Unit 2 Orianizational Structure & Diversity Flashcards
Leading Organizational Change
4 Steps
- Diagnosis: Why is change needed?
- Design: What sort of change is called for?
- Delivery: How can change best be implemented? Who will most likely be affected? What skills and support do leaders need as they manage the process?
- Evaluation: How can the impact of the change be assessed and measured?
Performance Gaps
Performance gaps arise from a difference between expected and actual performance.
Opportunity Gaps
Opportunity gaps are defined as potential future problems or missed value-creating opportunities the organization will face if it does not act today.
Scope of Change
Radical vs. Incremental
- Radical change is intended to affect nearly all of these aspects of the organization.
- Incremental change is intended to make small adjustments to the existing organizational systems, processes, and routines.
Origin of Change
Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up
- Leaders typically plan top-down change, with clear directives, goals, communication
plans, and assessment models. - Bottom-up change emerges from within the organization
Tactical Change
Change that is top-down and incremental.
Evolutionary Change
Change that is bottom-up and incremental.
Revolutionary Change
Change that is bottom-up and radical.
Transformational Change
Change that is top-down and radical.
Rollout of Change
Systemwide vs. Localized
- Systemwide changes are rolled out across multiple units or subunits simultaneously, it can require significant resources and coordination.
- Localized change is rolled out in a successive process. This approach involves implementing the change in specific units of the organization, one by one, until it reaches all areas,
Timing of Change
Fast vs. Slow
- A fast change effort is implemented quickly, with the goal of enacting it rapidly and then returning to the “new normal.”
- A slow change effort, on the other hand, is implemented over an extended period
or may go on indefinitely.
Implementation of Change
Steps and Sequencing
(8 Steps)
- *1 Establish a Sense of Urgency:** Identify and communicate performance or opportunity gaps.
- *2 Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition:** Assemble a group powerful enough to lead the change effort. Encourage the group to work as a team.
- *3 Create a Vision:** Create a vision powerful enough to help direct the change effort.
- *4 Communicate a Vision:** Use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision.
- *5 Empower Others to Act on the Vision:** Get rid of obstacles by changing systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision.
- *6 Plan for and Create Short-term Wins:** Plan for visible performance improvements and recognize employees involved in the improvements.
- *7 Consolidate Improvements and Produce Still More Change:** Use increased credibility to change the systems, structures, and policies that don’t fit. Hire, promote, or develop employees who can implement the vision. Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents.
- *8 Institutionalize the New Approaches:** Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and corporate success. Develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession.
Assessment of Readiness to Change
- *• Discrepancy:** Do individuals in the organization believe that there is a significant gap between the current state of the organization and what it should be and that the change is needed?
- *• Appropriateness:** Do organization members believe that a specific change designed to address a discrepancy is the correct one for the situation?
- *• Efficacy:** Do members of the organization believe that they personally, and the organization as a whole, can successfully implement a change?
- *• Principal Support:** Do individuals in the organization believe that their leaders are committed to the change’s success and that it is not going to be another passing fad or “program of the month”?
Creating Buy-in and Acceptance
for Change
- Awareness: The first thing leaders must do is determine who should be aware of the change. For some groups, knowing that a change is underway may be enough. Stakeholder analysis—a process of identifying individuals or groups who are most likely to support or resist the proposed change—provides useful information about which groups require more or less attention.
-
Self-Concern: The second stage asks individuals to associate some self-concern
with the change. Leaders should help others understand how the change matters to them personally. - Mental Tryout: The third stage gives individuals an opportunity to imagine what the change might be like before it happens. This is a low-risk way of helping people experience what lies ahead without having to change their existing behaviors.
- Hands-on Trial: The fourth stage asks individuals to experience the change in a low-risk environment. Leaders can create pilots for people to experience the change for a short period of time, and without significant time or resource commitments.
- Acceptance: The fifth stage marks an individual’s acceptance of the change. The individual has weighed the costs and benefits and has decided to adopt the new practice, technology, or behavior. For some, however, this stage marks a decision to reject the change.
