsibilities. While facing great amount of individuals, social and professional responsibilities in today’s fast-paced societies, educators are expected to execute a variety of activities. This will result in their experience of stress. Moreover, they mentioned occupational stress occurs among educators when those educators are aware an imbalance between situational demands and their ability to respond adequately to the demands. Drastic and continuous level of stress might lead to a burnout condition. They defined “burnout” as multidimensional phenomenon that includes physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion.

In another study, Devonport, Biscomb and Lane (2008) identified a significant proportion of lecturers exposed to inadequate levels of stress encounter impaired physical, social and psychological functioning. If high levels of organisational stress not to be resolved, it will caused quality, productivity and creativity of employees’ work to be decreased, and threatening employees’ health, well-being and morale. On the other hand, preventing high level of stress will preserve staff well-being and organisational productivity and performance. Furthermore, organisational stress usually caused by the interaction between a worker’s personal characteristics, environment factors, the demands placed towards them, and their ability to cope. The examples of an individual’s personal characteristics might include personal goals, confidence, emotional intelligence and the like. Levels of stress that expand within those parameters can reduce job performance.

A survey conducted by Tsui and Yeung (2002), identified stress can be consisted of positive or negative quality and individuals who experienced stressful work problems were less efficient in such case. Depression, anxiety, angry and phobic behaviours are common symptoms of stress that could be caused by the external environment or cognitive factors of the individual. Moreover, they had studied that stress was defined in terms of tolerance stating that stressful environments were considered outside the normal tolerance limits of a person’s daily function, and stimulation might be viewed as pain at the extreme levels. So, one person seemed it to be stressful but others might be seemed as challenging and exciting matter.

Research and teaching are complementary in the foundation for academic staff in university. But, sometimes they are also in conflict. It was because time spent on teaching is not directly time spent on research, and these different tasks are both labour-intensive which means needed a lot of human energy and concentration. The university goals of high quality research and teaching of tertiary education institutions may cause job-related stress. So, university academics have to manage this conflict and allocate time constructively in order to ensure the warranted quality of productivity in research and also in teaching (Tsui and Yeung, 2002).

Reinardy, Maksl and Filak (2009) had studied burnout and job satisfaction among high school journalism advisers. They proposed that group of teachers confront pressure from various sources, for example like administrators, members of school board, parents, fellow teachers and innumerable groups who often try to shape the content of such journal.

Berg (2001) identified the changes in some universities in Sweden during 1990s were his primary findings mainly on implication of those changes on work situation for university lecturers in terms of gender, management and organisation perspective. He mentioned that many lecturers have symptoms, which are similar to stress and burn-out, such as tiredness, angst, faced problems of sleep and concentrate. As his concerned, pressure has been increased among lecturers who were the middle management positions from the organizational context. Consequently, both private and work life of lecturers affected.

In another study by Amat, Fontaine and Chong (2003) stated that through lack of motivation or social contact, if the workers feel “under-loaded”, the stress will exists. They also identified some sources of work stress which are vagueness in job position, difference in work performance expectation, existence of definite policy or system of government in the organisational environment and poor relationships with colleagues. According to them, five categories of work stress have been identified from previous researches, included factors intrinsic to the job, employee’s role in the organization, video display terminal stress, relationship at work and also career prospects. They tried to apply these five categories of factors in their study and found out that mangers in Malaysia who work in Multinational Corporation (MNC) encountered with the same causes of stress across all multinational organizations.

According to Stevenson (2000), stress does not usually declare itself as a single set of symptoms which can be easily determine, but, generally many individuals may not even know that they are suffering stress. He also mentioned typical stress relates to the pressures which majority of person encountering such situation at some time in their workplace and private lives. The pressures can be either positive or negative one. Positive will be perceived as an opportunity whereas negative will be perceived as a threat, restriction or demand. There will be a possibility of both positive and negative pressures occur together in once, but this will not happen in normal.

In past 20 years, occupational stress has slowly increasing among both employers and governments (Fevre, Matheny and Kolt, 2003). Moreover, they had identified three set of principles which used to relate to concepts of stress, distress, and eustress. First of all, stress, whether is eustress or distress or the combination of both, occurred as the result from stressors in the individual’s environment. The next principle is stressors can be identified by a series of attributes, which are, timing, source, perceived control over the stressor, and perceived desirability of the stressor rather than only the level of stress that stressors cause. The third principle is that, whether or not the stressors which caused eustress or distress depend on the individual’s interpretation.

