MCom I Semester Contemporary Change Issue Study Material Notes

MCom I Semester Contemporary Change Issue Study Material Notes: Technology in the workplace  creating a learning organization managing change its culture-bound work stress and its management potential sources of stress Individual differences consequences of stress managing stress summary and implications for managers :

BCom 2nd Year Deduction Collection Income Tax Source Study Material Notes in Hindi

Contemporary Change Issues for Today Managers 

The Al process essentially consists of four steps, often played out in a large group meeting over a two or three-day time period, and overseen by a trained change agent. The first step is of discovery. The idea is to find out what people think are the strengths of the organization. For instance, employees are asked to recount times they felt the organization worked best or when they specifically felt most satisfied with their jobs. The second step is dreaming. The information from the discovery phase is used to speculate on possible futures for the organization. For instance, people are asked to envision the organization in five years and to describe what’s different. The third step is designing. Based on the dream articulation, participants focus on finding a common vision of how the organization will look and agree on its unique qualities. The fourth stage seeks to define the organization’s destiny. In this final step, participants discuss how the organization is going to fulfill its dream. This typically includes the writing of action plans and the development of implementation strategies.

Al has proven to be an effective change strategy in organizations such as GTE, Roadway Express, and the U.S. Navy. For instance, during a recent three-day Al seminar with Roadway employees in North Carolina, workers were asked to recall ideal work experiences–when they were treated with respect, when trucks were loaded to capacity or arrived on time. Assembled into nine groups, the workers were then encouraged to devise money-saving ideas. A team of short-haul drivers came up with 12 cost-cutting and revenue-generating ideas one alone that could generate $1 million in additional profits. 21

Contemporary Change Issue

Contemporary Change Issues for Today’s Managers

In this section, we address four contemporary change issues. First, how are changes in technology affecting the work lives of employers? Second, what can managers do to help their organizations become more innovative? Third, how do managers create organizations that continuously learn and adapt? And fourth, is managing change culture-bound?

Contemporary Change Issue

Technology in the Workplace

Recent advances in technology are changing the workplace and affecting the work lives of employees. In this section, we’ll look at two specific issues related to processing technology and work. These are continuous improvement processes and process reengineering. Continuous Improvement Processes in Chapter 1, we described quality management as seeking the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through the continuous improvement of all organizational processes. This search for continuous improvement recognizes that good isn’t good enough and that even excellent performance can, and should be improved on. For instance, a 99.9 percent error-free performance sounds like a high standard of excellence. However, it doesn’t sound so great when you realize that this standard would result in the U.S. Post Office losing 2.000 pieces of mail an hour or two plane crashes a day at O’Hare Airport in Chicago!

Quality management programs seek to achieve continuous process improvements so that variability is constantly reduced. When you eliminate variations, you increase the uniformity of the product or service. Increasing uniformity, in turn, results in lower costs and higher quality

As tens of thousands of organizations introduce continuous process improvement, how will employees be affected? They will no longer be able to rest on their previous accomplishments and successes. So some people may experience increased stress from a work climate that no longer accepts complacency with the status quo. A race with no finish line can never be won a situation that creates constant tension. This tension may be positive for the organization (remember functional conflict from Chapter 14?), but the pressures from an unrelenting search for process Improvements can create anxiety and stress in some employees. Probably the most cant implication for employ is that management will look to them as the prime source for improvement ideas. Employee involvement programs, therefore are part and parcel of continuous improvement. Empowered work teams who have hands-on involvement in process improvement, for instance, are widely used in organizations that have introduced quality programs.

Process Reengineering We also introduced process reengineering in Chapter 1 We described it as considering how you would do things if you could start all over The term engineering comes from the process of taking apart an electronic product and designing a better version. As applied to organizations, process reengineering means that management should start with a clean sheet of paper-rethinking and redesigning the processes by which the organization creates value and does work.

Process reengineering requires management to reorganize around horizontal processes. This means using cross-functional and self-managed teams. It means focusing on processes rather than on functions. It also means cutting out unnecessary levels of middle management.