-
Champion: Finally, certain individuals who accept the change may ultimately
become champions of the idea for others. At this stage, individuals have not
only bought in, but are eager to communicate the benefits to others.
Abundance-Based Change
Leaders assume that employees will change if they can be inspired to aim for greater degrees of excellence in their work.
Appreciative Conversations
Intense, positively framed discussions that help people to develop common ground as they work together to cocreate a positive vision of an ideal future for their organization.
Appreciative Inquiry Model
A model specifically designed as an abundance-based, bottom-up, positive approach, broadly defined, can be any question-focused, participatory approach to change that creates an appreciative effective on people and organizations.
Boundary Conditions
Define the degree of discretion that is available to employees for self-directed action.
Bureaucratic Model
Max Weber’s model that states that organizations will find efficiencies when they divide the duties of labor, allow people to specialize, and create structure for coordinating their differentiated efforts within a hierarchy of responsibility.
Centralization
The concentration of control of an activity or organization under a single authority.
Change Agents
People in the organization who view themselves as agents who have discretion to act.
Change Management
The process of designing and implementing change.
Command-and-Control
The way in which people report to one another or connect to coordinate their efforts in accomplishing the work of the organization.
Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)
A model that views organizations as constantly developing and adapting to their environment, much like a living organism. A CAS approach emphasizes the bottom-up, emergent approach to the design of change, relying on
the ability of people to self-manage and adapt to their local circumstances.
Conventional Mindset
Leaders assume that most people are inclined to resist change and therefore need to be managed in a way that encourages them to accept change.
Culture Change
Involves reshaping and reimagining the core identity of the organization.
Deficit-Based Change
Leaders assume that employees will change if they know they will otherwise face negative consequences.
Differentiation
The process of organizing employees into groups that focus on specific functions in the organization.
Disturbances
Can cause tension amongst employees, but can also be positive and a catalyst for change.
Emergent or Bottom-Up Approach
Organizations exist as socially constructed systems in which people are constantly making sense of and enacting an organizational reality as they interact with others in a system.
Entrepreneurship
The process of designing, launching, and running a new business.
Flat Organization
A horizontal organizational structure in which many individuals across the whole system are empowered to make organizational decisions.
Formal Organization
A fixed set of rules of organizational procedures and structures.
Formalization
The process of making a status formal for the practice of formal acceptance.
Geographic Structures
Occur when organizations are set up to deliver a range of products within a geographic area or region.
Group-Level Change
Centers on the relationships between people and focuses on helping people to work more effectively together.
Horizontal Organizational Structure
Flat organizational structure in which many individuals across the whole system are empowered to make organizational decisions.
Incremental Change
Small refinements in current organizational practices or routines that do not challenge, but rather build on or improve, existing aspects and practices within the organization.
Individual-Level Change
Focuses on how to help employees to improve some active aspect of their performance or the knowledge they need to continue to contribute to the organization in an effective manner.
Informal Organization
The connecting social structure in organizations that denotes the evolving network of
interactions among its employees, unrelated to the firm’s formal authority structure.
Intentionality
The degree to which the change is intentionally designed or purposefully implemented.
Kotter’s Change Model
An overall framework for designing a long-term change process:
- Establish a sense of urgency
- Form a powerful guiding coalition
- Create a vision of change
- Communicate the vision
- Remove any obstacles
- Create small wins
- Consolidate improvements
- Anchor the changes
Level of Organization
The breadth of the systems that need to be changed within an organization.
Managed Change
How leaders in an organization intentionally shape shifts that occur in the organization when market conditions shift, supply sources change, or adaptations are introduced in the processes for accomplishing work over time.
Matrix Structure
An organizational structure that groups people by function and by product team simultaneously.
Mechanistic Bureaucratic Structure
Mechanistic Bureaucratic Structure, (usually resistant to change) describes organizations characterized by:
- Centralized authority
- Formalized procedures and practices
- Specialized functions.
