Contents

Contents..................................................................................................................... 1 Executive Summary....................................................................................................3 Chapter 1.................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction............................................................................................................. 4 Background:......................................................................................................... 4 Topic Details:........................................................................................................5 Objectives:........................................................................................................... 7 Limitations:..........................................................................................................8 Chapter 2.................................................................................................................... 9 Research Model.......................................................................................................9 Framework:.......................................................................................................... 9 Model:..................................................................................................................9 Variables:...........................................................................................................10 Hypothesis:........................................................................................................ 10 Chapter 3.................................................................................................................. 12 Research Methodology..........................................................................................12 Population:......................................................................................................... 12 Sample Size:.......................................................................................................12 Sampling Method:..............................................................................................12 Plan of Analysis:.................................................................................................14 Software Employed:...........................................................................................14 Chapter 4.................................................................................................................. 15 Analysis and Findings............................................................................................15 Frequency and Percentage:................................................................................15

Descriptive Analysis:..........................................................................................20 Hypothesis Testing:............................................................................................21 Chapter 5.................................................................................................................. 24 Conclusion............................................................................................................. 24 Conclusion:.........................................................................................................24 Recommendations:............................................................................................25 References................................................................................................................26 Appendix............................................................................................................ 28

Executive Summary
Behind every topic there is a formal reason of selection. The reason we chose Effects of Stress on Organizational Outcomes was because we wanted to give importance on the nature of Job Stress and the relation with the Outcomes of the Organization a person works in. It was observed that Stress often resulted in a negative outcome from the employees and was taken as negatively from them. As expected it turned out to be a much vast area of research and our study was very broad in nature. The objectives included conducting research in South Asian corporations and evaluating their comparative results with the local environment the same companies operate in. There were a few limitations in the study area namely subjectivity of the topic, the impact of the influencing factors on it, the limited and scarce resources of the study and very limited access to organizational members who were a part of our sample. Our population is the Officers and Middle Management of various Multi-nationals operating in Karachi. However, the Sample Size is 39 due to the low response rate i.e. 26% (150 questionnaires were distributed). Sampling Method used is of convenience sampling in accordance with available resources. The qualitative analysis was done on the Questionnaire responses have been done on SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) in multiple aspects. The conclusions which turned out from the study were that the more the people were stressed; more were they losing interest in their job. Other than that, those who were likely to switch their jobs, they were more dissatisfied in stressful situations. When employees are dissatisfied or lose their interest in a job, they are highly likely to perform lower than those who are satisfied. There were a few positive recommendations which we derived from our study which included that long working hours should be avoided by employers as they resulted in not just stress but also fatigue and tiredness. Certain activities should be provided so that employees can relax their minds in stressful situations. Motivational therapies should be conducted so that employees can take stress as a positive factor and should not think of it negatively.

Chapter 1
Introduction
Background:

We examined the moderating effects of organizational commitment on the relationship of stress with job satisfaction, intent to quit, and health during organizational turmoil. Panel data were provided by hospital employees surveyed before and after a major divisional consolidation. Findings indicated that commitment buffered the relationship between stress and job displeasure (a canonically derived variate combining residualized job satisfaction, intent to quit, and irritation). Stress increased job displeasure only when commitment was low. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved). 2

These were the essence of the research that has already been conducted on this topic and it was a brief background of the past researches and articles. This Stress Organizational Outcomes relationship encouraged us to formulate the Impact of stress in the local environment and to develop the hypotheses for our research. In mid 70s, more emphasis was on Division of Labor and scientific management, including time and motion studies (By Fredrick Taylor) in order to increase Productivity and performance. But today, more importance is given to Behavioral discourses such as Stress-Outcomes relationship. It has now turned into broad area of investigation.

Topic Details:

Stress

Researchers define stress as a physical, mental, or emotional response to events that causes bodily or mental tension. Simply put, stress is any outside force or event that has an effect on our body or mind. It can be defined as the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response. Stress can come from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, nervous, or anxious. It can be either Physical or Mental.