Process reengineering has been popular since the early 1990s. Almost all major companies in the U.S., Asia, and Europe have re-engineered at least some of their processes. The result has been that lots of people have lost their jobs. Staff support jobs, especially middle managers, have been particularly vulnerable to process reengineering efforts. So, too, have clerical jobs in service industries

Employees who keep their jobs after process reengineering have typically found that they are no longer the same jobs. These new jobs typically require a wider range of skills, including more interaction with customers and suppliers, greater challenge, increased responsibilities, and higher pay. However, the three-to-five-year period it takes to implement process reengineering is usually tough on employees. They suffer from uncertainty and anxiety associated with taking on new tasks and having to discard long-established work practices and formal social networks. Stimulating Innovation

Contemporary Change Issue

How can an organization become more innovative? An excellent model is W.L. Gore, the $1.4 billion-a-vear company best known as the maker of Gore-Tex fabric, Gore has developed a reputation as one of America’s most innovative companies by developing a stream of diverse products including guitar strings, dental floss, medical devices, and fuel cells.

Introducing these characteristics into their organization if they want to create an innovative climate Before we look at these characteristics, however, let’s clarify what we mean by innovation Definition We said change refers to making things different. Innovation is a more specialized kind of change. Innovation is a new idea applied to initiating or improving a product, process, O C vice. So all innovations involve change, but not all changes necessarily involve new ideas or lead to significant improvements. Innovations in organizations can range from small incremental improvements, such as Nabisco’s extension of the Oreo product line to include double stuffs and chocolate-covered Oreos, up to radical breakthroughs, such as Jeff Bezos’ idea in 1994 to create an online bookstore. Keep in mind that while our examples are mostly of product innovations, the concept of innovation also encompasses new production process technologies, new structures or administrative systems, and new plans or programs pertaining to organizational members Sources of Innovation Structural variables have been the most studied potential source of innovation. A comprehensive review of the structure-innovation relationship leads to the following conclusions. First, organic structures positively influence innovation. Because they’re lower in vertical differentiation, formalization, and centralization, organic organizations facilitate the flexibility, adaptation, and cross-fertilization that make the adoption of innovations easier. Second, long tenure in management is associated with innovation Managerial tenure apparently provides legitimacy and knowledge of how to accomplish tasks and obtain desired outcomes. Third, innovation is nurtured when there are slack resources. Having an abundance of resources allows an organization to afford to purchase innovations, bear the cost of instituting innovations, and absorb failures. Finally interunit communication is high in innovative organizations.28 These organizations are high users of committees, task forces, cross-functional teams, and other mechanisms that facilitate interaction across departmental lines.

Innovative organizations tend to have similar cultures. They encourage experimentation. They reward both successes and failures. They celebrate mistakes. Unfortunately, in too many organizations, people are rewarded for the absence of failures rather than for the presence of successes Such cultures extinguish risk taking and innovation. People will suggest and try new ideas only when they feel such behaviors exact no penalties. Managers in innovative organizations recognize that failures are a natural byproduct of venturing into the unknown. When Babe Ruth set his record for home runs in one season, he also led the league in strikeouts. And he is remembered for the former not the latter.

Summary Given Gore’s status as a premier product innovator, we would expect it to have most or all of the properties we’ve identified. And it does. The company has a highly organic structure. Its dozens of plants, for instance, are limited in size to only 200 people. And almost everything is done i, teams. The culture strongly fosters experimentation. Employees are free to choose what projects they want to work on based on what they believe is most worthy of their time and most likely to contribute to the company’s success. Also, all researchers are encouraged to spend 10 percent of their time on developing their own ideas. Finally, Gore’s human-resources policies encourage employees to expand their skills and responsibilities, and to help others in the organization do the same.

Creating a Learning Organization

The learning organization has recently developed a groundswell of interest from managers and organization theorists looking for new ways to successfully respond to a world of interdependence and change. In this section, we describe what a learning organization looks like and methods for managing learning

What’s a Learning Organization? A learning organization is an organization that has developed the continuous capacity to adapt and change. Just as individuals learn, so too do organizations. All organizations learn, whether they consciously choose to or not-it is a fundamental requirement for their sustained existence. However, some organizations, such as Corning, FedEx, Electronic Arts. GE, and Phillips India, just do it better than others.

Most organizations engage in what has been called single-loop learning. When errors are detected, the correction process relies on past routines and present policies. In contrast, learning organizations use double-loop learning. When an error is detected, it’s corrected in ways that involve the modification of the organization’s objectives, policies, and standard routines. Double-loop learniny challenges deeply rooted assumptions and norms within an organization. In this way, it provides opportunities for radically different solutions to problems and dramatic jumps in improvement.