OD Consultant
Someone who has expertise in change management processes.
Organic Bureaucratic Structure
Used in organizations that face unstable and dynamic environments and need to quickly adapt to change.
Organization Development (OD)
Techniques and methods that managers can use to increase the adaptability of their organization.
Organization-Level Change
A change that affects an entire organizational system or several of its units.
Organizational Change
The movement that organizations take as they move from one state to a future state.
Organizational Design
The process by which managers define organizational structure and culture so that the organization can achieve its goals.
Organizational Development (OD)
Specialized field that focuses on how to design and manage change.
Organizational Structure
The system of task and reporting relationships that control and motivate colleagues to achieve organizational goals.
Participatory Management
Includes employees in deliberations about key business decisions.
Planned Change
An intentional activity or set of intentional activities that are designed to create movement toward a specific goal or end.
Positive or Appreciative Mindset
Leaders assume that people are inclined to embrace change when they are respected as individuals with intrinsic worth, agency, and capability.
Product Structures
Occurs when businesses organize their employees according to product lines or lines of business.
Scope of Change
The degree to which the required change will disrupt current patterns and routines.
Span of Control
The scope of the work that any one person in the organization will be accountable for.
Specialization
The degree to which people are organized into subunits according to their expertise—for example, human resources, finance, marketing, or manufacturing.
Strategic Change
A change, either incremental or transformational, that helps align an organization’s operations with its strategic mission and objectives.
Structural Change
Changes in the overall formal relationships, or the architecture of relationships, within an organization.
Technological Change
Implementation of new technologies often forces organizations to change.
Top-Down Change
Relies on mechanistic assumptions about the nature of an organization.
Transformational Change
Significant shifts in an organizational system that may cause significant disruption to some underlying aspect of the organization, its processes, or its structures.
Unplanned Change
An unintentional activity that is usually the result of informal organizing.
Vertical Organizational Structure
Organizational structures found in large mechanistic organizations; also called “tall” structures due to the presence of many levels of management.
What are Mechanistic vs Organic organizational structures?
- *The organizational structure is designed from both the mechanistic and the organic points of view, and the**
- *structure depends upon the extent to which it is rigid or flexible. Flexible structures are also viewed as more**
- *humanistic than mechanistic structures. The mechanistic organizational structure is similar to Max Weber’s**
- *bureaucratic organization. Organic structures are more flexible in order to cope with rapidly changing**
- *environments. These structures are more effective if the environment is dynamic, requiring frequent changes**
- *within the organization in order to adjust to change.**
What are the fundamental dimensions
of change?
- *It is often said that the only constant is change. Managers need to have the ability to understand the**
- *dimensions of change, know what drives change, and know how to implement changes to meet and exceed**
- *organizational goals. The three types of change are structural, technological, and culture changes. Managers**
- *need to understand change as organizations evolve and grow over time.**
How do managers deal with change?
As an organization grows and matures, change becomes necessary to its sustained viability. Thus, another key
responsibility for most leaders is the task of designing and managing change.
The Organizational Life Cycle
- In the entrepreneurship phase, the organization is usually very small and agile, focusing on new products and markets.
- The second phase, survival and early success, occurs as an organization begins to scale up and find continuing success. The organization develops more formal structures around more specialized job assignments. Incentives and work standards are adopted.
- In a third phase, sustained success or maturity, the organization expands and the hierarchy deepens, now with multiple levels of employees. Lower-level managers are given greater responsibility, and managers for significant areas of responsibility may be identified. Top executives begin to rely almost exclusively on lowerlevel leaders to handle administrative issues so that they can focus on strategic decisions that affect the overall organization.
- The fourth phase, renewal or decline, occurs when an organization expands to the point that its operations are far-flung and need to operate somewhat autonomously. Functional structures become almost essential, and subunits may begin to operate as independent businesses.