Workload

According to Collins Student’s Dictionary (2004), workload defined as the amount of work to be done especially in a specific period. In addition, Edworthy (2000) argued that academic retrenchment has caused increased in workloads and decrease in the level of control that lecturers have over their work. Thus, it helps to provide the potential for the manifestation of high levels of job stress and even the worst lead to inefficiency of operation of a college.

Demand-control theory is a useful approach for job analysis in studies of occupational stress and reduction of stress-related sickness, injury and burnout. This theory was developed by Karasek together with Theorell in 1979, is a theory of occupational stress, and basically applies among blue-collar and white-collar employees. Job demands not necessarily negative matter or eventually lead to stress (Dean and Pollard, 2001). Furthermore, they mentioned that the essential element to predict job stress or job satisfaction is the impact of occupational demands by considering the control resources available to the worker; this demand-control research proposed that employee in high demand and high control occupations do not undergoing problematic level of stress. They also encounter fewer incidences of stress-related illness and absenteeism as compare to personnel in high demand and low control occupations.

Steyn and Kamper (2006) identified some work-related stressors among educators which include professional demands, career development, role-based stress, interpersonal relationships and the home-work interface. Besides, their study also proposed that the starting point of stress among educators are work demands, career development, “role-based” stress, interpersonal relationship and home-work interface. As time goes by, when those stressors combine with the individual’s demographics, it will affect the person in terms of physical, mental and psychological aspects. The individual must able to take steps to cope with such stress with a set of stress management strategies like try to reduce sources of stress, meditation, relaxation and support.

Large numbers of occupational demands affect generally translation task that may contribute to interpreter stress and burnout (Dean and Pollard, 2001).

A teacher in counseling is rewarding profession, but also a challenging profession (McCarthy, Kerne and Calfa, 2010). They also mentioned that, research has proved some of the necessities that school counselors have to face. Those necessities include high caseloads, role conflict and common difficulty of keeping up with the all daily responsibilities. Further on, they found that the specific items that school counselors most demanding is paperwork requirements, caseload size, and daily disruptions were actually consistent with previous research.

In a research done by Devonport, Biscomb and Lane (2008) stated that stress was highest and job satisfaction lowest among staff whose workloads involved a combination of teaching and research. Employees in such situation reported feeling overwhelmed by a workload which required them to deliver research outputs apart from other demands. The major stressor was probably being the challenge by them to secure external research funding. They also identified the predictors of job-related strain among same group of teachers indicating by limited resources and also high volumes job demands.

Furthermore, Steyn and Kamper (2006) stated that teaching in a classroom has been characterised as an occupation where many demands are present. Heavy workloads and time pressures are identified by them according to previous educational studies. Educators often found to be not enough time to achieve standards of learning teaching they intended. The most common cause of stress among teachers in schools is work-overloaded whereby there are great amount of expectation as compare to what the individuals are capable to achieve. Often, this overloaded works comprise of curriculum-related problems, large classes and classroom related problems of which all of these matters have been identified accordingly.

In a study by Berg (2001) who had conducted interviews with the junior and middle-management positions of male and female lecturers in at one university in Sweden. He found that today’s lecturer was to work with not only lectures but also administration, research and writing applications for research funding. The time for preparing for lectures and research is limited. Those lecturers who can manage to get research funding are the ones who have succeeded, but, in reality, many of them do not have the opportunity. Further on, according to Berg, teaching is seen as a duty or responsibility, a heavy burden, a reward in order to spend some time in the field research.

Numbers of student study at university level are increasing. The students have increased from 1989 and 1998 amounted to 83 percent, meanwhile the number of lecturers only increased 17 percent during this period (Berg, 2001). Generally, it indicated that an increasing number of students from 10 per lecturer to 15 per lecturer. She also identified that, there has also been a growth in administrative work with increasing evaluation of courses and more meetings with students and colleagues about policy questions and administration. In addition, she also found that lecturers often feel that they are alone; if they are sick, there will be nobody who can replace them immediately. They have a feeling that there are always fewer lecturers than needed to do the work and that they can never ask colleagues to take over their jobs. Instead they work at home, preparing for lectures and their own research.

