Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

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that individual employees can withstand only a certain amount of stress before resources are depleted and the
stress leads to a strain reaction. The approach is taken into account within the presented research in that both
daily hassles and major life events are assessed in combination with employee burnout. Indeed the presented
research assessed how organisational stress impacts upon the experience of burnout using both qualitative and
quantitative methods, with results affirming the notion that the experience of both chronic daily hassles and major
life events can impact upon burnout. The quantitative outcomes clearly show that psychosocial stressors as
measured by the MSIT (which takes into account the major life event approach) impact strongly upon Burnout as a
stress-related outcome. Equally the qualitative results indicate that individuals were experiencing psychosocial
stressors in the form of daily hassles, although without a related assessment of stress-related outcomes it is
difficult to attribute these hassles to a stress-related outcome. However, it must be noted that quantification of the
stimulus approach is difficult due to the subjectivity involved in any psychosocial stress self-report measures.
Therefore it is difficult to assess how much of a particular stressor, or what combination of stressors, is needed for
an individual’s resources to become depleted and a strain reaction recorded.
The transactional approach however (Chapter II, Section 1a.3) describes the experience of stress as the
interaction between an individual and his/her environment which is mediated by the coping mechanisms available
for the individual employee to ‘deal with’ the stressor. It is clear that the presented research cannot take into
account the whole of the transactional approach – the work in no way directly assesses individual emotionfocussed
coping mechanisms described within the model. Neither does the presented research attempt to assess
or describe the appraisal categories assumed within the model. Bond and Bunce (2000) however discuss problemfocussed
approaches as primary organisational change interventions which, in a manner similar to the presented