Lewin’s Change Model
- First, an organization must be “Unfrozen” in that existing norms, routines, and practices need to be disrupted.
- Next, “Move” changes are introduced in the organization to shift the system to a new state or reality.
- The final phase is to “Refreeze” the organization. That is, leaders of the organization reinforce the new norms or practices that should accompany the change. They might adjust the resources, policies, and routines to fit the new expected norms.
Access Discrimination
A catchall term that describes when people are denied employment opportunities because of their identity group or personal characteristics such as sex, race, or age.
Access-and-Legitimacy Perspective
Focuses on the benefits that a diverse workforce can bring to a business that wishes to operate within a diverse set of markets or with culturally diverse clients.
Age Discrimination
Treating an employee or applicant less favorably due to their age.
Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)
Forbids discrimination against individuals who are age 40 and above, including offensive or derogatory remarks that create a hostile work environment.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
Prohibits discrimination in employment, public services, public accommodations, and telecommunications against people with disabilities.
Cognitive Diversity
Differences between team members regarding characteristics such as expertise, experiences, and perspectives.
Cognitive Diversity Hypothesis
Multiple perspectives stemming from the cultural differences between group or organizational members result in creative problem-solving and innovation.
Covert Discrimination (Interpersonal)
An interpersonal form of discrimination that manifests in ways that are not visible or readily identifiable.
Deep-Level Diversity
Diversity in characteristics that are nonobservable such as attitudes, values, and beliefs, such as religion.
Disability Discrimination
Occurs when an employee or applicant is treated unfavorably due to their physical or mental disability.
Discrimination-and-Fairness Perspective
A culturally diverse workforce is a moral duty that must be maintained in order to create a just and fair society.
Diversified Mentoring Relationships
Relationships in which the mentor and the mentee differ in terms of their status within the company and within larger society.
Diversity
Identity-based differences among and between people that affect their lives as applicants, employees, and customers.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
An organization that enforces laws and issues guidelines for employment-related treatment according to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Equal Pay Act of 1963
An amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
Provides new parents, including adoptive and foster parents, with 12 weeks of unpaid leave (or paid leave only if earned by the employee) to care for the new child and requires that nursing mothers have the right to express milk on workplace premises.
Glass Ceiling
An invisible barrier based on the prejudicial beliefs of organizational decision makers that prevents women from moving beyond certain levels within a company.
Groupthink
A dysfunction in decision-making that is common in homogeneous groups due to group pressures and group members’ desire for conformity and consensus.
Harassment
Any unwelcome conduct that is based on characteristics such as age, race, national origin, disability, sex, or pregnancy status.
Hidden Diversity
Differences in traits that are deep-level and may be concealed or revealed at discretion by individuals who possess them.
Highly Structured Interviews
Interviews that are be structured objectively to remove bias from the selection process.
Identity Group
A collective of individuals who share the same demographic characteristics such as race, sex, or age.
Inclusion
The degree to which employees are accepted and treated fairly by their organization.
Integration-and-Learning Perspective
Posits that the different life experiences, skills, and perspectives that members of diverse cultural identity groups possess can be a valuable resource in the context of work groups.
Invisible Social Identities
Membership in an identity group based on hidden diversity traits such as sexual orientation or a nonobservable disability that may be concealed or revealed.
Justification-Suppression Model
Explains the circumstances in which prejudiced people might act on their prejudices.
Managing Diversity
Ways in which organizations seek to ensure that members of diverse groups are valued and treated fairly within organizations.
Model Minority Myth
A stereotype that portrays Asian men and women as obedient and successful and is often used to justify socioeconomic disparities between other racial minority groups.
National Origin Discrimination
Treating someone unfavorably because of their country of origin, accent, ethnicity, or appearance.
Passing
The decision to not disclose one’s invisible social identity.
Pregnancy Discrimination
Treating an employee or applicant unfairly because of pregnancy status, childbirth, or medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth.
Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA)
Prohibits any discrimination as it relates to pregnancy in hiring, firing, compensation, training, job assignment, insurance, or any other employment conditions.
Race/Color Discrimination
Treating employees or applicants unfairly because of their race or because of physical characteristics typically associated with race such as skin color, hair color, hair texture, or certain facial features.
Religious Discrimination
When employees or applicants are treated unfairly because of their religious beliefs.
Resource-Based View
Demonstrates how a diverse workforce can create a sustainable competitive advantage for organizations.
Revealing
The decision to disclose one’s invisible social identity.
Reverse Discrimination
Describes a situation in which dominant group members perceive that they are experiencing discrimination based on their race or sex.
Schema Theory
Explains how individuals encode information about others based on their demographic characteristics.
Sex-Based Discrimination
When employees or applicants are treated unfairly because of their sex, including unfair treatment due to gender, transgender status, or sexual orientation.
Sexual Harassment
Harassment based on a person’s sex; it can (but does not have to) include unwanted sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or physical and verbal acts of a sexual nature.
Similarity-Attraction Paradigm
Individuals’ preferences for interacting with others like themselves can result in diversity having a negative effect on group and organizational outcomes.
Social Identity Theory
Self-concept based on an individual’s physical, social, and mental characteristics.
Stereotypes
Overgeneralization of characteristics about groups that are the basis for prejudice and discrimination.
Strategic Human Resources Management (SHRM)
System of activities arranged to engage employees in a manner that assists the organization in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.
Surface-Level Diversity
Diversity in the form of characteristics of individuals that are readily visible, including, but not limited to, age, body size, visible disabilities, race, or sex.
Treatment Discrimination
A situation in which people are employed but are treated differently while employed, mainly by receiving different and unequal job-related opportunities or rewards.
Work Visa
A temporary documented status that authorizes individuals from other countries to permanently or temporarily live and work in the United States.
Workplace Discrimination
Unfair treatment in the job hiring process or at work that is based on the identity group, physical or mental condition, or personal characteristic of an applicant or employee.
What is diversity?
Diversity refers to identity-based differences among and between people that affect their lives as applicants,
employees, and customers. Surface-level diversity represents characteristics of individuals that are readily
visible, including, but not limited to, age, body size, visible disabilities, race, or sex. Deep-level diversity
includes traits that are nonobservable such as attitudes, values, and beliefs. Finally, hidden diversity includes
traits that are deep-level but may be concealed or revealed at the discretion of individuals who possess them.
How diverse is the workforce?
In analyzing the diversity of the workforce, several measures can be used. Demographic measures such as
gender and race can be used to measure group sizes. Measures of such things as discrimination toward
specific groups can be analyzed to gauge the diversity of the workforce. Other measures of diversity in the
workforce can include examination of differences in age and sexual orientation.
How does diversity impact
companies and the workforce?
The demography of the labor force is changing in many ways as it becomes racially diverse and older and
includes more women and individuals with disabilities. Diversity affects how organizations understand that
employing people who hold multiple perspectives increases the need to mitigate conflict between workers
from different identity groups, enhances creativity and problem solving in teams, and serves as a resource to
create a competitive advantage for the organization.
What is workplace discrimination,
and how does it affect different
social identity groups?
Workplace discrimination occurs when an employee or an applicant is treated unfairly at work or in the jobhiring
process due to an identity group, condition, or personal characteristic such as age, race, national origin,
sex, disability, religion, or pregnancy status.
What key theories help managers understand the benefits and challenges of
managing the diverse workforce?
The cognitive-diversity hypothesis suggests that multiple perspectives stemming from the cultural differences between groups or organizational members result in creative problem solving and innovation. The similarityattraction
paradigm and social identity theory explain how, because individuals prefer to interact with others like themselves, diversity may have a negative effect on group and organizational outcomes. The justificationsuppression model explains under what conditions individuals act on their prejudice.
How can managers reap benefits from diversity and mitigate its challenges?