Barry, Berg and Chandler (2003) studied the development of the New Public Management in public sectors worldwide, and reported a numbers of interviews with university academics in Sweden and England which the New Public Management apply in the daily routines of university work. Academic staffs in both countries perceived their current workloads as difficult and heavy. These workloads had exhausted staffs’ time and energies. There was an increasing in administrative work and teaching and less time for research. This seems to be in line with other research into the workloads of academics.

Furthermore, Barry, Berg and Chandler (2003) found that the academics in Sweden appeared to have a little more free time to relax and take a rest on themselves, since they knew that they worked forty to forty-five hours each week. As compare to England’s academics who works between fifty and seventy hours per week, coupled with reducing vacation opportunities and rest from the job.

Apart from that, the study by Barry, Berg and Chandler (2003), identified female senior lecturer in Sweden proclaimed that she had experienced a lot of stress. At this time, she was experiencing the stress which had given a lot of thought to reducing her official work hours. She subsequently decided against this, angry about her defensive reactions, and instead wrote a letter to her managers where she described her workload.

Pihulyk (2002) stated that “on the job or at home, increased demands are being placed on individuals to perform, leaving many feeling distraught and exhausted”. In addition, workload to an organization means productivity, but to the workers it means expending more time and energy. Workweek often extends into the evening and weekend, further eroding time meant for leisure and recuperation. Not only that, she also mentioned downsizing adds to this problem, since the duties of middle management are redistributed to all levels of the organization, further overwhelming the workers with more paperwork.

In another study by Paulse (2005), an amount of fifty-five percent (55%) of educators have considered leaving the profession due to inadequate remuneration, increased workload, lack of career development, lack of professional recognition, dissatisfaction with work policies or job insecurities. She also identified time pressure concerned to administrative demands and too much paper works are the main causes of stress among teachers. This is because there is inadequate time for preparation, unrealistic deadlines imposed and issues regarding the workload of teachers.

Amat, Fontaine and Chong (2003) found that workloads, working environments and relationship at work were the primary concern of those managers who work in MNC that result in stress at their work place. In their study, they identified managers are stressed because of high workloads. As mentioned by them, most organizations in Malaysia today’s have cutting down the number of working days in a week in which from six days change to five days per week. Although this decrease of working days happens, yet in most cases the workload still not modified. Their study proved that age was significantly correlated especially with workloads. Further on, they proposed that work has been intensified over past few years, also organizational changes, for instances, downsizing, have often caused the increasing workload demands. In addition, their study also agreed that higher role conflict and role ambiguity among managers were due to the high work demands and the rapid changes in the workplace. When a worker receives inconsistent sets of expectations from employers which need to be satisfied simultaneously, definitely he or she will encounters role conflict and lead to job stress.

Antoniou, Polychroni & Vlachakis (2006) had found in their study on 493 school teachers in primary level and secondary level, whereby female teachers experienced higher levels of occupational stress, especially regarding to interaction with students and colleagues, workload, students’ progress and emotional exhaustion. In their study, they also categorized several special conditions that cause stress among teachers. First category is exogenous, that is factors derived externally, for instances, unfavourable occupational conditions, unreasonable workload, lack of collaboration and the like. Second, is endogenous, that is pressures derived internally like individual personality attributes, disappointment and frustration that probably arise from unrealistic expectations that teachers hold and so on. In addition, they clarified “teachers’ workload” comprised of matters that related to chores over the teachers’ role, lack of teaching assistants, and hold closely or firmly to the curriculum system in the school itself.

Stevenson (2000) mentioned that people usually find themselves unable to exercise influences in the workplace. For instance, over decisions taken by employers, consequently, individuals might have to face with the effects such as long working hours, workload, which might be either too heavy or too light or lack of development opportunities for him or her.

In another study, higher education lecturers experienced stress from many sources (Devonport, Biscomb & Lane, 2008). Those sources were categorized under three subject of discussion. The first one is organisational stress including workload, administration, role clarity, management style, and support services. Second, is the subject-linked stress which comprise of marking requirement, difficulties in combining many aspects of an academic’s role, knowledge on courses or subjects and students. Finally, the non-organisational stress which discuss about relationship issues.

Job satisfaction

John Arnold et.al (2004,page) defined job satisfaction as “a variety of aspects of the job that influence a person’s levels of satisfaction with it”. Besides, job satisfaction can be seen in three ways, as a function of (a) person’s general personality or characteristic attitude, (b) the opinions of others in the person’s workplace; or (c) the characteristic of a person’s job.

