Compromiso organizacional y estrés ocupacional: estudio de caso en una empresa de distribución y venta de gas LP en Costa Rica

Abstract

At the beginning of this study, two possible relations between Occupational Stress and Organizational Commitment were proposed: direct and inverse relation for a sample of employees in a Costa Rica`s Company. The instruments that were used, Job-Related Tension Index & Shortened Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, showed internal consistency with Alfas of Cronbach of 0.825 and 0.862 respectively. The Pearson correlation index between both variable was -0.17, which means an inverse relationship in alignment with results obtained by Kobasa (1982:707), who proposed that Organizational Commitment protects employees of the negative effects of stress, because it enables them to keep a direction and sense of meaning in their job. Nevertheless, the weak correlation does not support the mitigation effect of Organizational Commitment over Occupational Stress. Therefore, there is no evidence to support the findings of Begley y Czajka (1993:552), regarding the mitigating effect of Organizational Commitment during organizational turmoil. For future research, it is recommended to investigate the correlation between both variables using instruments that include the three components of commitment according to the model of Meyer & Allen (1997:11), use any instrument to measure Occupational Stress that combines both “distress” and “eustres” elements and consider alternate models that explain the mitigating effect on stress of other organizational factors, such as social support, as proposed by Karasek y Theorell (1990). Likewise, it is suggested that in addition to “parametric” evaluations, detailed interviews are performed with employees that show evidence of stress.