Dependent Variables Of Stress Management Essay

Nowadays, most of the organizations tried to improve their management and production to be more efficient and effective. Therefore, in many organizations today, jobs are becoming more unorganized and harder to identify. The trend is towards dejobbing. Dejobbing is “broadening the responsibilities of the company jobs, and encouraging employees not to limit themselves to what’s on their job descriptions.” (Abhishek Kamdi, 2007) the techniques which make organizations highly responsive, flexible and competitive such as flattening organizations, creating empowered teams, re-engineering and lean management.

Lean school cultures promote a positive can-do attitude, greater involvement and vested ownership in improving processes that support student learning. Schools leaders determined to meet today’s challenges of doing more with less should give Lean Process Improvement close consideration (Betty Ziskovsky, 2007). The purpose of apple lean principles is to improve student performance but there also create enough stress and pressure for educators if they cannot meet the goal. The basic ideas behind the lean management, which have been practiced for many years in Japan, are waste elimination, cost reduction, and employee empowerment. (Ohno, 1997).

Based on variety of causes of teacher burnout, we can observe that several causes stress on teachers that is effect of apply lean principles in school system such as excessive paperwork, unnecessary administrative meetings, crowded classrooms, shortages of available support staff and fewer resource.

Causes of teacher burnout can be found at the micro and macro levels of education and include lack of control or autonomy, absence of support groups, excessive paperwork, unnecessary administrative meetings, lack of advancement opportunities in teaching, student apathy, overcrowded classrooms, excessive testing, shortages of available support staff, involuntary transfers, inadequate salaries, demanding parents, poor administrative support and decision making processes, increase in student diversity, fewer resources, government policy formations and student discipline problems(Farber,1984; Anderson& Iwanicki, 1981; Farber, 2000; Grayson and Alvarez,2007).

2.1.1 Dependent variable: stress

Stress is usually connected with the lack of necessary means to accomplish the desired goal. The concept of stress has been historically linked with market work. As the study of stress has their origin in the organizational health psychology. Only lately stress has been connected with leisure as well. The term has been connected with time crunch and gender equality aspects of the time use during off- work hours (Olli- Pekka Ruuskanen, 2004).

Stress has been referred to as “the twentieth century plague”, a description identified by the media coverage given to this subject. The industrial society (Langley, 1999) claimed that, after colds and flu, stress was now the third most common cause absenteeism among employee. Stress is a complex phenomenon, acceptable level of stress for individuals can help to improve individual’s performance but excessive amounts of stress can cause decreased in performance.

Negative effects of stress include reduce efficiency, decreased capacity to perform, dampened initiate and lack of concern for the organization and colleagues (Fairbrother and Warn, 2003). According many commentators noted that the “flight or fight” syndrome associated with stress could increase the performance of the individual by providing adrenaline to increase the capacity of the body to cope; this is further described by Buchanan and Huczynski as positive effects of stress.

Different definitions of stress:

Stress arises when individuals perceive that they cannot adequately cope with the demands being made on them or with threats to their well being (Lazarus, 1966).

Stress result from an imbalance between demands and resource. (Folkman& Lazarus, 1984).

Stress is an acceptable pressure in our lives and strain is the response we experience to untenable stressors that cause damage and even destruction to our system (Thompson, 1987).

Stress on teachers

Schools and school systems are organizations in which workers must rely on multiple complex processes to accomplish their tasks and provide value to the customer. These processes occur at the administrative, instructional, and student learning levels (Betty & Joe, 2007). Teacher today are required to fulfill many roles other than teaching. Teacher in primary schools not only they needed to teach, but they are also needed to cleaning their rooms, preparation of lessons and adopting and maintaining their teaching style, preparing for outdoors activities and performing numerous other required tasks. There have a lot of responsibilities to shoulder besides teaching a student.

