CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

This chapter presented the background of the study, statement of the problem purpose of the study, objectives of the study, research questions, and scope of the study and significance of the study.

1.1 Background of the Study

Today, factors which drive an organization to success are basically workers’ personality and one of the factors affecting work is performance and commitment, which includes stress management. And it is this stress management that later on influences the employee’s commitment in the organization.

Excessive stress is considered to be one of the main factors affecting employees‟ performance and commitment (Paul, Elam & Verhaut, 2007). Work-related stress is considered to be the product of an imbalance between environmental demands and individual capabilities (Rees & Redfern, 2003). Rees (2001) indicates that occupational stress is the inability to cope with the pressures in a job because of a poor fit between someone’s abilities and ones work requirements and conditions. According to Schermerhorn, Hunt and Osborn (2008), stress is a state of tension experienced by individuals facing extraordinary demands, constraints, or opportunities. It is a mental and physical condition which affects an individual’s productivity, effectiveness, personal health and quality of work (Holmlund-Rytkönen & Strandvik, 2005). Stress may results in high portion of absence from work and loss of employment (Meneze, 2005). Stress can be defined as a physical, mental, or emotional response to events that causes bodily or mental tension. Stress in general can be defined as the reaction of individuals to demands (stressors) imposed upon them. It refers to situations where the well-being of individual is detrimentally affected by their failure to cope with the demands of their environment (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2006). Lately, there is a problematic increase in cases of occupational stress related problems among employees, which have led to declining interest in their jobs, less commitment and growing impatience among the top managers (Pflanz & Ogle, 2006). This is mainly due to the competitive nature of the job environment, shift in work demands and economic hardship owing to the economic recession. This is perhaps the general trend which indicates declining performance/productivity. People differ dramatically in the type of events they interpret as stressful and the way in which they respond to such stress. Stress is also an inevitable component in human life. Some stress is essential and promotes personal growth but excessive stress or an inappropriate way of coping with stress brings about negative results hence burnout.

Stress management has become one of the most important and valuable strategy to boast the employee’s moral and the organizational commitment in all organizations. All the organizations have understood that employees play a key role and they should be out of stress to give a high performance commitment atmosphere. There are varieties of strategies to manage stress in an organization. Stress is a fact of life, wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you cannot avoid stress, but you can learn to manage it so it doesn’t manage you. Also stress is an emotion or bodily reaction to physical, psychological or emotional demands. Stress produces numerous physical and mental symptoms which vary according to each individual situational factor. This can include physical health decline as well as depression. The process of stress management is as one of the key to a happy and successful life in modern society. Stress is what we feel when we are stressed, out body responds as we are in danger.

Stress Management Strategies

According to Agrawal (2001), stress management strategies refer to the intervention designed to reduce the impact of stressors in the organization. These can have an individual focus, aimed at increasing an individual’s ability to cope with stressors. Stress management programs have also been initiated in various organizations with an attempt to remove or mitigate the effect of stress and common strategies used to alleviate stress include.

• Avoid caffeine, Alcohol, and Nicotine
• Indulge in physical activity
• Try relaxation techniques
• Talk to someone
• Manage your time
• Rest if you are ill etc

However, there are also some stress management strategies that are negative in nature. According Guluadi (2006) negative stress management strategies can include unhealthy behaviors, distractions, violence, and withdrawal; unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, excessively over and under eating, and cling abuse are sometimes used to relieve stress Distraction such as television, computer, and filling up schedules to avoid facing problems are common ways to avoid stress.

Oboegbulem (2002) stated that stress management studies have shown that individuals in any occupation or profession can do little to significantly reduce stress which they experience or to which they are exposed. She further added that conventional wisdom is that much can be done outside one’s specific job to get one’s mind and body toughened up enough so as to withstand the attendant occupational rigours. In the view of Caplan (1974) social support system is a system of stress management. He explained social support as all human relationships that have a lasting and positive impact on the individual’s life. This system as he put it helps one to mobilize resources to gain control of emotional and stressful situations. As he put it such help as: helping with a task, lending money, solving problems, taking and giving love and affection help in reshaping psychological balance. Dixton (1980), Mcrae & Costa (1987), Weiten (1989) are of the same view that humorous aspects in stressful situation redefines the situation in a less threatening way. Laughter and fun according to them can discharge pent-up emotions. Therefore, joking about life’s difficulties is particularly useful strategy in coping with stress, they concluded. So stress can be reduced through the application of humor. In the view of Weiten (1989) the key to management of stress does not lie in avoiding stress. According to him, laughing and leaning on others may be helpful. He further stated that most stress management programmers should encourage people to engage in action oriented, rational reality-based constructive camping. He concluded that, one should confront stress rather than step it aside. Arroba and James (1990) suggested the development of an organizational stress management programme involving four segmental stages, which intends to provide manageable and methodical ways of keeping the organization pressure level at optimum. He put forward that the organization should contribute to enhance performance of raising awareness of stress problems, individual training to cope with stress, providing specialist skill (example dedicated stress-counseling service), and stress audit where sources of  stress with the organization are identified and changes implemented to reduce this to acceptable levels. Social support system is a system of stress reduction according to Bishop (1994). There are two kinds of social support as Liu and Spector (2005) grouped them; emotional and instrumental. The emotional support helps individual to feel better about themselves and their relationships with others. Persons around give support because they provide encouragement and acceptance. Considering the instrumental support, persons around bring useful information, helping in this way to understand or define stressful situations and cope with them. Okpe (1997) has the following solutions to stress: find your stress point, turn your stress down through diversion, meditation, adequate diet, and humor which she described as a tranquilizer. Okafor and Okafor (1998) stated that the following ways can be helpful in stress management. They advised that people should:- adopt a new way of looking at life, let go past, be reasonably organized and do not depend on alcohol and other drugs for stress reduction, and should not be a perfectionist because they set impossible goals for themselves. It becomes pertinent at this juncture to bring in the view of some other authorities. Underwood (2000) opined that social support may have a main effect on illness regardless of stress level. He further stated that the effects of social support may be evident in both high and low stressful situations. Akubue (2000) identified stress management strategies as: exercise, discussion, relaxation, meditation and holidaying. He further stated that people in developed world live longer than those in developing countries probably because they relax, plan and take a holiday. Ukaejiofor (2005) opined that there is certainly rescue for people under stress. He stated that Jesus Christ is at centre of Christian way through Christian counseling prayers. He further stated that a number of stressful situations can be avoided or well controlled if people can turn to their religion. Religion promotes psychological wellbeing for many people. People with strong religious faith report greater life satisfaction, greater personal happiness and fewer negative consequence of traumatic life events in comparism with those people not involved in formal religion (Ellison, 1991). Koeing et al (1986) and Palmer & Noble (1988) stated that many individuals spontaneously report that religion is helpful to them when they must cope with a stressful event. Organized religion often provides a sense of group identity for persons who have network of supportive individuals who share their beliefs. (http://www.businessballs.stressmanagement.html) identified some coping behavior to include taking enough water, discussing with others to identify the causes of stress, improving one’s diet, reduction of toxin intake, taking more exercise, one should not control things that are uncontrollable and using relation method. Finally, it should be remembered that stressors do not pose equal amount of stress to all people. What may be stressful to one may be less stressful to another. It now follows that any stress management strategies to be adopted should be considered in relation to one’s occupation.