Exhibit 19. summarizes the five basic characteristics of a learning organization. It’s an organization in which people put aside their old ways of thinking, learn to be open with each other, understand how their organization really works, torm a plan or vision on which everyone can agree, and then work together to achieve that vision mines collaboration Members of the management team compete with one another to show who is right, who knows more, or who is more persuasive. Divisions compete with one another when they ought to cooperate and share knowledge. Team project leaders compete to show who is the best manager. And third, reactiveness misdirects management’s attention to problem-solving rather than creation. The problem solver tries to make something go away, while a creator tries to bring some thing new into being. An emphasis on reactiveness pushes out innovation and continuous improvement and, in its place, encourages people to run around “putting out fires.”

It may help to better understand what a learning organization is if you think of it as an ideal model that builds on a number of previous OB concepts. No company has successfully achieved all the characteristics described in Exhibit 18-6. As such, you should think of a learning organization as an ideal to strive toward rather than a realistic description of structured activity. Note, too, how learning organizations draw on previous OB concepts such as quality management, organizational culture, boundaryless organization, functional conflict, and transformational leadership. For instance, the learning organization adopts quality management’s commitment to continuous improvement. Learning organizations are also characterized by a specific culture that values risk-taking, openness, and growth. It seeks “boundarylessness through breaking down barriers created by hierarchical levels and fragmented departmentation. A learning organization supports the importance of disagreements, constructive criticism, and other forms of functional conflict. And transformational leadership is needed in a learning organization to implement the shared vision.

Managing Learning How do you change an organization to make it into a continual learner? What can managers do to make their firms learning organizations?

Establish a strategy. Management needs to make explicit its commitment to change, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Redesign the organization’s structure. The formal structure can be a serious impediment to learning. By flattening the structure, eliminating or combining departments, and increasing the use of cross-functional teams, interdependence is reinforced and boundaries between people are reduced.

Reshape the organization’s culture. As noted earlier, learning organizations are characterized by risk-taking, openness, and growth. Management sets the tone for the organization’s culture both by what it says (strategy) and what it does (behavior). Managers need to demonstrate by their actions that taking risks and admitting failures are desirable traits. That means rewarding people who take chances and make mistakes. And management needs to encourage functional conflict. The key to unlocking real openness at work,” says one expert on learning organizations, “is to teach people to give up having to be in agreement. We think the agreement is so important. Who cares? You have to bring paradoxes, conflicts, and dilemmas out in the open, so collectively we can be more intelligent than we can be individual. 86

An excellent illustration of a learning organization is the US Army. This organization’s environment changed dramatically in the past several decades. Most significantly, the Soviet threat which was a major justification for the army’s military buildup following World War II is large Now army soldiers are more likely to be peacekeeping in Iraq or helping to fight fires in the e Northwest In response to this new mission, the army’s high command has redesigned cure stormily rigid, the hierarchical war-based command-and-control structure has been replaced with an adaptive and flexible structure to match its more varied objectives. In addition, everyone from PFCs to brigadier generals has gone through team training to make the army’s culture more egalitarian. For instance, soldiers are now encouraged to question authority and have been given new skills that allow them to make decisions in the field. The “new army is developing soldiers and officers who can adapt rapidly to different tasks and missions-lighting. peacekeeping. humanitarian rescue and who can quickly improvise in complex and ambiguous situations.

Managing Change: It’s Culture-Bound

A number of change issues we’ve discussed in this chapter are culture-bound. To illustrate, let’s briefly look at five questions: (1) Do people believe change is possible? (2) If it’s possible, how long will it take to bring it about? (3) Is resistance to change greater in some cultures than in others? (4) Does culture influence how change efforts will be implemented? (5) Do successful idea champions do things differently in different cultures?

Do people believe change is possible? Remember that cultures vary in terms of beliefs about their ability to control their environment. In cultures in which people believe that they can dominate their environment individuals will take a proactive view of change. This, for example, would describe the United States and Canada. In many other countries, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, people see themselves as subjugated to their environment and thus will tend to take a passive approach toward change

If change is possible, how long will it take to bring it about? A culture’s time orientation can help us answer this question. Societies that focus on the long term, such as Japan, will demonstrate considerable patience while waiting for positive outcomes from change efforts. In societies with a short-term focus, such as the United States and Canada, people expect quick improvements and will seek change programs that promise fast results

Is resistance to change greater in some cultures than in others? Resistance to change will be influenced by a society’s reliance on tradition. Italians, as an example, focus on the past, whereas Americans emphasize the present Italians, therefore, should generally be more

Does culture influence how change efforts will be implemented Power distance can help with this issue. In high-power distance cultures, such as Spain or Thailand, change efforts will tend to be autocratically implemented by top management. In contrast, low-power distance cultures value democratic methods. We’d predict, therefore, a greater use of participation in countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands.