By approaching diversity and diversity issues in a thoughtful, purposeful way, managers can mitigate the
challenges posed by a diverse workforce and enhance the benefits a diverse workforce can offer.
What can organizations do to ensure applicants, employees, and customers
from all backgrounds are valued?
Organizations should use objective and fair recruitment and selection tools and policies.
Leadership should make employees feel valued, be open to varied perspectives, and encourage a culture of
open dialogue. Women and racial minorities can increase positive employment outcomes by pursuing higher
levels of education and seeking employment in larger organizations. All individuals should be willing to listen,
empathize with others, and seek to better understand sensitive issues that affect different identity groups.
Surface-Level Diversity
An individual’s visible characteristics, including, but not limited to, age, body size, visible disabilities, race, or sex.
Deep-Level Diversity
Traits that are nonobservable such as attitudes, values, and beliefs.
Hidden Diversity
traits that are deep-level but may be concealed or revealed at the discretion of individuals who possess them. These hidden traits are called invisible social identities and may include sexual orientation, a hidden disability (such as a mental illness or chronic disease), mixed racial heritage, or socioeconomic status.
Strategic Fitness Process (SFP)
An integrated, disciplined, leadership platform that a senior management team can utilize to create an open
conversation about their organization’s fit with the strategy and environment as well as their own leadership.
Barriers to Successful Strategy Implementation
- Unhealthy, power & politics
- Lack of organizational purpose & commitment
- Resistance to change
- Preventingorganizational learning
The Silent Killers of Organizational Fitness
- Unclear strategy and/or conflicting priorities;
- An ineffective top management team;
- A leadership style that is too top-down or, conversely, too laissez-faire;
- Poor coordination across functions, businesses, or geographic regions;
- Inadequate leadership skills and development of down-the-line leaders;
- Poor vertical communication.
Organizational Fitness Model
Capabilities “the 7 C’s”
- Coordination among teams, functions and departments ensures efficiency in working towards a common goal;
-
Competence encompasses technical, functional, interpersonal and leadership skills that are
dynamic and flexible in adapting to changes; - Commitment and accountability from each and every member is crucial if the organization is to achieve its strategic goal;
- Communication (vertical, lateral and to stakeholders) enables clarity on what, why and how things need to be done;
- Conflict management helps to sustain healthy politics in the organization;
- Encouraging Creativity at all levels of the organization enhances novel ways of solving problems;
-
Capacity management matches financial and human resources (skills, knowledge) with the
strategy.
Self-Awareness
- Evaluating Strengths and Areas of Growth, Is realistic about personal strengths, skills, and areas for growth.
- Understanding the Effects of Actions, Sees own responsibility in actions and words. Understands and responds to the needs of others. Seeks to control own emotions and behavior even under stress. Tries to do the right thing.
- Workplace Manners, Strives to improve work appropriate manner. Learns and applies guidelines or rules of the work setting.
- Finding a Good Fit, Looks for work that is a good match for personal strengths and skills.
Anxiety
A feeling of inability to deal with anticipated harm.
Burnout
A general feeling of exhaustion that can develop when a person simultaneously experiences too much pressure to perform and too few sources of satisfaction.
Eustress
Beneficial stress.
Frustration
Refers to a psychological reaction to an obstruction or impediment to goal-oriented behavior.
General Adaptation Syndrome
Consists of three stages:
- the first stage, Alarm;
- the second stage of Resistance;
- the third stage, Exhaustion.
Hardiness
Represents a collection of personality characteristics that involve one’s ability to perceptually or behaviorally transform negative stressors into positive challenges.
Health Promotion Programs
Represent a combination of diagnostic, educational, and behavior modification activities that are aimed at attaining and preserving good health.
Locus of Control
The concept that much of what happens in one’s life is either under or outside of their own control.
Personal Control
Represents the extent to which an employee actually has control over factors affecting effective job performance.
Rate of Life Change
The variety of life events were identified and assigned points based upon the extent to which each event is related to stress and illness.
