Asian Research Thesis Index

Abstract

Global competitiveness has affected organizations in a number of ways. Thereupon, it is evident that the health and quality of work-life of employees have been influenced. In this respect, work-stress management has become a serious concern for individuals and organizations. Recent literature identifies that central issues are capturing a more in-depth insight into workstress phenomenon and development of well-structured and systematic approaches for its prevention. Accordingly, this study aims at exploring the causes and effects of work-stress among the employees of manufacturing sector organisations; and developing and validating a participatory based stress management intervention framework.For the purpose, data was collected from the employees (N=3307) of 60 manufacturing organizations in Pakistan where Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10) was used to measure the perceived level of stress and two self-designed instruments for investigating causes and effects of work-stress (34 items and 22 items respectively) were used. Besides descriptive, reliability, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) analyses information gathered was examined through partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The causes were hypothesized with perceived stress where path model testing results revealed six significant causes which in significance order are: Social Working Environment; Work-Family Conflict; Role Clarity; Work Characteristics; Management Support at Work; and Training and Career Development. Perceived stress hypothesized with the five consequences yielded all the relationships significantly strong; amongst Psychological Effect was found as the most significant. In addition, a participatory stress management interventions framework, based on a five-step approach (auditing stress, analyse, action plan, implementation, and organizational learning) was developed where stakeholders’ involvement especially employees’ participation and continuous improvement through organizational learning process were the prominent features. A validation case study was carried out at a manufacturing industry where comparative analysis of the situation in terms of the perceived level of stress, causes, effects and their underlying correlations at pre and post-intervention stages were investigated. The results confirm that the proposed participatory intervention strategy is an effective approach for work-stress prevention as its implementation resulted in the decrease of the perceived level of stress. The percentage of employees having severe stress decreased from 30% to 16%; and that of moderate from 21.2% to 18.9%.It is concluded that work-stress is a complex phenomenon where multiple causes and their effects are significantly linked with each other, so a holistic approach is necessary to design and implement advantageous interventions. Moreover, interventions like the development of stress reporting mechanisms, ergonomics workplace design, promotion of socialization and recreational activities, and improvement in hygiene conditions have been found effective. ‘Participatory Approach’ helps us to explore possibilities for worthwhile improvement through employees’ active participation; however, employees’ trust and management commitment are challenges for the realization of the benefit.

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