Reason that cause stress on teacher

According to research that conducted by John Pratt stated that industrial stress refers to the concepts of role stress, where the worker is faced with ambiguous or conflicting demands from other or of role overload when the work is too difficult or too great in volume, relative to the individual’s perceived capacity (Warr & Wall, 1975). Stress may occur when the worker does not ‘fit’ the job well or when the job involves responsibility for the safety, welfare or behavior of others (Cobb, 1973). Teaching contains many elements of these situations and one might predict that dealing with children all day was in itself a stressful business.

With regard to time pressure some teachers spend long time at school to help with extra- curricular activity such as sports coaching or refereeing or involves meetings after teaching and do their preparation and marking at home at night (Saptoe,2000) that cause stress to many teacher because little time for recreation. Teaching has now become very demanding occupation with a lot of stresses; teachers are required to complete their tasks to meet the deadline that have been set by the management. Therefore, teacher need to rush for complete their tasks that will minimize time that gather with their family and time for rest. That will cause stress on teacher.

As Sutton (1984) pointed out, role demands may become stressful for a teacher, when organizational member’s expectations about the teacher’s behavior are unclear as also can be defined as role ambiguity. Such as lack of clarify concerning organizational member’s expectations about the teacher behavior that results from insufficient or inconsistent of information that provided. Unclear expectations occurs when teachers have too many task to complete, they are not sure what target usually they need to achieve, that will cause confusion on the task their need to accomplish.

Teachers communicate with many people throughout the day: parents, children, support staff, the general public, and administrators.  Early childhood teachers must be prepared to communicate with all of these people (Childcare Education Institute, 2009).  Teachers needed to work on research papers and need to attending variety of meetings, there are many responsibilities exist outside of the classroom that they require to pay attention. That there are too many demand more than capability of teachers. Teaching is full of many responsibilities, roles, and challenges (Childcare Education Institute, 2009).

2.1.2 Independent variable: Multitasking and stress

The term multitasking is a buzz word that over the last several decades has become something we all recognize and most likely take part in. However, multitasking is not a new concept. People have been multitasking since the beginning of time. With today’s societal pressures for increased efficiency, being able to multitask is considered an advantage. The idea is that multitasking allows one person to do many tasks at one time; therefore, accomplishing more within a shorter period of time (Janelle Harrison, 2008).

Another study by Olli-Pekka Ruuskanen (2004) examined the effects of multitasking on stress levels. She questions whether multitasking causes an increase in stress, or whether multitasking is a result of stress. She suggests that people feel a form of time stress; that is, that they feel they do not have enough time to complete all the tasks required of them, so they do multiple tasks at one time. This can have negative effect not only on productivity due to errors, but also on stress levels(Janelle Harrison, 2008).

Another report by C.S. Budd and M.J. Cooper (2005) found out that multitasking is guaranteed to further delay the completion of all campaigns currently underway and highly stressed employees. (Charlene Spoede Budd and Marjorie J. Cooper, 2005)

2.1.3 Independent variable: lack of training and stress

Training is a learning process that involves the acquisition of knowledge, sharpening of skills, concepts, rules or changing of attitudes and behavior to enhance the performance of employees. Excessive levels of worker stress often result from inadequate feedback regarding performance, lack of training, lack of control and lack of meaningfulness or knowledge of how the individual contributes to the organization’s goals (Doby & Caplan, 1995).

According to Peggy Duncan (Scott, 2007), stress is caused due to a number of factors such as disorganization, unclear goals, too many personal phone calls, disjointed processes, no routines, poor planning, procrastination, lack of focus, and lack of training are some of the reasons for stress.

2.1.4 Independent variable: school expectation and stress

A change to lean production exposes workers to new technologies, working relationships, expectations about productivity and quality and shop floor responsibilities. The resulting uncertainty can create distress and the higher stress, increased dissatisfaction and lower commitment (Jannis Angelis, 2004).

