Workplace Stress- Organisational Environments, Cultures, and Convergence

Abstract

The professional and popular literature abounds with empirical and desk-based research, impressionistic analyses and speculation regarding the sources, aetiology, and costs of employee stress in the workplace. Intra-psychic, group dynamics, inter-personal, technical/structural, managerial/organisational, and business environmental factors have all been cited as significant. However their weighting and salience can be related to the situation, the nature, and culture of particular organisations or types of organisations, thus differentially determining how stress is expressed and experienced by staff, especially its intensity and prevalence. As organisations change, or more accurately begin to converge in terms of their environments and cultures, under the impact of a set of similar forces, the characteristics and quality of stress should show a similar convergence.An exploratory study of these factors, undertaken using various groups of managers, including some who are postgraduate students in management programmes at the University, will be described and the findings discussed in light of a postulated convergence.