Reference no: EM132903644

Camille and Frédéric were working together on a common project of great importance to their employer. Camille was at the head office in Montreal and Frédéric was temporarily stationed in France. Frédéric joined the company one year ago and saw this first expatriate assignment as a step on the path to a future promotion.

Camille was also considered for the assignment, but she had personal obligations in Montreal that made it difficult for her to relocate for six months to another country. In the end, she had declined. Camille had eight years of experience in her current position, and she was clearly essential to the company, but she felt that she was stagnating in her career. She knew it was her own choices that had led her to where she was, but she still felt that she was missing some of the more challenging aspects of the client work while she remained at the head office.

Wanting to stay on top of the project, Frédéric bombarded Camille with text messages and emails throughout the day from France. Of course, with France being six hours ahead of Montreal, Frédéric's messages often reached Camille in the middle of the night. The constant pinging on her phone, as early as 2:30 a.m. frustrated Camille immensely. Some of the messages pertained to important issues, but others were pictures and short videos of the life in Paris. If she didn't respond immediately, Frédéric would message her again, and on and on it would go all night long. Even though Frédéric knew it was the middle of the night for Camille, he couldn't tolerate waiting for her to respond and his tone would get more and more argumentative as his day wore on. Camille was losing precious hours of sleep and valuable time to manage her personal obligations before she started her workday. Normally, she believed that she could control what happened to her, but Frédéric's behaviour was creating a lot of tension for her.

For over a month, Frédéric did not relent. He kept sending messages all night long and getting angry when Camille did not respond within minutes. At that point, Camille decided she needed to manage her time in a way that worked better for her. She decided to ignore Frédéric's personal updates and she reserved one hour from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Montreal time (1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in Paris) to respond to the important messages that he sent overnight.

Before long, the tension began to escalate. Frédéric was furious that Camille no longer appeared to prioritize his messages. Then, one night, Frédéric didn't send any selfies to Camille, and she was relieved that he'd finally gotten her message to stop. Unfortunately, what she did not realize was that he also didn't update her about a critical delay in the project. Instead, he communicated with their superior, Jude, and he asked Jude for assistance.

The next thing she knew, Camille was called into Jude's office, and he demanded to know why the project was delayed. Camille was blindsided. She had no idea there had been a delay. She had been so relieved that Frédéric had not bombarded her with messages overnight, that she hadn't followed up with him to ensure that he had delivered the interim report to the client. As the senior member of the team, she should have (and normally would have) made sure it had been done, but she had been so tired from all the sleepless nights that she'd forgotten.

Embarrassed that she had lost control of the project - and trying to cover for herself - Camille blamed Frédéric's inexperience. She said that he was incapable of meeting the demands of the expatriate assignment and that he was unprofessional. She said that she was his colleague, not his mother or his friend, and that he clearly did not know how to manage professional communications or client relations.

Jude then shouted at Camille, insisting that a person with her experience should have known better. Jude said that it was Camille's responsibility to make sure the client was happy - whether she was in Montreal or not! Camille knew that Jude was right. At this point, she was worried about whether she could get things back on track.

QUESTION

Apply the model of stress in organizations (e.g., stressor, stress, stress reactions, personality) to the situation for Camille in the case. In your answer, be sure to identify two (2) stressors that could have affected Camille and to discuss the stress model fully. Provide one (1) recommendation that could help Camille to reduce her stress in the case. Provide a rationale for your response and use information from the case to support your analysis. Make sure to include a word count with your answer.