In a book, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy (1996) stated that, being under constant and strong pressure to produce, perform and meet deadlines , many of which may be unrealistic can causes stress. (Gerald Corey, 1996)

2.1.7 Independent variable: role overload and stress

As a teacher, they can alleviate some of the stress caused by role overload by setting realistic expectations for themselves (Greer & Greer, 1992; Shaw, Bensky, & Dixon, 1981 as cited in ERIC Digest, 1989). As part of their preservice education, special education teachers are taught to identify the individual needs of students and develop individualized programs for these students. Thus, teachers may develop the expectation that being a successful teacher translates into the ability to solve all students’ problems (Greer & Greer, 1992).

Role overload describes situations in which employees feel that there are too many responsibilities or activities expected of them in respect to their available time, and abilities had causes stress due to many roles they perform, which may lead to strain (Soleiman Ahmady, Tahereh Changiz, Italo Masiello and Mats Brommels 2007).

Another study stated that stress is built up in the concept of role. Whenever there is conflict between the self, the role under question and other roles that the person accupies, or where there is incompatibility amongst expectations by individual or significant others, there is a potential of role stress. A role stress has been defined as ‘anything about an organizational role that produces adverse consequences for the individual’ (Kahn & Quinn, 1970:41). Kahn et al. (1964) put constructs like role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload under the rubric of role stress. They conclude that role stress has consequences on variables like job-related tension and emotional reaction.

2.2 Review of Relevant Theoretical Models

Many manufacturing and some service businesses today are using lean management principles and practices as a means to improve business processes, which in turn improves productivity and competitiveness and delivers greater value to end-use customers (Bowen and Youngdahl, 1998; Goland et al., 1998; Lean Enterprise Institute, 2003; Swank, 2003; Shingo, 2004; Wysocki, 2004).The lean management system was initially developed by Toyota Motor Corporation (Ohno, 1988; Womack et al., 1990; Moonden, 1993; Womack and Jones, 1996; Toyota, 2001; Emiliani, 2004) beginning in the mid-1930 with elements of the management system dating to the late1800s (Toyota, 1988; Kimoto, 1991).

Lean management which is often known simply as “lean” is the optimal way of managing through the removal of waste and implementing flow. It is renowned for its focus on reduction of the original process wastes in order to improve overall customer value (Senthil Kumaran, 2009). Lean management is about operating the most efficient and effective organization possible with the least cost and zero waste. It is an approach that requires companies to make smart use of their resources, their technology, their equipment and above all, the knowledge and skills of their people.

Thoughtful application of lean principles and practices result in many benefits, including higher quality products and services, increased market share, margin expansion,, revenue growth, stable employment, better customer focus, faster response to changing market conditions and asset efficiency. Importantly, a key focus of lean management is time and how time is used with the intent of improving responsiveness to customers and ensuring that associates lives are not being wasted while at work doing unnecessary things (Minoura, 2002).

According to two researches conducted y Boyer and Soriano Meier, there are two major issues that influence the implementation of lean manufacturing infrastructure investment. In their research, they focused on four infrastructural investments: quality leadership, group problem solving, training and worker empowerment. Clare states that seven best practice components must be present in order to apply lean. They are environment change, leadership, culture, employee empowerment, training, communication, measurement. These components first bring changes in the management’s behavior which will then influence the employees to practice the seven components.

Boyer stated the successful implementation of lean production environment, training is necessary in order to develop a workforce which is capable of shouldering the increased responsibility, to develop multi-skilled workers and create an environment in which workers have the skills and ability to push for continuous improvement. By referring to Womack et al and Boyer, concludes that plants which allocate greater resources for the training of the workforce have been shown to have increased productivity.

Continuous training of employees is a central theme of High Reliability Theory (Roberts, 1990) and a critical component of lean. As a strategy of mindfulness, “HROs view failure as an important precondition to learning.” Weick et al, (1999). Therefore, they train employees to be committed to report errors and analyze near misses. Robert considers employee training as a countermeasure to deal with complexity. Lean management also emphasizes training of employee (deTrevelle and Antonakis, 2006).

According to Roberts, complex technologies can be managed by continuous training of employees of employees including simulations la hazardous events to prepare them for unexpected failures. In production industry, cross training is require for employees to perform multitasking on machine. Man power flexibility means that depending on the demand number of operators can be increased or decreased.