Physical This occurs when the body as a whole starts to suffer as a result of a stressful situation.

Emotional These responses are due to stress affecting the mind and include anxiety, anger, depression, irritability, frustration, over-reaction to everyday problems, memory loss and a lack of concentration for any task. Psychological Long-term stress can cause psychological problems in some individuals. Symptoms include withdrawal from society, phobias, compulsive behaviors, eating disorders and night terrors.

Major Causes of Stress

How workplace can be a cause for stress? In our work place we worry about getting and keeping a good job. We become stressed over new responsibilities and duties. We struggle to climb the career ladder and are overwhelmed by the demands of our bosses. The working conditions may change, or we may have some interpersonal trouble at our work place. Home work for the students becomes a major cause. Work stress is sometimes brought up by other, while some time we bring it to ourselves. Three forces that can cause stress in the workplace environment can be:

 Work Overload
Task Deadlines

Long Working Hours Emotional Dissonance Nervousness etc.

How can Stress cause Job Dissatisfaction?

In line with past researches, this study shows the evidence for the negative effect of stress on various personal and organizationally valued outcomes. More specifically, job stress was negatively related to job satisfaction and affective commitment and positively related to turnover intentions. These results highlight the possible negative effects of job stress in the workplace. Even more dangerous consequence of chronic job stress is burnout. Job stress was positively related to emotional exhaustion and cynicism. However, stress was not related to professional efficacy. These results show are in line with past research. Job stress however, was not related to performance. Maybe, the limited job choices available in economies such as Pakistan do not allow people to reduce their performance despite the fact that they are dissatisfied. This arguments draws strength from the result that stress was positively related to turnover intentions. This implies that although people intend to quit the job if possible, they do not reduce their performance just because they do not have opportunities to switch the job or they cannot afford to lose the job. Surprisingly, job stress was positively related to creativity. We believe it is possible that people become more creative in wake of situations that induce stress in order to effectively cope with such situations.

Objectives:

Job stress and burnout continue to be important constructs for research and inquiry in the OB literature. Reason for attention to these two constructs is their potentially negative relationship with personal and organization outcomes. Most of the theory and research in this area has been developed and tested in North America or a few European countries. Little is known about how these theories would hold in developing countries such as Pakistan. Moreover, bulk of the research in this area has been conducted on human service sector such as health care professionals and school teachers with heavy reliance on self reported measures. Field studies that have tried to map on the effects of job stress and burnout on a variety of outcomes in single study are very rare. Our study addresses these gaps in research by examining the effects of job stress outcomes relationships. Our major emphasis will be to carry out conclusions of this model in the South-Asian context and draw necessary recommendations for the local organizational environment.

Limitations:
Subjective nature of Stress Means the terminology is very subjective

and it varies from person to person and so its measurement depends only on the personal feeling of an individual as we have no reliable measures.

Impact of other Influencing Factors Other factors that can impact the

performance of an individual can also have their impact on organizational outcomes and they cannot be controlled as the research is totally response based.

Scarce Resources The unavailability of appropriate resources has

restrained the research only in the Karachi City boundaries and therefore, the generalizability of results can be different in other areas.

Limited Access to Organization members Most of the organizations

didnt allowed members to be involved in such type of Feedback Forms and so we faced limited access to the individuals which prevented us from getting desired information from the Top-Level management.