A research on Australian universities’ staffs showed that overall decline in job satisfaction from1994 to 2000 due to increasingly difficult financial situation experienced by them during that period (Winefield, 2003).

In their survey study, DeMato and Curcio (2004) identified almost 90% of primary school counsellors in Virginia were satisfied with their job. Besides, they also identified the intention to stay in their current job position was little. This intention was the essential element to foretell about school counsellors’ job satisfaction. Stress can cause professional satisfaction to be reduced among school counsellors when it turns serious problem, and also professional burnout (McCarthy et al., 2010)

Another study by (Fichter and Cipolla, 2010) on role conflict, role ambiguity, job satisfaction and burnout among financial advisors in the South Florida area has been done. Their study mentioned job satisfaction was affected through two set of factors that is hygiene and motivational. Hygiene is referring to external circumstances whereas motivational is referring to internal factors within an employee. They identified achievement, recognition, job itself, responsibility, advancement and the future prospect as elements in motivational factors. On the other hand, hygiene factors are organization policy, supervision, relationship between the employee and his or her supervisors, conditions of working, relationship with colleague, salary and wages, personal life, relationship with subordinates, status, and job security.

Apart from above, literature on job satisfaction among university academics indicates that although Performance Appraisal System has been introduced in both public and private universities around the world, but impact of Performance Appraisal System on job satisfaction in those academic institution in developing countries never been conducted by anyone (Ndambakuwa and Mufunda, 2006). They also pointed out that Performance Appraisal System is a strategy being introduced to improve performance as similar as Total Quality Improvement and Management by Objectives. Total Quality Management pays attention on the matter of team working and customer satisfaction. But, Performance Appraisal System highlights an employee behavior control for the satisfaction. In their study, there are nine out of ten of academic staffs from University of Zimbabwee their ranked job satisfaction related to teaching activity as above average before the Performance Appraisal System being introduced. But, after introduction of Performance Appraisal System only five out of ten, rated job satisfaction related to teaching activity as above average. Other than that, 60 percent of university staffs rated job satisfaction related to research activity as above average prior to introduction of Performance Appraisal System as compared to after introduction, only 30 percent. As for the staffs involved in service activity, they ranked their job performance in related field as average and above is 50 percent prior to introduction of Performance Appraisal System and decline to 20 percent after implemented the system. Overall from their study, since the Performance Appraisal System was introduced, both job satisfaction and productivity had declined. Furthemore, there are more than two-thirds of the staffs in University of Zimbabwee suggested Performance Appraisal System should be discarded due to it is worthless and ineffective.

In another study, the emotional fatigue had a negative relationship on job satisfaction. In other way, personal accomplishment had a positive relationship with job satisfaction (Reinardy, Maksl & Filak, 2009). Generally, they stated the feeling of dissatisfaction will grow larger when employees become exhausted from their jobs. The journalism advisers they studied have suggested that personal accomplishment seems to be the counter balance of work stress. Furthermore, indication high level of satisfaction in work among journalism advisers comes from the enjoyment of the work tasks which might precludes any of the probable job exhaustion. Apart from that, their study also proposed that generally, workers do not spend for 10 years or more if they are not satisfied in their job or workplace. This was supported by evidence that the group of journalism advisers they studied had been work an average of 10.3 years as journalism advisers and average of 9.8 years in the same school.

Chen and Silverthorne (2008) stated in their study Locus of Control score was able predict of a personnel’s work related behavior in several areas. Locus of Control measures a person’s expectancies for the need for internal or external control of reinforcement. People with a low Locus of Control score have an internal Locus of Control is said that their own behavior, capacities, or attributes determine the rewards that they will be received. Individuals with a high Locus of Control score have an external Locus of Control and them thinks that rewards they might obtain in life are generally outside of their control. In their study, respondents who had an internal Locus of Control recognized low degree of job stress, but high levels of job satisfaction and job performance. Further, they proposed individuals who have an external Locus of Control, job stress would have negative relationship on their performance while for an internal Locus of Control individual job stress has the ability to improve his or her performance. They concluded that internal Locus of Control persons was more easily satisfy in their jobs as compare to individuals with external Locus of Control, thus enhancing the job performance. In addition, they found that it is easier for an internal Locus of Control individual to manage with job stress.

