Stress and Human Motivation

Stress and Human Motivation

Introduction

The job characteristics model and the sociotechnical systems approach to designing jobs remain the most popular, and there have been additional developments and extensions to both. One such development that draws on the job characteristics model is Robert Karasek's job demands-job decision latitude (i.e., control) model of stress, proposed in 1979. Essentially, the model proposes that jobs high in demands (i.e., workload) have harmful effects on mental and physical health. However, the effects of those demands are even greater when a job is simultaneously high in demands and low in control (e.g., autonomy). (Charles, 2008) referred to this as a “high-strain job” because it is the most stressful. His theoretical approach has dominated job stress research for the last 30 years.

An extension to the job characteristics model was suggested by Gerald Salancik and Jeffrey Pfeffer in 1978. The social information processing perspective suggests that employees' perceptions of job characteristics are often influenced by social information provided by coworkers, managers, suppliers, customers, and even family members (Beal, 2007). Social information can include comments made during conversations, meetings, and observations. It is important to note that employees don't always respond in an accurate, reasonable manner when asked about characteristics of their jobs. Rather, actual job characteristics and social information cues tend to interact to affect employees' perceptions of and reactions to their jobs (Ashforth, 2008).

Discussion

At present, a popular job-design perspective is the concept of psychological empowerment. The concept of empowerment is defined as a psychological or motivational state in which a worker experiences more choice or self-determination, meaning, competence, and impact regarding his or her role in an organization. While job characteristics such as autonomy and feedback clearly influence psychological empowerment, the main focus is whether or not individuals perceive themselves as empowered (Charles, 2008). A worker's personality type, cues from coworkers or customers, and the work environment can affect these perceptions.

Interestingly, empowerment draws from both the job characteristics model and social information processing. Individuals' assessments of self-determination, meaning, and so on are very similar to the critical psychological states in Hackman and Oldham's theory, but the state of empowerment can also be influenced by the actions and behaviors of other people in the organization. Empowerment allows employees more discretion to use their skills and knowledge to solve problems directly. Thus, in an organization that values learning and initiative, empowerment can have an impact on employee motivation, commitment, satisfaction, and performance (Beal, 2007).

By determining the personal, situational, and task characteristics of an individual, it is possible using AIM to predict when emotions are likely to influence workplace attitudes and behavior. While limited workplace research uses the AIM for making predictions, it is clear that AIM provides a robust theoretical framework for making specific and testable hypotheses about the role of affect in the workplace.

Employees experience a variety of emotions on the job, ranging from happiness to anger to shame. Due to the variation between types of emotions, Pinder (1998) suggested that different emotions elicit varied reactions ...