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Instructor’s Manual:
ch. 5: Stress
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Chapter 05 - Stress
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Chapter 05 - Stress
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
LEARNING GOALS
After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer the following
questions:
5.1 What is stress, and how is it different than stressors and strains?
5.2 What are the four main types of work stressors?
5.3 How do individual people cope with stress?
5.4 How does the Type A Behavior Pattern influence the stress
process?
5.5 How does stress affect job performance and organizational
commitment?
5.6 What steps can organizations take to manage employee stress?
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Stress
A. Definitions
Try This! For students who have not yet read the chapter and have
not yet seen Table 5-1, ask them to guess what some of the least
stressful jobs are, and what some of the most stressful jobs are.
Write them in two different columns on the board. Then, as you go
through the list of challenge and hindrance stressors later in the
lecture, keep coming back to your list on the board. Do the least
stressful jobs really have lower levels of challenge and hindrance
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B. Types of Stressors
Try This! Ask students to think about their current job, or the
job they will pursue as their career after graduation. Have
them describe the role conflict inherent in that job. At a
minimum, most jobs will have a built-in conflict between
quality and quantity that the students can identify. However,
sometimes there will be more unique examples, such as
strictly adhering to rule following versus providing customers
with a uniquely pleasing customer service experience.
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Try This! Use the Devil Wears Prada clip for a different
chapter. The clip provides a good demonstration of low
levels of the core job characteristics in Chapter 4 on Job
Satisfaction, and low levels of psychological empowerment
in Chapter 6 on Motivation. Andy’s plight also vividly
illustrates low levels of expertise, and low levels of both
explicit and tacit knowledge, from Chapter 8 on Learning and
Decision Making. Finally, the boss’s behavior also illustrates
low levels of consideration in the Leadership: Styles and
Behavior chapter.
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a. Time pressure – the sense that you don’t have enough time
to do what needs to be done
b. Work complexity – the degree to which the requirements of
the work tax or exceed the capabilities of the person doing
the work
c. Work responsibility – the nature of the obligations a person
has to others
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1. Levels of stress are directly linked with health care costs and
worker’s compensation claims – managing stress keeps these
costs down
2. Reducing Stressors
a. Eliminate or significantly reduce stressful demands through
programs such as job sharing
b. This approach is most beneficial for hindrance stressors
3. Providing Resources
a. Help employees cope with stressful demands by
i. providing resources such as training interventions
ii. providing supportive practices such as flextime or
compressed work weeks to help balance work and non-
work role demands
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4. Reducing Strains
a. Decrease the strains associated with stress through
practices such as relaxation techniques and meditation
b. Use cognitive-behavioral techniques to help people appraise
and cope with stress in a more rational manner
c. Improve resistance to stress through health and wellness
programs
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
5.1 Prior to reading this chapter, how did you define stress? Did your
definition of stress reflect stressors, the stress process, strains, or
some combination?
Most students think of stressors when they think of stress – things like
not having enough time, unreasonable demands from a parent,
significant other, boss or professor, and not having the resources
they need (money, books, etc.) As a follow-up to this question, ask
students to identify the strains associated with the stressors they
mention. What negative outcomes do they associate with their
stressors?
5.2 Describe your dream job and then provide a list of the types of
stressors that you would expect to be present. Is the list dominated
by challenge stressors or hindrance stressors? Why do you think
this is?
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Answers to this question will vary by student, but consider the student
whose “dream job” is to be CEO of his or her own organization.
Stressors might include difficulties in dealing with politics in the
organization, difficult customers, hassles with employees, the need
to develop the organization, the need to learn more skills, and the
need to create new products or services for the organization to sell.
The first three are hindrance stressors, and the last three are
challenge stressors.
5.3 Think about the dream job that you described in the previous
question. How much of your salary, if any at all, would you give up
to eliminate the most important hindrance stressors? Why?
5.4 If you had several job offers after graduating, to what degree would
the level of challenge stressors in the different jobs influence your
choice of which job to take? Why?
5.5 How would you assess your ability to handle stress? Given the
information provided in this chapter, what could you do to improve
your effectiveness in this area?
Again, student answers will vary, but common responses will include
gaining skills in time management, modifying job and/or school
requirements, getting more exercise, participating in calming
techniques such as meditation, etc.