According to Tsui and Yeung(2000), the profession of teaching was self-motivating whereby teachers’ internal locus of control might motivate them to upgrade their quality of teaching. Apparently, it would cause excessive stress to teachers. Furthermore, in school environment, factors affecting the well-being of teachers often go beyond the classroom to whole school. The quality of supervision affected job satisfaction and also motivation among teachers. So, they concluded that facilitative working environment was important in reducing job stress and enhancing job satisfaction among teachers in schools.

Another research by Noelker, Ejaz and Castora (2008) examined predictors of job satisfaction on 138 supervisors for direct care workers in 49 nursing centre, assisted living facilities, home care centers in northeast of Ohio. Their research carried out due to the reason that there were only little observations and experiments of attention on job satisfaction among nurse supervisors. They found out those supervisors, who have higher job satisfaction scores have low depression, fewer problems of supervisors’ turnover, reported better orientation and continuing education programs. They also mentioned that these predictors are essential due to the reason that they help workers more readily to workplace interference. So, they suggested that management in long-term care to improve job orientation and continuing education programs, reducing turnover and implement job improvement chance.

In addition, a study on job satisfaction among athletic administrators in high schools, by Green and Reese (2006), stated that coaching, overseeing and superintend the high schools’ athletics most probably a rewarding yet stressful job. They also stated those athletic administrators and high schools’ coaches serving in a dual or multi-role capacity, as they are also school teachers. Often, the problems of job satisfaction occurred in the business world, but also happen in the athletic industry which is a highly visible and competitive world. They also stressed that coaching and supervising athletic programs in high school are easy and without excessive pressures is a misleading belief. Furthermore, they also identified that long hours of working with athletes, arranging time for games, budget preparation, buying orders and the like, can probably be the main sources in connection of low job satisfaction among athletic administrators.

A study by Pearson and Moomaw (2005) stated that job dissatisfaction can cause to stress and furthest to burnout, if such individual does not cope with it. They also identified that both motivation and autonomy among teachers have relationship with job dissatisfaction and job stress. Moreover, teachers who experienced less stress and more satisfied with their job are those who intrinsically motivated. Empirical studies identified restrictions on autonomy for example, experienced lack of control and feel of powerlessness have close relation with tension, frustration and distress among teachers.

A study on activities and attitudes of retired university staffs by Tizard and Owen (2001) had identified several causes for early retirement among university academics. Dissatisfaction with the work situation was the most general reason with 47%, followed by a favourable financial settlement, wanted time to pursue other interests, stress or illness of self or family member, wanted time for own academic work and the last is pressure from university. Apart from that, those who retired under 60 and those who retired from 60-64 years old were more probably because of stress or illness and dissatisfaction. Furthermore, lecturers were less likely than other levels of staff to choose the cause of wanted time for own academic work and because of pressure from the university.

According to Montgomery and Ruppin (2005), a person may have strong feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction towards his or her job and life situation more commonly might influence level of commitment this individual’s to his or her work. They also mentioned that it is arguable whether the level of satisfaction is causally prior or after the experiences of burnout. This debatable issue depends on an individual and a situation whereby each human and things happen is unique from others. They chose to assign satisfaction prior to burnout because we viewed it as predominantly connected / related to emotional response. Furthermore, in their study, they found a result which moderate associations existed between external stressors and burnout, personality mediators, negatively or positively oriented emotional responses including satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and support variables as well as between emotional responses and burnout.

In another study by Collin and Turunen (2006), identified that stress can increase job dissatisfaction, anxiety and depression on an individual.

Rewards

Dollard, Winefield and Winefield (2003) analyzed Siegrist’s (1996) Effort- Reward Imbalance model as showed at below: This model identifies extrinsic effort and intrinsic efforts. Extrinsic effort is conceptually similar to the job demands concept in the Demand-Control Support model. But, intrinsic efforts refer to a personal characteristic of coping, a pattern of excessive striving in combination with strong desire of being approved and esteemed.

According to Thomas (2009), extrinsic rewards which usually refer to financial or tangible rewards given by employers to employees. The extrinsic rewards include salaries, wages, bonuses and other benefits. These rewards are external to the employee’s work itself. Moreover, their size and whether or not they are granted is control by other people. On the other hand, Thomas (2009) also mentioned that psychological rewards which employee get from well-performance of work by him or her are called intrinsic rewards. Almost all workers now days are required to high degree of self-manage to apply their knowledge, intelligence and experience in their daily work activities. This kind of phenomenon happen is to achieve organizational purposes and goals.