Chapter 2
Research Model
Framework:
Job stress has been defined as an individually-based harmful physical and emotional response that occurs as a result of mismatch between person and the environment or the requirements of the job and capabilities (Jamal, 1984; Niosh, 1999)3. Egor (2000)4 viewed stress as the way individuals respond to conditions that scare, threaten, anger, bewilder or excite them. Job stress has traditionally been associated with undesirable, expensive, and debilitating consequences which affect both individuals and organizations (Ross, 2005)5. In organizational setting, stress is nowadays becoming a major contributor to health and performance problems of individuals, and unwanted occurrences and costs for organizations. Many studies have shown that stress is related to various individual and organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction (Chen, Silverthorne, & Hung, 2006)6, organizational commitment (Jamal, 1990; Chen et al., 2006)7, TOI (Turnover Intentions) poor physical and mental health (Jamal, 1990; Marzabadi & Tarkhorani, 2007)8 job performance (Jamal, 2004, 2007)9, and creativity (Demerouti, Willem, Verbeke, & Bakker, 2004; Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004; Talbot, Cooper, Barrow, 1992)10. We believe that it is useful to test the universality of these relationships. As stress is more of a person focused construct, we expect that the stress outcomes relationships would hold in the South Asian context. Therefore, we hypothesize a negative relationship between Job Stress and desired Organizational Outcomes.

Model:

Variables:

Independent Variables:
Stress and Burnout were taken as the independent variables under consideration as they are the subject of our research and in their impact upon Organizational Outcomes has to be tested.

Intervening Variable:
In our proposed model, Job Satisfaction is placed as an intervening variable as Workplace Stress and Burnout result in Job Dissatisfaction and finally impact on the performance of individuals towards Organizational Outcomes.

Moderating Variable:
Turnover Intentions (TOI) will be a moderating variable that moderates the relationship between Stress and Job Satisfaction.

Dependent Variable:
The dependent variable in our model is the Organizational Outcomes that will be measured through work performance of individuals and their efficiency in achieving Organizational goals.

Hypothesis: Hypothesis 1: Job Stress will be negatively related to Job Satisfaction. Hypothesis 2: Relationship between Job Stress and Job Satisfaction will be
moderated by Turnover Intentions.

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Hypothesis 3: Job Satisfaction will be positively related to Job Performance.

(Leads to Organizational Outcomes)

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Chapter 3
Research Methodology
Population:
Many Multi-nationals have widespread their roots in Pakistan over last two decades and some are operating even more years ago. As we were interested to formulate the relationship between variables in proposed Model in the South Asian local perspective, we should have conducted the research Countrywide. But due the scarcity of available resources and the intent of our research projects, our population is the Officers and Middle Management of various Multi-nationals operating in Karachi.

Sample Size:
Even by properly utilizing all available adequate resources, we were unable to generate as many responses as were expected. The main reason was the length of questionnaire which included cross questions as well to validate the respondents answers. The Sample Size is 39 due to the low response rate i.e. 26%. 150 questionnaires were distributed, among which half were partially filled out and were left incomplete. It hindered the formulation of highlighted variables and so we had to continue with the available and gathered data.

Sampling Method:
In accordance with the available resources, Sampling Method used is of convenience sampling. This is because gathering data from diverse organizations in limited time was not possible if we have applied any other method. Questionnaires were evenly distributed among members of Multi-national Organizations including Silkbank Ltd, P & G, Maersk, Dubai Islamic Bank etc. This sampling allowed us the convenient distribution and collection of the research instruments among respondents and we were able to generate data from employees of the mentioned organizations.
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Plan of Analysis:
The detailed analysis of collected information included many statistical tools via which we were able to test the search results as well as we were able to draw necessary conclusions regarding the proposed Model and the relationships among the variables under consideration. These included:

Frequency and Percentage Cross Tabulation Descriptive Analysis Correlation Regression Analysis Hypothesis Testing

Software Employed:
Analysis on the Questionnaire responses has been done on SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) in multiple aspects. Some of the graphical presentations and comparison tables were also generated through Microsoft Excel.

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Chapter 4
Analysis and Findings
Based on the analysis, following results were generated from the gathered information. Their interpretation is based on the findings through our research instrument.

