Role of collectivism as a moderator in the relationship between organizational stress and mental health of managerial personnel

Abstract

In the present era of positive psychology and occupational health psychology interest in promoting the mental health of employees has increased markedly during the last few years due to its direct and indirect important role in the productivity, job satisfaction, turnover, bum out, and so on. There may be a lot of key factors such as work environment, management support, work load and so on in determining how stressful the work can be and its effect on employee physical and mental health. Organizational stress and collective cultural are the factors that may play an important role in determining the mental health of employees basically the managers of the organizations. More recently, studies have targeted occupational stress in various professions, such as nurses, doctors, police officers, teachers and academics (Plattner & Mberengwa, 2010), but little research has been conducted on occupational stress among managers. In the pursuit for organizational excellence, managers need to work under highly stressful circumstances. Managers in the manufacturing sector have been found to be experiencing high stress (Jestin & Gampel, 2002). In addition to this, personal cultural orientation of managers may moderate the relationship of occupational stress and mental health through different social support and coping style. In highly heterogeneous societies cultural differences must not be ignored, especially in the workplace otherwise it may result in reduced organisational outcomes (Holtzhausen, 2005).Mental healthAccording to the WHO (2009), mental health can be conceptualized as a state of well-being in which the individual: realizes his or her own abilities; can cope with the normal stresses of life; can work productively and fruitfully; is able to make a contribution to his or her community.Organizational stressIn an organizational context, organizational stress is also known as job stress and/or work stress and/or occupational stress. These terms are often used interchangeably in organizations, but its meaning refers to the same thing (AbuAlRub, 2004; Larson, 2004). It is defined as the perception of a discrepancy between environmental demands (stressors) and individual capacities to fill these demands (Topper, 2007; Vermut & Steensma, 2005; Ornelas & Kleiner, 2003; Varea, 1999). Employees in an organization can face occupational stress through the role stress. Role stress means anything about an organizational role that produces adverse consequences for the individual (Kahn& Quinn, 1970). Bhagat etal. (2010)acknowledge role conflict, role overload and role ambiguity as the three frequent causes of occupational stress. Reilly (1982) and Jones et al. (2007) stated that role overload is the degree to which one found him/herself in a position of time pressure because of the number of tasks and responsibilities one has in life. Role ambiguity is defined as being uncertain about the task requirements of a certain job due to lack of information, unclear company directives and unclear goals and responsibilities (Rizzo etal., 1970; Walker etal., 1975; Schuler, 1979; Behrman & Perreault, 1984; Mengiuc, 1996; Karatepe et al., 2006; Jones et al., 2007). Role ambiguity can result from deficient information available (Conley W Chang & Lu, 2007). Role conflict can result from inconsistent information (Conley W LaMontagne et al., 2008). Research has established that job-related stress impacts on individual level outcomes that include depression decreased overall well-being and coronary heart disease (Beehr & Glazer, 2005; Gyllensten & Palmer, 2005). …