Reference no: EM132613000

Review Key Points and provide a written response to the discussion question . Responses should have at least three citations. Add "and why that is important / significant to me."

Managing Individual Stress

Key Points:

• Stress is an adaptive response moderated by individual differences, that is, a consequence of any action, situation, or event that places special demands on a person.
• Stress can have psychological, behavioral, and physiological consequences. The relationship between stress and physiological consequences is complex and can potentially be serious to the health of individual who can't or don't cope with the stressors linked to the stress.
• Major variables in one model of organizational stress are: (1) work stressor (work environment, individual, group, and organizational); (2) stress itself; (3) stress consequences (organizational and individual); (4) stress moderators (personality, A behavior, and social support); and (5) stress prevention and management (maximize person-environment fit, organizational programs, and individual approaches).
• Stressors are actions, situations, or events that place special demands on a person. Three important categories of stressors are: (1) work environment (e.g., chemicals, radiation, temperature); (2) individual stressors (e.g., role conflict, work overload, change); and (3) group and organizational stressors (e.g., politics, culture, interpersonal relationships, downsizing).
• While some consequences of stress are positive, many are dysfunctional. Negative individual consequences include accident proneness, poor concentration, drug and alcohol abuse, and burnout. Organizational consequences may include absenteeism, turnover, increased health and medical costs, and quantitative and qualitative decrements in productivity.
• Some factors affect the nature of the stress response. These are called stress moderators. Three important moderators are personality, A behavior, and social support.
• Individuals take problem-focused and/or emotion-focused steps to deal directly with stress. In most cases a combination of these two types of coping strategies is used.
• Stress prevention and management strategies include (1) maximizing person-environment fit, (2) organizational programs such as employee assistance and wellness, and (3) individual approaches such as cognitive techniques, relaxation training, meditation, and biofeedback.

Discussion question:

Why are people in certain occupations more susceptible to burnout? What kinds of things might organizations do to reduce the likelihood their members will experience burnout?