What is organizational stress and why does it matter?

By Christina G. L. Nerstad, Ingvild M. Seljeseth, Astrid M. Richardsen, and Sir Cary Cooper

Stress is often viewed as something unhealthy, dangerous, and “must be avoided” because of the heavy toll it has been found to play on individuals’ lives. Examples of stress-related problems include heart disease, drug abuse, alcoholism, and complaints of illness, as well as work groups or families suffering from the stress problems of their members. Also, stress is seen as a detrimental factor to the productivity and health of companies and countries due to the high cost it can impose on employee well-being and organizational productivity. Still, as we emphasize in our book Organizational Stress stress can also be adaptive for individuals because it has the capacity to foster learning and growth. Thus, stress is not quite the root of all ills and social problems at work or in life; it may also engender positive outcomes such as work-related well-being. We therefore need to re-shift the focus from the extent to which there is too much or too little stress in employees’ lives, to how we can understand the stress process (both negative and positive) and its implications for the management of stress.

There are wide discrepancies in the way stress is defined, but stress theories typically have a common theme of addressing an imbalance or misfit between the person and the environment. An underlying premise is that strain (e.g., burnout), which is the individual’s responses to stressors (e.g., stimuli such as time pressure, workload, destructive leadership, and job insecurity), occurs when there is an imbalance between the demands of the work situation and the resources of the employee. Stress arises when the misfit is perceived as salient and significant by the individual, when it is an initial threat to the individual’s well-being, and when it requires actions over and above normal functioning. For example, a situation that can create such an imbalance may be holding a work-related presentation in front of a big audience. This may by some be perceived as a stressful event (a stressor) and engender what we refer to as negative stress, while for others it may rather engender positive stress.

What is the source of the different stress responses? The brain becomes aware of a potential danger (public speaking) and sends signals of this potential danger to the part of the brain, the amygdala, where emotional information is processed. The amygdala further sends information to the sensory center of the brain, the thalamus, and informs about the arousal state of the individual. Further, the potential danger is evaluated, stress hormones (adrenalin, cortisol) are released, and based on an evaluation of the danger “alarm”, a stress response results if the alarm is interpreted as threatening. To what extent a stressor such as public speaking is perceived as threatening (negative stress) or pleasant (positive stress) may, according to some stress theories, depend on the employee’s appraisal. This appraisal is contingent upon the previous experiences of the employee but also on their expectations of how they will be able to cope with the particular situation of public speaking. An important reason for a reduction in a stress response may be that one learns from the situation. For example, an employee who has experienced making a successful public presentation in the past may have developed a positive expectation of being able to cope when making the upcoming presentation. This means that when the brain stores information about coping success in previous stressful encounters (e.g., public speaking, organizational change), it produces a positive expectancy of being able to cope in similar situations.

Empirical evidence has shown that employees are more likely to experience negative stress and strain, such as burnout and depression, when they lose their resources (e.g., autonomy, social support, opportunities for career advancements, learning, positive work relationships, optimism, self-esteem, etc.) at work. Therefore, organizations and their leaders are well advised to facilitate and boost employees’ pools of resources through for example strengthening social support, organizational support, and creating work climates and cultures characterized by aspects such as teamwork, participation, autonomy, mastery, development, and cooperation, health and well-being promoting HR practices and leadership. Also, given the burden of too high job demands, organizations need to be conscious about the level of demands that their workers experience, and seek remedies to decrease the burden of too high demands. This is particularly important considering recent changes where work is excessively available, manifested through for example working from home, long working hours, taking work along on holidays, or being present at work when one is sick and should have stayed at home.

Organizational stress, whereby employees experience an unfavorable imbalance between demands and available resources to cope, is prevalent. The way organizations manage stress is important. Organizations and their leaders can harness and use the energy that stress creates to foster learning and growth rather than experience the toll of stress by the loss of productivity and the ill-health of their employees.

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Book Details
Organizational Stress
Christina G. L. Nerstad, Ingvild M. Seljeseth, Astrid M. Richardsen, Cary L Cooper, Philip J. Dewe, Michael P. O'Driscoll
March 2023
ISBN: 9781529724714

About the Authors

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Christina G. L. Nerstad is Professor of Organizational Psychology/Organizational Behaviour at the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business School. Her research activities are in the areas of occupational health psychology, organizational psychology/organizational behaviour, and human resource management focusing on the motivational determinants of achievement, stress, health, and well-being at work. Her work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, and Human Resource Management, and she has written several book chapters which are published by both national and international publishers. She is involved in research collaboration projects with a number of organizations, and she teaches various topics at PhD, executive, Master of Science, and bachelor programs.

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Ingvild M. Seljeseth is an Associate Professor in Leadership and Organizational Behaviour at the Department of Leadership and Organization, Kristiania University College, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Culture, BI Norwegian Business School. Seljeseth is a clinical psychologist who graduated from the University of Oslo in 2008 and earned a PhD in Leadership and Organizational Behavior from BI Norwegian Business School in 2018. Her academic work focuses on social hierarchies, leadership, and stress. Prior, Seljeseth worked as an organizational psychologist assisting clients in selecting and developing leaders and management teams.

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Astrid M. Richardsen is Professor Emerita at BI Norwegian Business School, where she was Head of Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior 2007-2015. Research interests include occupational health, job stress and burnout, work engagement, and various work outcomes. Her research has been published in international journals and national and international edited books, and presented at international conferences. She has also co-edited several books on workplace health. For many years, she was Dean for the MSc program in Leadership and Organizational Psychology, and she has served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Stress Management. She now lives in Canada and divides her time between grandchildren, creative pursuits, and academic work.

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Professor Sir Cary Cooper, CBE is the 50th Anniversary Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. He is a founding President of the British Academy of Management, Immediate Past President of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), former President of RELATE and President of the Institute of Welfare. He was the Founding Editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, former Editor of the scholarly journal Stress and Health and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Management, now in its 3rd Edition. He has been an advisor to the World Health Organisation, ILO, and EU in the field of occupational health and wellbeing, was Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Chronic Disease of the World Economic Forum (2009-2010) (then served for 5 years on the Global Agenda Council for mental health of the WEF) and was Chair of the Academy of Social Sciences 2009-2015. He was Chair of the Sunningdale Institute in the Cabinet Office and National School of Government 2005-2010. Professor Cooper is currently the Chair of the National Forum for Health & Wellbeing at Work (comprised of 40 global companies, e.g. BP, Microsoft, NHS Executive, UK government (wellbeing lead), Rolls Royce, John Lewis Partnership, etc.). Professor Cooper is the author/editor of over 250 books in the field of occupational health psychology, workplace wellbeing, women at work, and occupational stress. He was awarded the CBE by the Queen in for his contributions to occupational health; and in 2014 he was awarded a Knighthood for his contribution to the social sciences.