Finally, do successful idea champions do things differently in different cultures? The evidence indicates that the answer is Yes. People in collectivist cultures, in contrast to individualistic cultures, prefer appeals for cross-functional support for innovation efforts, people in high-power distance cultures prefer champions to work closely with those in authority to approve innom work is conducted on them; and the higher the uncertainty avoidance of a society, the more champions should work within the organization’s rules and procedures to develop the innovation. These findings suggest that effective managers will alter their organization’s championing strategies to reflect cultural values. So, for instance, while idea champions in Russia might succeed by ignoring budgetary limitations and working around confining procedures, champions in Austria, Denmark. Germany or other cultures high in uncertainty avoidance will be more effective by closely following budgets and procedures.

Work Stress and Its Management

Most of us are aware that employee stress is an increasing problem in organizations. Friends tells us they’re stressed out from greater workloads and having to work longer hours because of downsizing at their company (see Exhibit 18-7). Parents talk about the lack of job stability in today’s world and reminisce about a time when a job with a large company implied lifetime security. We read surveys in which employees complain about the stress created in trying to balance work and family responsibilities. In this section, we’ll look at the causes and consequences of stress, and then consider what individuals and organizations can do to reduce it.

What is Stress?

Stress is a dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important. This is a complicated definition. Let’s look at its components more closely.

Stress is not necessarily bad in and of itself. Although stress is typically discussed in a negative context, it also has a positive value. It’s an opportunity when it offers potential gain. Consider, for Example, the superior performance that an athlete or the performer gives in clutch s i s often use stress positively to rise to the occasion and perform at or near their max umum. Similarly, many professionals see the pressures of heavy workloads and deadliness o challenges that enhance the quality of their work and the satisfaction they get from their job.

More typically, stress is associated with constraints and demands. The former prevents you from doing what you desire. The latter refers to the loss of something desired. So when you take a testat school or you undergo your annual performance review at work, you feel stress because you confront opportunities, constraints, and demands. A good performance review may lead to a promotion, greater responsibilities, and a higher salary. But a poor review may prevent you from getting the promotion. An extremely poor review might even result in your being fired

Two conditions are necessary for potential stress to become actual stress. There must be uncer anty over the outcome and the outcome must be important. Regardless of the conditions, I s only when there is doubt or uncertainty regarding whether the opportunity will be seized, the constraint removed, or the loss avoided that there is stress. That is, stress is highest for individuals who perceive that they are uncertain as to whether they will win or lose and lowest for individuals who think that winning or losing is a certainty. But the importance is also critical. If winning or losing is an unimportant outcome, there is no stress. If keeping your job or earning a promotion doesn’t hold any importance to you, you have no reason to feel stress over having to undergo a performance review.

Understanding Stress and Its Consequences

What causes stress? What are its consequences for individual employees? Why is it that the same set of conditions that creates stress for one person seems to have little or no effect on another person? Exhibit 18-9 provides a model that can help to answer questions such as these.”

National surveys consistently show that people hold family and personal relationships dear. Mar tal difficulties, the breaking off of a relationship, and discipline troubles with children are examples of relationship problems that create stress for employees that aren’t left at the front door when they arrive at work.

Economic problems created by individuals overextending their financial resources is another ser of personal troubles that can create stress for employees and distract their attention from their work Regardless of income level-people who make $80.000 a year seem to have as much trouble handling their finances as those who earn $18,000—some people are poor money managers or have wanted that always seem to exceed their earning capacity.

Studies in three diverse organizations found that stress symptoms reported prior to beginning a job accounted for most of the variance in stress symptoms reported nine months later. This led the researchers to conclude that some people may have an inherent tendency to accentuate negative aspects of the world in general. If this is true, then a significant individual factor that influences stress is a person’s basic disposition. That is, stress symptoms expressed on the job may actually originate in the person’s personality.