Again, Thomas (2009) stated in his article that, Professor Walter Tymon from Villanova University and him had introduced and clarified a measure of the four intrinsic rewards which comprise of sense of meaningfulness, sense of choice, sense of competence and sense of progress, available as Work Engagement Profile now. They confirmed the effect of the intrinsic rewards on employee self-management by data which had collected by them. For instance, individuals with high level of rewards indicate greater concentration and are ranked as more effective by their superiors. The strong predictors of retention are intrinsic rewards. Employees with high levels of intrinsic rewards recommend the organization to friends as an option of workplace, and introduce and promote its products and services to potential clients.

According to Ryan and Deci (2000), two types of motivation are intrinsic and extrinsic had been studied by large number of researcher. They also stated that almost every individual who works with others is interested with matters of motivation. Those matters included facing the question of how much motivation oneself has for a job and the recurrent task of fostering more compare to less motivation around them. In addition, orientation of motivation, which in short called type of motivation, relates to the basis of attitudes and targets that cause to occur of action whereby it concerns with the reasons of actions.

Niemiec, Ryan and Deci (2008) identified the key difference between intrinsic and extrinsic in terms of the objective of these two groups are differentially related to psychological health. Further the degree to which those goals are linked to satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are considered by Self Determination Theory to be the indispensable and fundamental basis of psychological health. According to them, the need for autonomy indicates a sense of choice and volition in the regulation of behaviour whereas the need for competence refers to a sense of effective interaction with the individual’s environment. Apart from that, the need for relatedness was basically regards the feeling connected to and cared about by others. More specifically, Self Determination Theory explained that the relation of the two types of rewards to satisfaction of the basic psychological needs involves two components. The first component is the satisfaction of basic psychological needs across development will promote higher importance of intrinsic aspirations. The second component is the pursuit and attainment of intrinsic aspirations at any given time will facilitate satisfaction of the basic psychological needs and, in turn, will promote psychological health.

Furthermore, intrinsic rewards are healthy and keep up sources of motivation for workers (Thomas, 2009). With this kind of motivation, there will be only little chance of burnout. Employees will have more positive feelings and fewer negative ones on their job if they experienced high degree of rewards. Thus, job satisfaction among them is higher, they perceive symptoms of stress fewer, and they will probably feel that they are developing professionally in their job position.

According to Syed, Anwar and Syed (2007), rewards can be classifies into 2 broad categories that are financial rewards and non-financial rewards. Financial rewards are those rewards that are given in monetary terms and also things that have some monetary value whereas non-financial rewards are those rewards arise from work itself and working environment and do not have any monetary value.

Financial rewards generally include basic pay, contingent pay, variable pay, share ownership and other financial benefits and incentives. Contingent pay is the pay for performance, competence or contribution. Example for variable pay is bonuses. Due to the reason that these rewards are given as a result of a transaction between an employer and employees or as a return for employees’ services, they are called Transactional rewards. On the other hand, non financial rewards normally comprise of recognition, responsibility, meaningful work, autonomy, opportunity to use and develop skills, career opportunity, quality of work life, and work life balance. These rewards also defined as Relational rewards because they are concerned with learning, development and work experience of employees (Syed, Anwar & Syed, 2007).

Kinman and Jones (2007) studied the effort-reward imbalance (ERI) model which is one of the model formulated to explain relationships between attributes of working environment and employees’ behaviours. The ERI model proposed that employee’s pressure or stress caused by an imbalance between the levels of effort the individual perceives that they work for the organization with the rewards that they might be receiving. The experience of effort-reward imbalance is seems to be in high frequency in employees who are committed too much on their work.

According to Kinman and Jones (2007) identified Siegrist’s (1996) ERI model, and concluded rewards are distributed to employees by three components that is money, esteem and security or career prospects. The esteem approaches can be achieved by giving appropriate respect and support to employees whereas, examples for security or career prospects are reasonable promotion prospects, status consistency, and job security. Further, Kinman and Jones (2007) also stated, “It is also likely that employees who believe that their efforts and achievements at work are not counterbalanced by the rewards they receive may be less likely to tolerate intrusion into their home lives than those who work under more equitable conditions”. Findings from Kinman and Jones (2007) identified there was a significant relationships between the three components which are money, esteem and security or career prospects in the ERI model and work-life conflict. For example, respondents in their study who reported higher efforts, lower rewards and committed too much on their work reported higher levels of work-life conflict.