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CASE: GOOGLE
Questions:
5.1 Describe how the work that’s done at Google can result in
employees feeling both very stressed and also very positive about
their work and the company. In what way do these effects depend
on Google being able to hire the “right” kind of employees?
5.2 Describe the different ways that the Energy Pods influence the
stress process. Might there be any differences in how employees
use the Energy Pods to cope with hindrance stressors as opposed
to challenge stressors?
5.3 Describe how individuals who exhibit the Type A Behavior Pattern
would likely react to the Energy Pods. What role could social
support play in promoting the acceptance of Energy Pods and
similar strain-reducing practices?
People with a Type-A behavior pattern would not likely want to use
an Energy Pod, even though they might benefit from it. They would
likely feel that they don’t have time to waste taking a nap. They
would also become upset with people with whom they worked if
they were not available because they were using the Energy Pods.
Social support in the form of encouragement, especially among
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It’s not unusual for large organizations such as Humana to offer programs
that encourage employees to engage in healthy behaviors. Companies
spend significant resources on practices that help their employees cope
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Questions:
One the one hand, the program could result in employees who feel
more healthy and energetic, and as a consequence they may be
more likely to use an active problem-focused approach to deal with
stressful demands. On the other hand, the bikes could serve as a
means of emotion focused coping as well. A stressed employee
could jump on a bike to try to escape or avoid the demands.
5.3 Do you believe that backlash among employees who do not use the
program is a serious issue? Why or why not? What could be done
to mitigate this issue?
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is all. I hope you are satisfied. Let us go away again. You ought
really to give us some more dollars for what we have done.’ There
was, however, really next to nothing to see. In the darkness I could
just make out the tabernacle inside the holy of holies. It was a kind of
ark, covered with cheap draperies and surmounted by a crucifix. A
few lanterns lay about. That was all. At any rate, that was all that we
could induce the priest to show us.”[149]
Mr. Hormuzd Rassam has given a sketch of a tabot in his book,
with the following description: “The tabot is a square block of wood
on which the emblem of the cross, with some appropriate passage of
Scripture, is sometimes represented. No church can be consecrated
without it, and in the church from which it has been removed the
Lord’s Supper cannot be celebrated. It is placed upon the altar in the
centre of the holy of holies, and by the ignorant clergy is regarded
with as much veneration as the consecrated elements.”[150]
Annually, on the eve of the festival which commemorates Christ’s
baptism, the tabot is carried out of the church by the chief officiating
priest, “and left all night covered in a tent or hut erected for the
purpose near a stream or pool. At daybreak the following morning it
is taken to the water, and after being sprinkled with a few drops is
again enveloped in the church-cloth, and replaced under the tent
until the time arrives for its formal restoration to the church—a grand
religious ceremony, accompanied with singing of psalms and
dancing.” In this recessional solemnity, which Mr. Rassam saw, “the
priests led the way, bearing various sacred symbols, and chanting
psalms all the while, followed by a train of about three hundred men
and a score of damsels, all dancing, singing, and screeching as they
went.”[151]
The appearance of Abyssinian churches has already been alluded
to, but the following general description, given by Major Harris, may
serve to bring the principles of their construction clearly before the
reader. “There are, perhaps, more churches in Abyssinia than in any
other part of the Christian world; and he who has erected one
believes that he has atoned for every sin. But even the best are very
miserable edifices of wattle plastered with mud, only to be
distinguished from the surrounding hovels by a thin coating of
whitewash, which is dashed over the outside to point with the finger
of pride to the peculiar privilege of the two great powers in the land.
Circular in form, with a door to each quarter of the compass, and a
conical thatch, they have an apex surmounted by a brazen cross,
which is usually adorned with ostrich eggs; and the same depraved
and heathenish taste pervades the decorations of the interior.
