Relationship between stress and work

COMMENTARY

By Dr. Bruno Roque Cignacco

United Kingdom

Looker and Gregson (2010) state that stress is a “mismatch between perceived demands and perceived ability to cope,” which implies that a person has too many demands or too few resources to deal with those demands. Sometimes stress can also stem from few demands, even though this is less common.

In other words, stress is a person’s defensive response to a perceived threat from the environment. Stressed people appraise that they will not be capable of dealing with the stressing factors effectively.

Csikszentmihalyi (2002, 2003) states that workers are more prone to become stressed when the level of work required from them is highly challenging as compared with their skills. From the psychological perspective, stressful events tend to be more impactful when they are uncontrollable or unpredictable.

Stress usually brings about physical symptoms (for example, tension, fast heartbeats, etc.), emotional states (anger, fear, etc.), thoughts (worries, ruminations, etc.), and behaviour (avoidance, inaction, self-medication, etc.). These aspects interact with each other in a negative cycle.

Stress can also be contributory to the development of different health conditions, such as backache, lowered immunity, depression, headaches, heart attacks, etc. Some say that a reasonable amount of stress improves achievement, but it is difficult to determine what is “reasonable”.

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How to cite this article: Cignacco, B.R. (2020). Relationship between stress and work; PM World Journal, Vol. IX, Issue VIII, August. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/pmwj96-Aug2020-Cignacco-relationship-between-stress-and-work.pdf

About the Author

Dr Bruno Roque Cignacco

United Kingdom

Dr Bruno Roque Cignacco (PhD) is an international business consultant, international speaker and business coach. For over 20 years, he has advised and trained hundreds of companies on international trade activities and international marketing. He is a university lecturer. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA – UK). He is also the author of business and personal development books published in different languages. His new book “The Art of Compassionate Business: Main Principles for the Human-Oriented Enterprise” (2019, Routledge). Link to the book: www.bit.ly/2MAkr4k    His websites are www.humanorientedenterprise.com  and www.brunocignacco.com