Stressors Are Additive A fact that tends to be overlooked when stressors are reviewed individually is that stress is an additive phenomenon. Stress builds up. Each new and persistent stressor adds to an individual’s stress level. So a single stressor may be relatively unimportant in and of itself, but if it’s added to an already high level of stress, it can be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” If we want to appraise the total amount of stress an individual is under, we have to sum up his or her opportunity stresses, constraint stresses, and demand stresses.

Individual Differences

Some people thrive on stressful situations, while others are overwhelmed by them. What is it that differentiates people in terms of their ability to come people thrive on stressful situations, while handle stress? What individual difference variables moderate the relation others are overwhelmed by them.

ship between potential stressors and experienced stress? At least six variable perceptions, job experience, social support, belief in the locus of control, self and hostility-have been found to be relevant moderators. In Chapter 5, we demonstrated that employees react in response to their perception of reality rather than to reality itself. Perception, therefore, will moderate the relationship between a potential stress condition and an employee’s reaction to it. For example, one person’s fear that he’ll lose his job because his company is laying off personnel may be perceived by another as an opportunity to get a large severance allowance and start his own business. So stress potential doesn’t lie in objective conditions; it lies in an employee’s interpretation of those conditions.

The evidence indicates that experience on the job tends to be negatively related to work stress. Why? Two explanations have been offered. First is the idea of selective withdrawal. Voluntary turnover is more probable among people who experience more stress. Therefore, people who remain with the organization longer are those with more stress-resistant traits or those who are more resistant to the stress characteristics of their organization. Second, people eventually develop coping mechanisms to deal with stress. Because this takes time, senior members of the organization are more likely to be fully adapted and should experience less stress.

There is increasing evidence that social support that is, collegial relationships with coworkers or supervisors can buffer the impact of stress. The logic underlying this moderating variable is that social support acts as a palliative, mitigating the negative effects of even high-strain jobs.

Contemporary Change Issue

Locus of control was introduced in Chapter 4 as a personality attribute. Those with an internal locus of control believe they control their own destiny. Those with an external locus believe their lives are controlled by outside forces. Evidence indicates that internals perceives their jobs to be lede stressful than do externals 51 When internals and externals confront a similar stressful situatie internals are likely to believe that they can have a significant elfect on the results. They, therefore, act to take control of events. In contrast, externals are more likely to be passive and feel helpless.

Self-efficacy has also been found to influence stress outcomes. You’ll remember from Chapter 5 that this term refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task. Recent That is and work overload than did those with low levels of self-efficacy. o n ce in one’s own abilities appears to decrease stress. As with an internal locus of control confirms the power of self-belief in moderating the effect of a high-strain situation Some people’s personality includes a high degree of hostility and anger. These people are chronically suspicious and mistrustful of others. Evidence indicates that this hostility significantly increases a person’s stress and risk for heart disease,55 More specifically, people who are quick to anger, maintain a persistently hostile outlook and project a cynical mistrust of others are more likely to experience stress in situations.

Contemporary Change Issue

Consequences of Stress Stress shows itself in a number of ways. For instance, an individual who is experiencing a high level of stress may develop high blood pressure, ulcers, irritability, difficulty in making routine decisions, loss of appetite, accident-proneness, and the like. These can be subsumed under three general categories: physiological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms.”!

Physiological Symptoms Most of the early concern with stress was directed at physiological symptoms. This was predominantly due to the fact that the topic was researched by specialists in the health and medical sciences. This research led to the conclusion that stress could create changes in metabolism, increase heart and breathing rates, increase blood pressure, bring on headaches, and induce heart attacks.

The link between stress and particular physiological symptoms is not clear. There are few, if any, consistent relationships. This is attributed to the complexity of the symptoms and the difficulty of objectively measuring them. But of greater relevance is the fact that physiological symptoms have the least direct relevance to students of OB. Our concern is with attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, the two other categories of symptoms are more important to us.

Psychological Symptoms Stress can cause dissatisfaction. Job-related stress can cause job-related dissatisfaction. Job dissatisfaction, in fact, is the simplest and most obvious psychological effect of stress. But stress shows itself in other psychological states–for instance, tension, anxiety, irritability, boredom, and procrastination.

