Feasibility of Research Project and Factors Causing Stress in Workplace: A Literature Review

Is My Proposed Research Project Feasible?

Is My Research Aim Specific, With No Room For Ambiguity Or Mis-Interpretation?

 Is My Research Aim Appropriately Complex?

Are The Research Objectives Specific?

Are The Research Objectives Measurable?

Are The Research Objectives Achievable?

Are The Research Objectives Realistic?

Are The Research Objectives Timely?

Stress is typically viewed as a deviation from general functioning of body and mind. Stress can approach in an organization because of number of reasons related to control over work, managerial approach of manager (Panigrahi 2016).  Stress as perceived in limited quantity is advantageous to organization as well as employees. It helps in achieving personal and goals of organizations. However, stress in excess quantity tends to cause detrimental effects on health conditions of workforce (Prause and Mujtaba 2015).  Stress management has been considered as the most vital subject of contemporary competitive world in which every individual, regardless of sexual and ethnic characteristics, religion, caste, has been undergoing stress as well as strain because of a diversity of factors particularly ever increasing severe competition in the current succeeding society whereby every sky is not seen as the limit of success.  In the view of authors, till a certain point an increase in pressure will recover performance as well as the quality of life (Haque and Aston 2016). Nevertheless, if pressure develops disproportionately, it will tend to lose its valuable effect and subsequently show harmful impacts.  Thus, employers must develop understanding of the factors which have potential of resulting in excessive pressure as well as stress in the workplace.  The paper will review literature related to organizational stress and in order to increase work efficiency of employees by overcoming stress at workplaces.  

Stress is common occurrence at workplaces but implies differently to different people. Factors like distribution of smooth operations have been unconstructively impacted by occupational stress. However, ul Haque, Aston and Kozlovski  (2018) drawing insights of other scholars have argued that efficiency and performance tends to get lessened because of stress encountered by employees.  While, under transactional theories it has been claimed that when an individual and setting interacts, level of stress are likely to transact evolving and intensifying its impact within the dynamic organizational setting.  ul Haque, Aston and Kozlovski  (2018) have shared similar views and has found that individual factors impact the performance and tend to cause recurrent stress amongst employees at operational level. It has been noted that female employees typically tend to encounter stress owing to organizational factors as compared to male counterparts (Shanker et al. 2017). Furthermore, operational level employees are extensively impacted by organizational factors. By drawing relevance to this factor, author has found that shared insights of previous scholars who argued that industrial sectors encountering rapid developments have superior chances of employees being impacted by organizational factors.  Meanwhile, Sohail and Rehman (2015) are of the opinion that factors at organziatioanl level such as job demand encounter, lack of  appreciation, recurrent and insignificant work, job insecurity, work burden or underutilization of services along with lack of or poor communication impact badly to the capacity of employees in working contentedly in the workplace and deliver utmost efficiency.  Research conducted by Haque and Aston (2016) have found that Pakistani labor force reveal only 36% normative commitment whereas UK's staffs tend to exhibit around 51%. UK male-to-female ratio vis-à-vis normative commitment which is estimated at 63:37 while Pakistani male-to-female ratio has been estimated to be around 59:41. Furthermore, it has been asserted that Role demand is the main stressor among all included organisational factors affecting the males' performance and organisational commitment.  Furthermore, interpersonal demand acts as vital factor of stressor amongst female employees in UK and Pakistani markets. In addition, organisational leadership as well as organisational structure tend to act as visible organisational factors impacting on the work performance and obligation of male as well as female employees in conflicting markets.  