Sculpture is strictly forbidden; but the walls are bedaubed with
paintings of the patron saint of the church, the Blessed Virgin, and a
truly incongruous assemblage of cherubim and fallen angels, with
the evil one himself enveloped in hell flames. Timbrels and crutches
depend in picturesque confusion from the bare rafters of the roof,
and no ceiling protects the head from the descent of the lizard and
the spider.”[152] Mr. Hormuzd Rassam has given a sketch of the
ground plan of an Abyssinian church, showing the entrances and
“courts.”[153] According to him “the outer enclosure is for the
congregation generally, male and female, the former occupying the
western portion, and praying with their faces towards the east; the
latter standing opposite to them and facing the west.”[154]
The “crutches” mentioned by Major Harris astonished Mr. Vivian
at a later date. He saw them in a monastery, and “imagined they had
been contributed by lame people, to whom the saint of the place had
restored the use of their legs. As a matter of fact, however, they were
merely the crutches which every priest uses in the ritual of the
dance.”[155] The manner in which these singular adjuncts of the
priestly office are employed has been described by Mr. Vivian. He
attended a service at Trinity Church in Addis Abiba, and has given a
very interesting account of the ceremonies. At a certain stage “all the
priests grasp their long crutches and go through a kind of gymnastic
exercise, which reminds me of the use of spears at a Somali dance.
The crutches are five feet long, and must, I imagine, have originally
taken their origin from spears, adapted for civilian use. The tops are
either of ivory or brass, some of them elaborately carved. . . . One
priest acts as conductor, and the others imitate his movements, all
singing loudly through their noses. . . . The crutches are held in the
middle and darted at the ground, now near, now far, with a forward
movement made by slightly bending the right knee. It is as though
spears were being poised and aimed playfully at objects on the floor.
The crutches are then lifted, crook end up, a foot into the air, they
are poised, they are swung, with ever-increasing vigour. All of a
sudden the whole exercise ceases without any warning
whatever.”[156]
Major Harris wrote, with regard to certain other clerical functions
—“The Father Confessor is bound to the strictest secrecy; and it is
believed that on this point a dread oath is taken before ordination,
when all the mysteries are expounded by the Abouna, and especially
those which have reference to the preparation of bread for the holy
supper. In a small house styled Bethlehem,[157] which rises
immediately behind every church, the mysterious ceremony is
performed. The deacon can alone bake the cake; and the most
vigilant guard is invariably preserved against the approach or
intrusion of females or other improper visitors during the hour of
solemn preparation.”[158]
The first appendix to Vol. III. of Major Harris’s book contains a list
of the sacred writings used by the Abyssinian Church. These
include, inter alia—
The Old Testament.
The four gospels with readings, and all the other books of the New Testament.
Genset. A book used in funeral solemnities, ascribed to Athanasius, and stated to
have been discovered by Helena at the digging out of the Holy Cross.
Retna Haimanot. The orthodox faith.
Henoch. The prophecies of Enoch.
Gadela Tekla Haimanot. Life of Tekla Haimanot. (And the lives of many other
saints.)
Synodos. Canons of the Church, attributed to the Apostles.
Sena Febrak. History of the Creation; containing certain fabulous traditions
concerning the Creation and the Antediluvian world, said to have been
communicated to Moses on Mount Sinai, but not recorded in the Book of
Genesis.
Tamera Mariam. Miracles of the Holy Virgin, wrought during her sojourn in
Abyssinia, where she is said to have tarried three years and six months with the
infant Jesus, before her return to Palestine.
Nagara Mariam. Words of the Holy Virgin.
Ardeet. Words said to have been spoken by Christ before his ascension.
Kedasie. Liturgy of the Abyssinian Church.
Gadela Adam. History of Adam.
Auda Negest. Book for prognostication.
Kufalik. Mysteries revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, not written in the
Pentateuch.
Serata beita Chrestian. Institutions of the Christian Church.
Degwa. Book of anthems, in which all the pieces of the liturgy that are chanted are
set to music by St. Yareed, a native of Simien, who lived thirteen centuries ago
and is believed to live still.
Lefafa Zedik. Prayers and spells against evil spirits and diseases, a book much
esteemed, and buried along with the corpse.
Zalota Musa. Prayers of Moses against the influence of evil spirits.
Melka Michael. Prayers to St. Michael.
Mazafa Tomar. A letter which Christ is said to have written.
Germama. Prayers to frighten evil spirits.
Fekaric Yasoos. Christ’s prophecy of the consummation of the world.
Haimanot Abao. Doctrines of the Abyssinian Church, comprising extracts from the
Holy Scriptures, from synods, councils, and writings of the Fathers.
Gelota Monakosat. Prayers of the monks.
Felekisus. Book on monastic subjects.
Gadela Yob. Life of Job.
Raia Miriam. Dream of the Holy Virgin.
Gadela Samoetal. Lives of the martyrs.