Stress and Other Aspects of Organizational Behavior

Organizational stress is related to low organizational commit­ment, high turnover rates, and—under specific conditions— increased levels of absenteeism. Organizational commitment refers to an individual's bond or link to the organization (Mowday, Porter. & Steers, 1982). It comprises attitudinal, normative, and continuance aspects (Allen & Meyer, 1990). In a meta-analysis on organizational commitment, Mathieu and Zajac (1990) reported mean weighted corrected correla­tions between role stressors (role overload, role conflict, role ambiguity) and various aspects of organizational commit­ment ranging between r = - .206 and r- - .271. Thus, indi­viduals perceiving a more stressful work situation reported lower organizational commitment.

There is clear meta-analytic evidence that work-related strains including impaired health are positively related to absence behavior (Farrell & Stamm, 1988; Martocchio. Harrison, & Berkson, 2000). However, this does not necessar­ily imply that stressors at work are related to absenteeism. Stressors may overlap with strain and strain may overlap with absenteeism, but strain may not be the mediator between stressors and absenteeism. A variance decomposition idea ex­plains how such a relationship may appear. There is common variance between stressors and strain and between strain and absenteeism. But the two common variance fields do not over­lap. Thus, it is that part of strain that is not related to stressors that may contribute to absenteeism. As a matter of fact, the data on the relationship between stressors and absenteeism are inconclusive. Cross-sectional studies found weak and often nonsignificant relationships between work stressors and ab­sence data (Chen & Spector, 1992; Hemingway & Smith, 1999; Peter & Siegrist, 1997). Some studies revealed positive relationships between stressors and absenteeism (e.g., Kristensen, 1991), whereas others showed negative relation­ships (e.g., North, Syme, Feeney, Shipley, & Marmot, 1996).

Also longitudinal studies resulted in inconsistent findings. Tang and Hammontree (3992) found that work stress in po­lice officers was a significant predictor of self-reported ab­sence; they also found this to be true when they controlled for prior absence (time lag was 6 months). Vahtera, Kivimaki, Pentti, and Theorell (2000) analyzed absence data from more than 500 Finnish municipal employees over a period of 7 years. They found that initially healthy employees who ex­perienced high psychological job demands in 1990 had a 21% higher risk of long absence spells (more than 3 days) than did employees with low psychological job demands in 1990. For physical demands, the risk of long absence spells

474Stress in Organizations

was even 66% higher. The experience of downsizing and per­ceived job insecurity also increased the risk of absence spells (Kivimakietal., 1997).

Smulders and Nijhuis (1999) collected data on absence frequency and rate of 1,755 male employees of a Dutch tech­nical maintenance company. In their analyses, Smulders and Nijhuis controlled for employee health and absenteeism in the 1st year of their study. Results showed that high job de­mands were not associated with higher absence frequency or absence rate during the following 3 years. Contrary to what one might expect, high demands predicted a lower absence rate, particularly when the Poisson regression method was used. Similarly, a natural experiment (Parkes, 1982) found lower absence rates in high-demand work settings.

These cross-sectional and longitudinal findings suggest that the relationship between stressful work situations and absenteeism does not follow a simple pattern. First, it might be that the relationship is contingent on moderator variables. In line with the job demand-job control model (Karasek, 1979), one might argue that job control is such a moderator, However, although there is some support for this assumption (e.g., Dwyer & Ganster, 1991), most empirical studies did not confirm the hypothesized interaction effect of job control on the demands-absenteeism relationship (Smulders & Nijhuis, 1999; Vahtera, Pentti, & Uutela, 1996).

Moreover, person factors such as organizational or profes­sional commitment might play a role in the stressor-absenteeism relationship. It might be that in stressful work situations, absenteeism increases in employees with low com­mitment but decreases in highly committed employees. Data reported by Jamal (1984) partially supported this assumption. Gender might also play a role. For example, Melamed et al. (1995) found substantial correlations between objective mo­notony and sickness absence in women but not in men.

Additionally, a study by Peter and Siegrist (1997) suggests that it is not the stressfulness of a situation per se that affects an employee's absence behavior. In accordance with the effort-reward-imbalance model, the authors found that status incongruity (i.e. a mismatch between effort and career achievements) was positively related with both short-term and long-term absenteeism in middle managers, whereas ef­fort alone (i.e. time pressure and interruptions) was not re­lated to absenteeism. These findings can be explained in the context of a psychological contract interpretation (Rousseau, 1995): Stressors increase absenteeism if employees feel that their efforts are not rewarded adequately. Longitudinal stud­ies are needed that explicitly test this assumption.

Stressful work situations are positively related to turnover intentions and turnover behavior. There is rather consistent evidence from numerous studies that stressors in the work

situation are positively related to intentions to quit the or«nn-zation and to job search behavior (Cavanaugh, Boswell Roehling, & Boudreau, 2000; Chen & Spector, 1992; Gupta & Beehr, 1979). With respect to actual turnover behavior, a re­cent meta-analysis by Griffeth, Horn, and Gaertner (2000) re­ported effect sizes ranging from p = , 10 to p - .21 (corrected for measurement error in the predictors and sampling error) between stressors and turnover behavior.

Taken together, there is empirical support for the assump­tion that stressors in the work situation are related to low or­ganizational commitment, turnover intentions, and turnover behavior. However, with respect to organizational commit­ment and turnover intentions, the issue of causality remains unclear. Although it makes intuitive sense to assume that experiencing a stressful work situation increases the intention to quit the organization, individuals who plan to leave the organization might perceive more stressors than do their coworkers who in fact experience the same work situation but intend to stay. Longitudinal studies are needed in this area.

In general, research in this area suggests that organiza­tional stress is detrimental not only to individuals' health and well-being; it can also harm the organization by increasing turnover rates and—possibly, although it has not been proven—absenteeism.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 849