Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

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1d) Occupational Stressors
Throughout the literature, often utilising the theories and views
above, copious stressors have been identified as having the potential to
be present in everyday life. The following section of the background
research will evaluate some of the issues which have been identified as
stressful in the workplace. This will fit into the current study because it
outlines some of the major areas which may come up during the process
of the study, as such preparing the researcher for some of the potential
outcomes during the data collection stage without either tainting the
researchers’ view or influencing what participants may identify as the
stressors they face in the workplace.
Occupational stressors are aspects of the working environment that
have the potential to cause poor psychological health or well-being of the
individual. Contemporary research articles which have investigated the
‘health’ of the workplace have shown this to be multi-dimensional
involving people within the organisation as well as the work environment
(Regehr & Bober, 2005). Therefore it is understandable that numerous
pieces of research have suggested that both of these aspects of the
workplace can contribute to an employee’s perception of stress at work,
and as such adversely affect the health and well-being of individuals. In a
review of the work redesign literature, Morgeson and Humphrey (2006)
placed work characteristics into three major categories: motivational,
social and contextual. Motivational characteristics relate to how complex
the work is, with jobs being enriched with higher levels of complexity.
Social characteristics reflect the wider social environment within which the
job is performed, with contextual characteristics being the physical
environment within which work is performed. Indeed it is within the
context of these three characteristic types that the following potential
stressors should be identified.
1d.1) Factors Intrinsic to the Job
These are two-fold: aspects of the job involving risk or danger to life
as encountered, for example, by those in ‘extreme’ occupations such as