Frequency and Percentage:

Stress on the Job

Frequency Valid Never A few times a year Once a month or less A few times a month Once a week A few times a week Everyday Total 8 7 5 7 7 3 2 39 Percent 20.5 17.9 12.8 17.9 17.9 7.7 5.1 100.0 Valid Percent 20.5 17.9 12.8 17.9 17.9 7.7 5.1 100.0 Cumulative Percent 20.5 38.5 51.3 69.2 87.2 94.9 100.0

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Frequency

Never A few times a year Once a month or less A few times a month Once a week A few times a week Everyday

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Physical Stress on Job

Frequency Valid Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Total 6 17 8 4 4 39 Percent 15.4 43.6 20.5 10.3 10.3 100.0 Valid Percent 15.4 43.6 20.5 10.3 10.3 100.0 Cumulative Percent 15.4 59.0 79.5 89.7 100.0

18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Frequency

Burnout
Frequency Valid 0 Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Total 1 4 7 13 10 4 39 Percent 2.6 10.3 17.9 33.3 25.6 10.3 100.0 Valid Percent 2.6 10.3 17.9 33.3 25.6 10.3 100.0 Cumulative Percent 2.6 12.8 30.8 64.1 89.7 100.0

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Job Performance
Frequency Valid Never A few times a year Once a month or less A few times a month Once a week A few times a week Everyday Total 2 1 8 4 9 5 10 39 Percent 5.1 2.6 20.5 10.3 23.1 12.8 25.6 100.0 Valid Percent 5.1 2.6 20.5 10.3 23.1 12.8 25.6 100.0 Cumulative Percent 5.1 7.7 28.2 38.5 61.5 74.4 100.0

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Frequency

Never A few times a year Once a month or less A few times a month Once a week A few times a week Everyday

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Switching the Job

Frequency Valid I would quit this job at once if i could I would take almost any other job in which i could earn as much as I am earning now I would like to change both my job and my occupation I would like to exchange my present job for another one I am not eager to exchange my job, but I would do so if I could get a better job I can not think of any jobs which i would exchange I would not exchange my job for any other Total 2 5.1 5.1 94.9 19 48.7 48.7 89.7 3 7.7 7.7 28.2 4 10.3 10.3 20.5 4 Percent 10.3 Valid Percent 10.3 Cumulative Percent 10.3

12.8

12.8

41.0

2 39

5.1 100.0

5.1 100.0

100.0

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

I w ould quit this job at once if i could I w ould take almost any other job in which i could earn as much as I am earning now I w ould like to change both my job and my occupation I w ould like to exchange my present job for another one I am not eager to e xcha nge my job, but I w ould do so if I could get a better job I can not think of any jobs which i w ould exchange

Frequency

I w ould not exchange my job for any other

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Descriptive Analysis:

Mean Burnout Feel Worn Out Irritation on the Job nervousness Physical stress on job Stress on the Job Irritation on the Job Job Gets Annoying 2.56 2.72 3.03 2.13 2.56 2.38 3.03 3.23

Std. Deviation 1.875 2.038 1.038 1.080 1.188 1.830 1.038 1.087

3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Mean Std. Deviation Burnout Feel Worn Out Irritation on the Job nervousness Physical stress on job Stress on the Job Irritation on the Job Job Gets Annoying

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Hypothesis Testing:
We tested the afore-mentioned hypothesis for the correlations among the respective variables with a level of significance of 0.05. We observed the following results:

Hypothesis 1: Job Stress will be negatively related to Job Satisfaction

The Correlation came out to be -0.40422 or negative 40.422%.

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Hypothesis 2: Relationship between Job Stress and Job Satisfaction will be moderated
by Turnover Intentions.

We used a partial correlation analysis with job switching being the controlled variable.

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Hypothesis 3: Job Satisfaction will be positively related to Job Performance.

The Correlation came out to be 0.005948 or 0.5% positive correlation

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Chapter 5
Conclusion
Conclusion:

The more the people were stressed, more were they loosing interest in their jobs.