1.1.1 Organizational Commitment

Organizational commitment is the bond employees experience with their organization. Broadly speaking, employees who are committed to their organization generally feel a connection with their organization, feel that they fit in and, feel they understand the goals of the organization. The added value of such employees is that they tend to be more determined in their work, show relatively high productivity and are more proactive in offering their support. The description above is a very good indicator of organizational commitment, but does only offer a broad description. “Three component model of commitment” Meyer and Allen discuss organizational commitment in great detail. We can see from their insightful research that there exist three distinct types of organizational commitment:

Affective commitment Continuance commitment normative Commitment,

Affective commitment relates to how much employees want to stay at their organization. If an employee is affectively committed to their organization, it means that they want to stay at their organization. They typically identify with the organizational goals, feel that they fit into the organization and are satisfied with their work. Employees who are affectively committed feel valued, act as ambassadors for their organization and are generally great assets for organizations.

Continuance commitment relates to how much employees feel the need to stay at their organization. In employees that are continuance committed, the underlying reason for their commitment lies in their need to stay with the organization. Possible reasons for needing to stay with organizations vary, but the main reasons relate to a lack of work alternatives, and remuneration.

A good example of continuance commitment is when employees feel the need to stay with their organization because their salary and fringe benefits will not improve if they move to another organization. Such examples can become an issue for organizations as employees that are continuance committed may become dissatisfied (and disengaged) with their work and yet, are unwilling to leave the organization.

Normative commitment relates to how much employees feel they should stay at their organization. Employees that are normatively committed generally feel that they should stay at their organizations. Normatively committed employees feel that leaving their organization would have disastrous consequences, and feel a sense of guilt about the possibility of leaving.

Reasons for such guilt vary, but are often concerned with employees feeling that in leaving the organization they would create a void in knowledge/skills, which would subsequently increase the pressure on their colleagues. Such feelings can, and do, negatively influence the performance of employees working in organizations.

In conclusion, the importance of employee commitment for organizations is well documented. All three forms of commitment highly influence the length that employees stay with organizations. What is most important for organizations is to recognize each type of commitment in employees, and to aim to encourage affective commitment.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Today more than ever before witness the rise and collapse of most organizations and the reasons behind this as discovered that it was as a result of dissatisfaction which caused by low performance of the employees at various organizations. Kathie and Lingle (2007) emphasis that workers rank stress as a top reason why they would leave their company. This therefore indicates that stress lead to lower employees‟ commitment. Elovainio et al. (2002) highlights that occupational stress inadvertently leads to low organizational commitment by the employees and therefore results to increased labor turnover. Willingham (2008) notes that employees respond to stress at work in a variety of ways; many employees show up for work, but do not work to their full capacity; other employees decide that the stress is too much and quit voluntarily. From this background we ought to bring out the effect of stress management strategies on the commitment of employees for their organization.

1.3 Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this study was; to bring out the impact of stress management strategies on the commitment of employees for their organization. From this main objective we had the following sub objectives:

• To bring out the effect of psychological support and job redesign on the commitment of employees for their organization
• To assess effect of training and development on the commitment of employees for their organization
• To examine the effect of employees welfare programs on the commitment of employees for their organization

1.4 Research Questions

The main research question of this study was; what is the impact of stress management strategies on the commitment of employees for their organization. From this main research questions we had the following sub research questions:

• What is the impact of psychological support and job redesign on the commitment of employees for their organization
• What is the impact of training and development on the commitment of employees for their organization
• What is the impact of employees welfare programs on the commitment of employees for their organization