The evidence indicates that when people are placed in jobs that make multiple and conflicting demands or in which there is a lack of clarity about the incumbent’s duties, authority, and responsibilities, both stress and dissatisfaction are increased. Similarly, the less control people have over the pace of their work, the greater the stress and dissatisfaction. While more research is needed to clarify the relationship, the evidence suggests that jobs that provide a low level of variety, significance, autonomy, feedback, and identity to incumbents create stress and reduce satisfaction and involvement in the job.08

Behavioral Symptoms Behavior-related stress symptoms include changes in productivity, absence, and turnover, as well as changes in eating habits, increased smoking or consumption of alcohol, rapid speech, fidgeting, and sleep disorders.

Contemporary Change Issue

There has been a significant amount of research investigating the stress-performance relationship. The most widely studied pattern in the stress-performance literature is the inverted-U relationship. This is shown in Exhibit 18-11.

The logic underlying the inverted U is that low to moderate levels of stress stimulate the body and increase its ability to react. Individuals then often perform their tasks better, more intensely, or more rapidly. But too much stress places unattainable demands or constraints on a person, which result in lower performance. This inverted-U pattern may also describe the reaction to stress over time, as well as to changes in stress intensity. That is, even moderate levels of stress can have a negative influence on performance over the long term as the continued intensity of the stress wears down the individual and saps his or her energy resources. An athlete may be able to use the positive effects of stress to obtain a higher performance during every Saturday’s game in the fall season, or a sales executive may be able to psych herself up for her presentation at the annual national meeting But moderate levels of stress experienced continually over long periods, as typified by the me gency room staff in a large urban hospital, can result in lower performance. This may explain why emergency room starts at such hospitals are frequently rotated and why it is unusual to find individuals who have spent the bulk of their careers in such an environment. In effect to do expose the individual to the risk of career burnout.”

In spite of the popularity and intuitive appeal of the inverted-U model, it doesn’t get a lot of empirical support. At this time, managers should be careful in assuming that this model accurately depicts the stress-performance relationship.

Contemporary Change Issue

Managing Stress

From the organization’s standpoint management may not be concerned when employees experience low to moderate levels of stress. The reason, as we showed earlier, is that such levels of stress may be functional and lead to higher employee performance. But high levels of stress, or even low levels sustained over long periods, can lead to reduced employee performance and, thus, require action by management.

Contemporary Change Issue

While a limited amount of stress may benefit an employee’s performance, don’t expect employees to see it that way. From the individual’s standpoint, even low levels of stress are likely to be perceived as undesirable. It’s not unlikely, therefore, for employees and management to have different notions of what constitutes an acceptable level of stress on the job. What management may consider being a positive stimulus that keeps the adrenaline running is very likely to be seen as “excessive pressure” by the employee. Keep this in mind as we discuss individual and organizational approaches to managing stress.

Contemporary Change Issue

Individual Approaches An employee can take personal responsibility for reducing his or her stress level. Individual strategies that have proven effective include implementing time-management techniques, increasing physical exercise, relaxation training, and expanding the social support network.

Many people manage their time poorly. The well-organized employee, like the well-organized student, can often accomplish twice as much as the person who is poorly organized. So an understanding and utilization of basic time management principles can help individuals better cope with tensions created by job demands.2 A few of the more well-known time-management principles are: (1) making daily lists of activities to be accomplished; (2) prioritizing activities by importance and urgency: (3) scheduling activities according to the priorities set; and (4) knowing your daily cycle and handling the most demanding parts of your job during the high part of your cycle when you are most alert and productive 63

Noncompetitive physical exercises such as aerobics, walking, jogging, and swimming. and riding a bicycle have long been recommended by physicians as a way to deal with excessive stress levels. These forms of physical exercise increase heart capacity, lower the at-rest heart rate, provide a mental diversion from work pressures, and offer a means to “let off steam.”64

Contemporary Change Issue

Individuals can reach themselves to reduce tension through relaxation techniques such as meditation, hypnosis, and biofeedback. The objective is to reach a state of deep relaxation, in which one feels physically relaxed, somewhat detached from the immediate environment, and detached from body sensations. Deep relaxation for 15 or 20 minutes a day releases tension and provides a person with a pronounced sense of peacefulness. Importantly, significant changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiological factors result from achieving the condition of deep relaxation.

As we noted earlier in this chapter, having friends, family, or work colleagues to talk to provides an outlet when stress levels become excessive. Expanding your social support network, therefore, can be a means for tension reduction. It provides you with someone to hear your problems and to offer a more objective perspective on situations.