Multi- tasking, multi- discipline, multi- functional, self- managing working groups is key lean construction concepts that are critical to the success of partnering on construction projects. In practice, these groups will evolve, and ‘morph’ many times between the beginning of design and the turn-over of the finish ‘product’ to the owner. As the needs of the project change, the same players will move seamlessly from group to group, fulfilling different roles each time. They are at one time the working group champion, the next time a support member. Working groups will overlap then disappear as their function is no longer needed. However, the key success is the continuity of the team members from group to group.

According to the concept of lean production in the manufacturing sector include the following keep system simple and avoid waste. Encourage the use of self-managing teams that are empowered to improve processes that create multi-tasking and multi-lateral (cross discipline) working groups in order to expedite and simplify communications.

Expectations are important for organization after that company implement new system such as lean principles. According to stated that The Buchhaugen project was chosen as the site for Veidekke’s experimentation with the unit delivery system as it had several roughly equivalent apartments, which seemed to be a good match for repetitive delivery of units. Expectations going in to the project were that site productivity would be increased due to less material handling; more time spent on installation and materials waste was expected to decrease.

The United Kingdom lean Aerospace Initiate comprises a research consortium (Universities of Bath, Cranfield, Notthingham and Warwick) and a continuous improvement implementation programme, known as Masterclass. The ultimate expectation is that total product costs will be reduced, throughout the supply chain and across product life-cycle as a result of adoption of lean thinking (Yvonne Ward and Andrew Graves, 2004).

Berggren (1993) similarity equates JIT/LP with mean production, describing the lean environment as: “unlimited performance demands, the long working hours and requirement to work overtime on short notice, the recurrent health and safety complaints, the rigorous factory regime that constitutes a new and very strict regime of subordination”.

Rehder (1994) gives little cause to believe cause to believe that conditions have since improved as following “Japan’s industrial work hours are among the longest in the world and the quality of life is poor and not improving. Public and recently government sentiment in Japan is growing increasingly critical of the ‘lean system’, citing its drain on human and natural resources, its stressful land wasteful short model cycle and its street- congesting and polluting just- in-time system. “

The above quote raises several externalities that lie beyond the constraints of narrow instrumental rationality. Further doubts on the human cost of lean methods are raised by Sugimoto (1997), who confirms the Japanese regime of long working hours and further points to a widespread absence of provision of paid sick leave. The term ‘karoshi’ is now is a common use amongst Japanese workers to describe sudden deaths and severe stress resulting from overwork. Muda is to be eliminated; karoshi is the produce to be paid. Such references to the human cost of lean production are absent from the lean construction literature.

According to the research that conducted by Betty Ziskovsky and Joe Ziskovsky, stated that lean management is not a new concept, but it is new for the education industry. There is no question that differences exist between the products of a manufacturing assembly line and those of an education service. But a huge similarity exists in the delivery system of these organizations, delivery system made up of thousands of complex processes. As mach, many aspects of Toyota’s process improvement methodologies and other lean tools can and do apply to improving the processes of delivery education.

Forward thinking educators recognize both the application and the implications lean has for improving their school operations and program outcomes. The consistency with which lean has delivered such improvements in every industry that has applied them demonstrates the universality of its principles. Lean process improvement, even in its limited introduction within education has resulted in increased performance with cost savings.

2.4 Proposed Theoretical/ Conceptual Framework

Multi-tasking

Training and equipment support

Work pace/ intensity

Stress

Demand of job

Delegation of responsibility

Role overload

2.4 Hypotheses development

H1 There is relationship between multitasking and job stress in primary schools teacher.

H2 There is relationship between training and equipment support and job stress in primary schools teacher.

H3 There is relationship between work pace and intensity and job stress in primary schools teacher.

H4 There is relationship between demand of job and job stress in primary schools teacher.

H5 There is relationship between delegation of responsibility and job stress in primary school teacher.

H6 There is relationship between role overload and job stress in primary schools teacher.