Factors Causing Stress in Workplace

Employee performance is vital factor influencing profitability of an organization. It is important to note that inefficient job performance results in tragedy to the organization as linked with poorer output, profitability and impairment of general work efficiency.  In the view of Jayaweera (2015), recognizing the impact of work setting on employee performance of hotel workforce tends to add in gathering awareness of ways wherein managers can improve employee performance. Furthermore, research of Jayaweera (2015)has found ways in which environmental conditions enhanced by mangers and organizational leaders shape staff output while taking into consideration physical and psychosocial aspects for indorsing work performance of personnel.  Meanwhile, Sikora, Ferris and Van Iddekinge (2015) have shared insights of other scholar who has demanded for high-performance work practices (HPWP). HPWP use can enable line managers to efficiently act in producing organizations’ services and inclination of adapting company’s HPWP. As per author, organizational leadership is likely to accentuate performance management practice implementation rather than focusing on training practice implementation (Haque, Aston and Kozlovski 2016). Contradictory statements have also been found whereby it has been noted that in few firms, line managers possibly will use high ratio of the companies HPWP. By citing examples, Sikora, Ferris and Van Iddekinge 2015) have stated that rate of HPWP in a business tends to shed light on the purpose of company to apply these practices. On the other hand, by drawing relevance from former studies it has been found that motivation is an important factor which can be intensified by managers provided management takes effectual initiatives to encourage employees and promote motivation amongst employees in fundamental and extrinsic level by offering relevant inducements in remuneration and accepting employee perceptions and inspiring initiatives Jayaweera (2015).  On the contrary, Petrou et al. (2015) focusing on activation theory has claimed that job stressors tend to ensue when stimuli cause staffs to encounter activation levels instead of attribute level of activation. As a result, organizational changes like job crafting overly elevate the employment dimension of employees thus causing high job stressors of employees and even exhaustion.  On the other hand, under Fiedler leadership contingency model theory, effectual employee performance shows reliance on suitable collaboration between leaders’ capacity of direction dependent on situational factors and capacity of employee base (Iqbal, Anwar and Haider 2015). By drawing relevance to this theory it has been asserted that organizational leaders must implement such an approach to successfully stimulate staff production and performance (Cravens et al. 2015). Role of managers in reducing stress in workplace In current organizational setting, managers understanding of cultural awareness are measured as vital factor in order to reduce organizational stress by elevating the output of employees.  Comprehensive studies of Prause and Mujtaba (2015) have asserted that the fundamental role of managers must be executed and suitably shared with the team. Furthermore, on organizational stages, managers must aim on setting up constructive linkages which will subsequently authorize staffs to work in utmost collaboration without creating any stressors and conflicts within the organization.  Contrariwise, research of Milligan-Saville et al. (2017) have posited that mental health training for managers will facilitate in upgrading occupational results for staffs who frequently have been experiencing mental health issues. The study rather than casting light on managerial efforts to improve employee performance, have accentuated the importance of enhancing managers’ capacity which consequently shape employee performances in organizations (Tsai et al. 2015).  Research of authors have found major positive association between role uncertainty and worker stress whereby factors related to role ambiguity is likely to cause around 15% increase in job stress (Hoboubi et al. 2017) .  Furthermore, it has been noted that as per Herzberg's “modified expectation” theory young employees show high motivation at the initial periods of employment thus leading to elevated job satisfaction.  On the contrary, Guest (2017) has claimed that dominant methods to HRM have shown incompetence of considering external context and it does not invariably elevate performance.   Thus, organisations show potentials of capitalizing on a focus of employee benefits and stress management in relation to enhanced performance as well as reduced costs. In the view of Guest (2017), exchange theory as a central analytic framework will essentially endorse security and welfare in workplaces in addition to a positive employment relationship between employees.  

Role of Managers Shaping Employee Performance in Workplace

The first step of the research methodology is to develop the research question which has been mentioned below. Research Question- How managers can increase work productivity of employees by overcoming stress at workplace? The second step of the research methodology involved conduct of review of literature which included formulation of search terminologies based on discussions and creating dimensions of studies within the panel. The development of relevant search terminologies has aimed to facilitate the extraction of relevant literature which draws relevance to the research question. Google Scholar and International Journal of Database Management Systems (IJDMS) are the electronic databases which have been comprehensively searched in order to retrieve articles (McKeever et al. 2015).  The reference lists of articles have been searched in manual approach, thus implementing the procedure of snowballing (Blumenthal-Barby and Krieger 2015). Hand searching the bibliography of the scholarly articles and making consultation of citation analysis has enabled in finding relevant articles appropriate for the developed research question (Inayat et al. 2015). Search terminologies which have been used to find articles are ‘employee stress’, ‘stress’, ‘stressors’, ‘manager’, ‘line managers’, ‘employee performance’, ‘line manager’, ‘performance’, ‘productivity’, ‘mental health training’, ‘HR practice implementation’, ‘Leadership’, ‘factors’, ‘exhaustion’, ‘job crafting’ which have been combined with Boolean operators like AND, OR and NOT. The third step determined the selection criteria of inclusion and exclusion for conducting review of literature and further has put emphasis to the resource limitations.  

Epistemologically, positivist qualitative research shed light on searching for and conducting non-statistical means uniformities in addition to causal relationships between different factors of the reality and making summarization of the acknowledged patterns into comprehensive findings (Dana and Dumez 2015). The research has an epistemological positioning as it has gathered evidences from observable and measurable information (Thorne, Stephens and Truant 2016). 

The comprehensive review of literature has described the research concepts with ground critical evaluation of formerly published studies and has identified the gaps or contradictions in the knowledge base which will facilitate further investigation on the chosen topic (Ketefian 2015). The literature review has been approved by the Gaining approval of the Research Ethics Application Form and critically evaluated relevant evidences and has effectively perused the literature for in-depth information as per utmost ability (Miller, Goyal and Wice 2015). The accessibility of relevant studies has successfully leveraged the quality of the research which has been reviewed. 

Resource and time limitation of the literature review has not allowed for complete inclusion of additional researches for thoroughly representativeness of the involved articles.   This has made the review of the literature to develop certain type of susceptibility of being subjectively biased. However, as a result, it has not provided a complete representative overview of the current status of investigation.  

Role of Managers in Reducing Stress in Workplace

References

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