Job Stress

Basic Common Assumptions of Stress Models

In the history of stress research (see e.g. Appley & Trumbell, 1986) some approaches focused on physiological and behavioural response patterns as stress reactions (e.g. Cannon, Mason, Selye, Levi, Frankenhaeuser, Ursin) and some identified and differentiated stressors (e.g. Dohrenwend). Others promoted the modelling of the mediating stress process between stressors and strain as an interactional or even transactional process indicating the individual coping behaviour in a given situation (Lazarus, Cox, McGrath).

There is agreement that JSA should consider all aspects mentioned below (see e.g. Cox & Griffiths, 1999; Chmiel, 2000; Schabracqu et al., 1996): characteristics of the job in relation to the individual and situational resources, mentioned as demand-resource discrepancies (stressors), the efficiency of compensatory regulation (coping), motivational patterns of conflict and negative emotions (strain) and long term effects on health (disorders).

There are two mainstreams of approaches with different topics and methods (Gaillard, 1993): the ‘experimental’ approach on the background of [Page 523]cognitive and physiological psychology focuses on mental load, whereas the ‘correlational’ approach of social and health psychology concentrates on affective well-being, complaints and psychosomatic disorders. Therefore, we differentiate between mental load models corresponding with the ‘experimental’ approach and health models related to the ‘correlational’ approach.

Mental Load Models

These models are dealing with the imbalance between task demands and individual resources and the coping behaviour resulting from it. They either focus on effort-regulation (Hockey, 1997; Sanders, 1983; see Gaillard, 1993), problem solving (Hockey, 1997; Schonpflug in Appley & Trumbell, 1986) or multiple level hierarchy of regulatory control (Frese & Zapf, 1994; see Semmer in Schabracqu et al., 1996). The models differ with respect to the sort of job and personal characteristics. Sanders' cognitive energetics model considers task variables and energetic resources, while Hockey's compensatory control model, just like Schonpflug's economic approach, relates task and environmental variables to the management of effort and performance regulation. Various types of data are obtained: performance data (reaction time, errors), self-assessment data (subjective load measures) and physiological data of different systems, e.g. the cardiovascular system, the adrenocortical (cortisol) and adrenomedullar system (adrenaline, noradrenaline) and, recently, the immune system. The methods are from the same type when dealing with workload assessment (see Tattersdal in Chmiel, 2000). The action-oriented approach is methodologically somewhat different, however, describing performance patterns to fulfil task-related goals under limiting conditions (Semmer in Schabracqu et al., 1996).

Health Models

These models consider job features and their influences on job-related health (see Le Blanc et al., 2000 for the following references). They are mainly based on observational, interview and questionnaire data. According to the early Michigan Model (Kahn et al., 1964) psychological stressors develop from an imbalance between job characteristics and job expectancies which are related to individual resources. Stressors such as role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload lead to strains as precursors of psychosomatic complaints and psychosomatic diseases. Recent models assume patterns of job variables as predictably (linear, curvilinear) related to strain and mental health, e.g. the person-environment (P-E) fit model of French et al. (1982), Warr's vitamin model (1994), the job demand-control model of Karasek (1979), the demand control-support model by Johnson (1989) and the effort-reward imbalance model by Siegrist (1996).

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