Implications of work stress models for

entrepreneurship

Dominika Dej

Fakultät Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften Professur für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie

Today‘s agenda

• Importance of work for human beings

• Film

• Work stress models

• Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ)

• Your Job Fit

• What is good work?

Importance of work for human beings

We spend half of our adult life at work

• It can be a joy or a chore

• A source of…

Meaning, purpose, satisfaction, solace, inspiration, connection

OR

Frustration, dissatisfaction, alienation

The importance of work

What do psychologists say?

“Work will always matter to people … they will always love it and hate it … society should help people love it more than hate it.”

Warr & Wall (1975, p. 11)

What is good work?

Specialization and simplification

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYbsBcPDVQM

• Your reflection about the film…

• Past or maybe future?

Specialization and simplification

Old way: Assembly at individual stations

People hate simplified work

• Importance of social relationships/ social connection

New way:

?Health, learning, personality development

Definition of job demands

“The degree to which the environment contains stimuli that peremptorily require attention and response. Demands are the ‘things that have to be done.’’

Jones & Fletcher (1996, p. 34)

“Job demands are those physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological (i.e., cognitive or emotional) effort and are therefore associated with certain physiological and/or psychological costs.

Although job demands are not necessarily negative, they may turn into job stressors when meeting those demands requires high effort and is therefore associated with high costs that elicit negative responses such as depression, anxiety, or burnout.“

Schaufeli & Bakker (2004, p. 296)

Work stress models: Basic definitions

Definition of job resources

“Job resources refer to those physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that either/or

(1) reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs

(2) are functional in achieving work goals(3) stimulate personal growth, learning and development.

Schaufeli & Bakker (2004, p. 296)

Hence, resources are not only necessary to deal with job demands and to ‘get things done,’ but they also are important in their own right“

(Hobfoll, 2002).

Work stress models: Basic definitions

emotional cognitive physical others

Job resources

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Job demands

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Work stress models: Exercise

Definition: Job Demands and Job Resources

Job demands are those physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or psychological (i.e., cognitive or emotional) effort and are therefore associated with certain physiological and/or psychological costs. Although job demands are not necessarily negative, they may turn into job stressors when meeting those demands requires high effort and is therefore associated with high costs that elicit negative responses such as depression, anxiety, or burnout.“

Job resources refer to those physical, psychological, social, or organizational aspects of the job that either/or

(1) reduce job demands and the associated physiological and psychological costs

(2) are functional in achieving work goals(3) stimulate personal growth, learning and development.

• Mental health is affected by environmental psychological features (e.g., job characteristics) in a way that is analogous to the effects that vitamins are supposed to have on physical health

• There are 9 vitamins = job characteristics that influence the psychological work-related health

Vitamin Model (Warr, 1994)

6 vitamins (job characteristics) have curvilinear effects on health, i.e. both lack of and excess of such features will affect mental health negatively:

1. Opportunity for control2. Opportunity for interpersonal contact3. Opportunity for skills use4. Externally generated goals5. Variety6. Environmental clarity.

3 vitamins have a linear effect on health, i.e. the higher such a job characteristic, the higher the level of mental health will be:

1. Availability of money2. Physical security3. Valued social position.

Vitamin Model (Warr, 1994)

• Affective well-being is a principal indicator for job-related mental health. Job-related affective well-being has generally been studied in terms of job satisfaction, job-related anxiety, or tension, occupational burnout, and depression. Warr proposes three dimensions for this purpose: displeasure-to-pleasure, anxiety-to-comfort, and depression-to-enthusiasm.

• Three categories of individual characteristics are viewed as moderators: values, abilities, and baseline mental health “concept of match“ for job characteristics, individual characteristics, and mental health (e.g., the relationship of job control and satisfaction will be higher for a person with a high preference for autonomy than for one with a low preference for autonomy)

Question:Is there a linear relationship between job characteristics and mental health?

Vitamin Model (Warr, 1994)

Vitamin Model (Warr, 1994)

Identified 18 dimensions; 4 major categories–Task–Knowledge–Social–Contextual

• Measured work characteristics with 540 job incumbents across 243 different jobs

Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ)

What is the relationship between a diverse set of work features and outcomes?

What is the relationship between a diverse set of work features and outcomes?

What is the relationship between a diverse set of work features and outcomes?

What is good work?

Where is the person in this?

• Fit for the work – Demands-abilities – Needs-supplies – Satisfaction of preferences/ values

What is good work?

The Status of “Good Work”?

• This is a complicated thing • Good for who? • Good for what? – Satisfaction, stress, performance, OCB

• Too much of a good thing?

How to Foster Good Work?

Workers can play a central role in “sculpting” or “crafting” their jobs

– They enact their roles in slightly different ways, expanding it beyond formal boundaries

– Individuals as active job (re) designers…

• What are the antecedents of different forms of role expansion?

Who is Responsible for Good Work?

Many responsible parties

– Workers: Be open and proactive

– Leaders: Understand worker needs, help design work, allow variation where possible

– Organizations: Culture, supportive systems

– Society: Laws, regulations, activists, social organizations

• Bad work is often the result of a flawed assumption about the purpose of organizations

The pursuit of economic outcomes is not necessarily the primary goal of business

The Purpose of Organizations

“I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being…we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as a company so that they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately–they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental.”

David Packard, Founder, HP

We have a responsibility as psychologists to help ensure good work…

Thank you!

My thanks to Prof. Fred Morgeson for the use of certain slides from his presentation “Who is Responsible for Good Work?“ (EAWOP 2011) Certain images sourced from Google Images.

Literatur

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