In another study by Jonge et al. (2000) found that the risk of emotional exhaustion for men and women who have both high efforts and low rewards was about fifteen times higher workers with low efforts and high rewards. This showed that, the individual who has put a lot of efforts in his or her work, but receive only a little of rewards will be easier to experience stress as compare to those who have higher level of rewards but not over committed in their works. Moreover, they had also found that occupational rewards were the strongest predictors of job dissatisfaction from their study. Furthermore, as compared to individuals reporting job strain, Jonge et al. (2000) also identified employees reporting a mismatch their efforts with occupational rewards showed even more significant risks of emotional exhaustion, complaints on mental and physical health, and job dissatisfaction. They concluded that rewards received by employees seem to be more essential than job control. In the context of stress, their study proved that unsatisfied reward expectancies by employees in conjunction with high extrinsic efforts are most probably to provoke negative behaviours among employees.

Tsutsumi and Kawakami (2004) found that the effort-reward imbalance model outlines and give guidance on measures for the evaluation of a stressful work environment that reflects the labour market situation in now days. Other than that, they also found that occupational stress reduction based on the effort-reward imbalance theory is applicable in various field of occupations. But, greater effectiveness is expected on employees in the field of service occupations which require them to have personal interaction with their clients.

Schreuder et al. (2009) proposed that when women who have high frequency of absent, the employers or superiors should not only look for symptoms of chronic disease, but also get further information about work efforts and rewards, respect that she experienced in the organization, and the level of satisfactory on work-related conditions. In their study, they suggested managers of the regional hospital having a discussion on employees absenteeism with whom have been absent because of sickness three times in a one year. Those managers are the superiors for employees who are respondents in the study of Schreuder et al. (2009). Such discussion between employers and employees can probably identify whether the employee was legitimately absent from work due to illness or because of other reasons. When managers kindly explore how frequent absentees conceptualize work efforts and rewards to find out major motivators and obstructions to well-being at workplace.

Stress management strategies

According Dean and Pollard (2001) steps taken by business sector which tried to reduce employee stress was still limited to changes in the physical environment or promoting change in employee behaviours. In details, those steps include installed noise reduction barriers, ergonomic seating and keyboards, installed filters to monitors, expand greater space in workplace building, held nutritional and stress reduction seminars, offered health club membership with discount and build facilities of child care and on-site exercises.

Devonport, Biscomb and Lane (2008) stated in their study, that a person’s optimal level of stress is affected by the way the stress is appraised and accommodated. They also mentioned there are a number of moderating factors that help to reduce or eliminate the negative effects of organisational stress. These factors been identified include stress coping style, emotionality of an individual, levels of control and social support.

According to study done by Steyn and Kamper (2006), the consequences of stress may be managed by adaptive responses from the educator himself or herself, the school or factors outside the school. The particular educator and school can benefit from a more productive personal and professional life when he or she managing stress effectively. Thus, it will limit problems of absenteeism, turnover and poor performance among educators in school. There are two common methods being applied to manage stress in order to increase performance and personal effectiveness in which they are reducing sources of stress and building resistance to stress.

In more detail, according to Steyn and Kamper (2006), the method of reducing sources of stress was that individuals might be seeking counselling and by training, learning new skills which included skills related to assertiveness, managing time, managing disruptive learner behaviour and developing higher level of learning orientation. Educators can make clear on personal values. Meanwhile, school principles can clarify educators’ job descriptions and, reduce educators’ role conflict and role ambiguity by communicating expectation to educators. School principals can further provide a positive atmosphere of social support, review educators’ workload, improve relationship between educators through team building and conflict management, and assist educators by providing updated resources and advance technologies.

As for the second method, building resistance to stress applied when facing stressors that cannot be reduced and should be identified. A first method of developing resistance to stress is to achieve mental and physical health which includes meditation, relaxation and development of a strong network social support. (Steyn and Kamper, 2006)

Cash (2009) in his article mentioned that American Heart Association recommends 10 positive healthy habits to cope with stress. Those healthy habits include talk with family and friends daily to share an individual’s feelings, hopes and joys, make time every day for physical activity to relieve mental and physical tension, accept the things that one cannot change, remember to laugh daily, give up the bad habits, for instance, too much alcohol drinks, cigarettes, or caffeine, slow down and pace of oneself, get six to eight hours of sleep each night, get organized and make “to-do” lists, practice giving back by volunteering your time to help others, and last, try not to worry too much. Moreover, he also stated that if those measures do not really work on an individual, he or she might need to seek the advice from qualified professionals.