Role Ambiguity
Occurs when individuals have inadequate information concerning their roles.
Role Conflict
The simultaneous occurrence of two (or more) sets of pressures or expectations; compliance with one would make it difficult to comply with the other.
Role Overload
A condition in which individuals feel they are being asked to do more than time or ability permits.
Role Underutilization
Occurs when employees are allowed to use only a few of their skills and abilities, even though they are required to make heavy use of them.
Social Support
The extent to which organization members feel their peers can be trusted, are interested in one another’s welfare, respect one another, and have a genuine positive regard for one another.
Strain
The damage resulting from experiencing stress.
Stress
A physical and emotional reaction to potentially threatening aspects of the environment.
Tolerance for Ambiguity
Individuals measure and affect by role ambiguity (in terms of stress, reduced performance, or propensity to leave) than others with a low tolerance for ambiguity.
Type A Personality
Type A personality is characterized by impatience, restlessness, aggressiveness, competitiveness, polyphasic activities, and being under considerable time pressure.
How do you recognize the symptoms of stress in yourself and in others?
Stress is a physical and emotional reaction to potentially threatening aspects of the environment. The damage
resulting from stress is called strain. The general adaptation syndrome is the common pattern of events that
characterizes someone who experiences stress. Two primary types of stress can be identified: frustration and anxiety. The three stages of the syndrome are:
- Alarm,
- Resistance
- Exhaustion
What are the underlying causes of stress
in a particular situation?
Four organization influences on stress can be identified:
- Occupational differences,
- Role ambiguity,
- Role conflict,
- Role overload or underutilization.
Three personal influences on stress are:
- Personal control, or the desire to have some degree of control over one’s environment
- Rate of life change
- Type A personality.
How do managers and organizations minimize the dysfunctional consequences
of stressful behavior?
The effects of potential stress can be buffered by two factors:
- Social support from one’s coworkers or friends
- Hardiness, or the ability to perceptually and behaviorally transform negative stressors into positive challenges.
Sustained stress can lead to:
- Health problems
- Counterproductive behavior, such as turnover, absenteeism, drug abuse, and sabotage
- Poor job performance
- Burnout.
- *What are the remedies for job-related stress, and how can managers motivate employees to participate**
- *actively in health promotion efforts for the benefit of all concerned?**
Burnout is defined as a general feeling of exhaustion that can develop when a person simultaneously experiences too much pressure to perform and too few sources of satisfaction. Individual strategies to reduce stress include:
- Developing one’s self-awareness about how to behave on the job
- Developing outside interests
- Leaving the organization
- Finding a unique solution.
Organizational strategies to reduce stress include:
- Improved personnel selection and job placement
- Skills training
- Job redesign
- Company-sponsored counseling programs
- Increased employee participation and personal control
- Enhanced work group cohesiveness
- Improved communication
- Health promotion programs.
W. S. Neff has identified five types of people who have problems adjusting to work:
-
Type I: People who lack motivation to work. These individuals have a negative conception of the work role
and choose to avoid it. - Type II: People whose predominating response to the demand to be productive is fear or anxiety.
- Type III: People who are characterized predominantly by open hostility and aggression.
- Type IV: People who are characterized by marked dependency. These people often exhibit the characteristic of helplessness. They are constantly seeking advice from others and are unable to initiate any action on their own.
- Type V: People who display a marked degree of social naïveté. These individuals lack perception when it comes to the needs and feelings of others and may not realize that their behavior elicits reactions from and has an effect on others. Typically, these individuals are socially inept and unaware of appropriate behavior in ordinary social situations.
The Underload-Overload Continuum
(Diagram)
Type B Personality
A Type B personality exhibit patience and a broad concern for the ramifications of decisions.
Individual Strategies to help cope with continuing high stress.
- Developing
- Self-Awareness
- Developing Outside Interests
- Leaving the Organization
- Finding a Personal or Unique Solution
- Physical Exercise
- Cognitive Perspective
