A Field Study of Some Antecedents and Consequences of Felt Job Stress

In addition to its financial costs, job stress has been linked to other serious consequences for both the individual (e.g., high blood pressure and heart disease) and the organization (e.g., decrements in performance, and increased turnover and absenteeism). This chapter presents a general research model of job stress within which our concept of stress is embedded. The model is based on two typical models of the antecedents and consequences of job stress. Those models hypothesize a set of organizational stressors, a set of personal characteristics, an individual stress response, and a set of individual consequences. The chapter proposes a new conceptualization and a new measure of job stress, and to report on an initial test of it. A path analytic model was proposed that hypothesized that personal, organizational, and role characteristics relate to job stress and its attitudinal and behavioral consequences.