Bowman and Krongold (2002) stated that one study on 50 healthy adults demonstrated that massage therapy leads to improved concentration and mood, as well as lower anxiety and depression. Another study looked at the effectiveness of 15-minutes chair massages in reducing stress in 52 employees, showed by a significant reduction in those individuals’ blood pressure levels after receiving massages.

Pihulyk (2002) had identified three simple tips, from Alberta Mental Health Board, to reduce stress and also helps to improve how an individual feels about his or her life. The tips include plan some “fudge” time in a day, let go one “control” thing per week, and think before talking or acting.

In another study, Nagel and Brown (2003) identified some approaches of stress management for teachers and those strategies can easily apply to cope with stress. The first approach that teachers can manage their stress is to acknowledge what caused their stress levels. They also mentioned the best strategy for managing multiple stressors is to acknowledge what creates the most immediate stress and find a creative way to solve the problem. After the situation was improved, other stressors may seem more manageable, and balance will be more easily restored in the life of a teacher.

The second approach Nagel and Brown (2003) suggested was behaviour modification strategies. These help teachers reach a state of homeostasis. Example of behaviour modification strategy is exercise which provides multiple benefits that build resiliency to stress including the burning of stress hormones. This will also be a long-term effect in avoiding future stress. Meditation and diaphragmatic breathing help create emotional balance. Besides, quiet reflection for 20 minutes once has been shown able to lessen level of stress. Moreover, time management strategies and creative problem solving also the examples under behaviour modification strategies. They also mentioned that creative problem solving consist of five steps. First, describe the problem and analyses thoroughly. Second, the teacher actively generates solutions by researching, asking colleagues for suggestions and referring to personal experience. Third, the teacher settles on the solution that seems most advantageous. Fourth, the teacher then implements the selected solutions. Finally, the teacher analyzes the solution and its implementation, providing a basis for future selection of solutions.

The third approach of stress management strategies suggested by Nagel and Brown (2003) was communication. The communication may not necessarily be verbal on the part of teacher but also the non-verbal like body language which affects student behaviour and self-regulation. A useful strategy for teacher is to take a deep breath and remain calm rather than reacting immediately to student behaviour and communicating anxiety to students. Once the teacher manages to reach again the sense of personal control, she can calmly decide what actions should be taken to communicate a lowered level of stress. According to them, teachers’ verbal and non-verbal communications with students contribute significantly to the overall level of stress in the class. In addition, two main benefits if appropriate stress management strategies being applied are reduces the physiological effects of stress and it may improve job performance and reduce absenteeism.

According to Stevenson (2000), physical exercises sessions, ‘chill out’ rooms, massage and meditation or treatments can most probably give individuals’ relieves for only temporary period and also make them feel better. Counselling session may help an employee in dealing with personal or situational problems. So, habitual stress management techniques are hardly seen as a suitable remedy if stress is stem from occupational causes.

In another study by Dewe and O’Driscol (2002), they found that the most frequent action that managers claimed that their companies took in response to job stress is non-specialist assistance, for instance, management and peers assistance, with amount of 22.4 percent. Followed by specialist assistance, 21.9 percent, proactive measures, like stress management, prevention, identification and awareness of stress programs, 16.8 percent. The rest consist of time off, which is sick leave, reduction of workload and work relief, and restructuring the physical and social work environment are those actions less frequent the organization will take in coping with organizational stress. Besides, they also asked a question on strategies would have been applied if the respondents were responsible for stress management in their own organization they worked for. Consequently, the respondents answered proactive measures to cope with the stress had the highest frequency.

Summary

This chapter has provided a review of literature regarding the causes of stress among employees. Those stressors are appearing in their organisation and some effects that it has on their health. Besides, it was highlighted that the pressure teachers, educators, university academic staffs, and lecturers are facing in now days. The overall concept of stress was introduced and explained in terms of stress and health, sources of stress, signals of stress and burnout and also the approaches taken to cope with stress. A number of internal and external stressors have an impact on employee perceived well-being in work. From the literature review it is clear that stress is of importance to university academic staffs especially lecturers and tutors because the impact of stress affects the efficiency and effectiveness of lecturers and tutors when they are lecturing or teaching university students in class.