Those who were likely to switch their jobs, they were more dissatisfied in stressful situations.

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 When employees are dissatisfied or lose their interest in a job, they are highly likely to perform lower than those who are satisfied.

Recommendations:
Job Stress and Workload should be handled properly in organizations to keep employees satisfied on their jobs.

Employees should be trained for Stress handling as it finally affects organizational performance.

Employee satisfaction should be given priority if we intend to reduce the Employee Turnover Rate.

Organizational goals should be aligned properly with Employee objectives in order to avoid stress and burnout among Employees.

Long Working Hours should be avoided by employers.

Certain activities should be provided so that employees can relax their minds in stressful situations.

Therapies should be conducted on how Stress can be taken positively, instead of being taken negatively. Positive Stress can increase Job performance.

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References
1. http://ebiz.bm.nsysu.edu.tw/2008/m954012025/(Job%20Satisfaction%20and %20Job%20Performance)/1992%20Organizational%20Stress,%20Job %20Satisfaction%20and%20Job%20Performance-%20Where%20Do%20We %20Go%20From%20Here.pdf

2. http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1993-47396001&CFID=4356304&CFTOKEN=34216728

Jamal, M. 1984. Job stress and job performance controversy: An empirical assessment. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. 1999. Stress At Work. 4676 Columbia Parkway

Ross, G. F. 2005., Tourism Industry Employee Workstress A Present and Future Crisis, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 19: 133-147

Jamal, M. 1990. Relationship of job stress and type-A behavior to employees job satisfaction, organizational commitment, psychosomatic health problems, and turnover motivation. Human Relations, 43: 727-738.

Chen, Jui-Chen; Silverthorne, Colin; Hung, Jung-Yao,.2006. Organization communication, job stress, organizational commitment, and job performance of accounting professionals in Taiwan and America. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 27: 4. 242-249(8)

Marzabadi e A, Tarkhorani H. 2007. Job stress, job satisfaction and mental health. Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research [serial online]

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Jamal, M. 2007. Job stress and job performance controversy revisited: An empirical examination in two countries, International Journal of Stress Management. 14:2. 175-187

Demerouti, E., Verbeke W., and Bakker. A. B. 2005. Exploring the Relationship Between a Multidimensional and Multifaceted Burnout Concept and Self-Rated Performance. Journal of Management, vol. 31: pp. 186 - 209

Halbesleben J., and Buckley M. R. 2004. Burnout in Organizational Life. Journal of Management, 12: 30. 859 - 879

Talbot R., Cooper, C., Barrow, S. 1992. Creativity and Stress. Creativity and Innovation Management. 4: 183193.

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Appendix
Self Report
Dear Participant,

Thank you for agreeing to fill out this questionnaire. I am a candidate for the Masters in Business Administration at the National College of Business Administration and Economics. I am conducting a study to explore the consequences of stress at workplace. You could help us in our research by filling out this questionnaire. I would greatly appreciate your participation in this study. Please provide your honest and most accurate responses to the questions in this Self Report questionnaire and hand over the Manager / Supervisor Report questionnaire to the person to whom you report to. You are not required to give your name or any other information that could reveal your identity anywhere expect on the slip attached with the Manager / Supervisor Report questionnaire. This is only to help your manager / supervisor to ensure that he / she is filling in the questionnaire for correct person. Please request him/her supervisor to remove the slip before handing in the questionnaire to one of our representatives. Although I am not asking you for any sensitive personal information, I assure you that your responses will be held in strictest anonymity. Keep in mind that resulting data will be summarized on a general basis and not on an individual basis. Please read the instructions carefully and answer all the questions. There are no trick questions, so please answer each item as frankly and as honestly as possible. It is important that all the questions be answered. I once again thank you for your assistance and cooperation. Sincerely,

Ramish Hasan Bilgrami

Sohaib Ali Khan

Munib Ahmed Agha

M. Rabeet Ahsan

Muzzammil Hanif

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