Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

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The transactional model is an important model, particularly with
respect to psychosocial working conditions and their relation to stress.
Additionally, it adequately combines aspects of the individual with
environmental stressors, an approach that neither the stimulus- and
response-based definitions attempt. The stimulus and response
approaches both focus the ‘blame’ for stress squarely at the feet of the
individual due to being unable to deal with amount of stress levelled at
them, or due to physiological responses toward the stress. The
transactional model, however, differs. While the individual obviously
plays a strong part in the model, the transactions between the individual
and the environment lead to stress and as such ‘blame’ is not attributed
to the person alone.
1b) Occupational Stress - Theories
Under the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), employers in the
United Kingdom are law-bound to ensure positive health and safety
working practices for their employees, with the focus being on both
physical and psychological well-being (Cousins et al., 2004). The term
‘psychosocial’ refers to the interior processes that occur within an
individual, with ‘psychosocial stress’ therefore referring to the internal
processes which can lead to stress outcomes. The concept of
psychosocial working conditions with respect to stress in the workplace
realises that there is a dynamic relationship between the
organisation/organisational environment and the employees within the
organisation, and appreciates that within this relationship there are going
to be both costs and rewards.
Over the last fifty years or so, a number of models have been
developed in order to attempt to explain the relationship between the
psychosocial work environment and health and well-being (De Croon et
al., 2000). Many current studies investigating the phenomenon of
psychosocial work stress use one of the two theories to be critically
discussed below as the basis for their research, and literally hundreds of
pieces of research literature have utilised these models: the Job Demand-