Organizational Approaches Several of the factors that cause stress, particularly task and demands, and organizational structure-are controlled by management. As such, they can be modified or changed. Strategies that management might want to consider include improved personnel selection and job placement, training, use of realistic goal setting, redesigning of jobs, increased employee involvement, improved organizational communication, offering employee sabbaticals, and establishment of corporate wellness programs.

Contemporary Change Issue

Certain jobs are more stressful than others but, as we learned earlier in this chapter, individuals differ in their response to stressful situations. We know, for example, that individuals with little experience or an external locus of control tend to be more prone to stress. Selection and placement decisions should take these facts into consideration. Obviously, management shouldn’t restrict hiring to only experienced individuals with an internal locus, but such individuals may adapt better to high-stress jobs and perform those jobs more effectively. Similarly, training can increase an individual’s seller cacy and thus lessen job strain

Contemporary Change Issue

We discussed goal setting in Chapter 6. Based on an extensive amount of research, we concluded that individuals perform better when they have specific and challenging goals and receive feedback on how well they are progressing toward these goals. The use of goals can reduce stress as well as provide motivation. Specific goals that are perceived as attainable clarify performance expectations. In addition, goal feedback reduces uncertainties about actual job performance. The result is less employee frustration, role ambiguity, and stress.

Redesigning jobs to give employees more responsibility, more meaningful work, more autonomy, and increased feedback can reduce stress because these factors give the employee greater control over work activities and lessen dependence on others. But as we noted in our discussion of work! design, not all employees want enriched jobs. The right redesign, then, for employees with a low need for growth might be less responsibility and increased specialization. If individuals prefer structure and routine, reducing skill variety should also reduce uncertainties and stress levels.

Contemporary Change Issue

Role stress is detrimental to a large extent because employees feel uncertain about goals, expectations, how they’ll be evaluated, and the like. By giving these employees a voice in the decisions that directly affect their job performances, management can increase employee control and reduce this role stress. So managers should consider increasing employee involvement in decision-making. 06

Increasing formal organizational communication with employees reduces uncertainty by lessening role ambiguity and role conflict. Given the importance that perceptions play in moderating the stress-response relationship management can also use effective communications as a means to shape employee perceptions. Remember that what employees categorize as demands, threats, or opportunities are merely an interpretation, and that interpretation can be affected by the symbols and actions communicated by management.

Contemporary Change Issue

What some employees need is an occasional escape from the frenetic pace of their work. In recent years, companies such as Charles Schwab, Du Pont, LLBean, Nike, and 3Com have begun to provide extended voluntary leaves.” These sabbaticals -ranging in length from a few weeks to several months-allow employees to travel, relax, or pursue personal projects that consume time beyond normal vacation weeks. Proponents argue that these sabbaticals can revive and rejuvenate workers who might be headed for burnout.

Our final suggestion is to offer organizationally supported wellness programs. These programs focus on the employee’s total physical and mental condition. For example, they typically provide workshops to help people quit smoking, control alcohol use, lose weight, eat better, and develop a regular exercise program. The assumption underlying most wellness programs is that employees need to take personal responsibility for their physical and mental health. The organization is merely a vehicle to facilitate this end

Contemporary Change Issue

Summary and Implications for Managers

If environments were perfectly static, if employees’ skills and abilities were always up to date and capable of deteriorating, and if tomorrow were always exactly the same as today, the organizational change would have little or no relevance to managers. But the real world is turbulent, requiring organizations and their members to undergo dynamic change if they are to perform at competitive levels.

Managers are the primary change agents in most organizations. By the decisions they make and their role-modeling behaviors, they shape the organization’s change culture. For instance, management decisions related to structural design, cultural factors, and human resource policies largely determine the level of innovation within the organization. Similarly, management decisions, policies, and practices will determine the degree to which the organization learns and adapts to changing environmental factors.

We found that the existence of work stress, in and of itself, need not imply lower performance. The evidence indicates that stress can be either a positive or a negative influence on employee performance. For many people, low to moderate amounts of stress enable them to perform their jobs better, by increasing their work intensity, alertness, and ability to react. However, a high level of stress, or even a moderate amount sustained over a long period, eventually takes its toll, and performance declines. The impact of stress on satisfaction is far more straightforward. Job-related tension tends to decrease general job satisfaction. Even though low to moderate levels of stress may improve job performance, employees find stress dissatisfying.

Contemporary Change Issue