JOB STRESS, EMPLOYEE HEALTH, AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS: A FACET ANALYSIS, MODEL, AND LITERATURE REVIEW¹

TLDR

Job stress and employee health have been under‑researched, and existing studies are examined through six of seven facets—environmental, personal, process, human consequences, organizational consequences, and time—within a broader conceptual framework. The authors propose a general and sequential model that integrates these six facets of job stress–employee health research. The model links the facets by outlining sequential relationships among environmental, personal, process, human and organizational consequences, and time factors. The review identifies key research shortcomings, including ambiguous terminology, weak study designs, absent systematic and interdisciplinary approaches, and insufficient focus on many facet elements.

Abstract

Job stress (and more generally, employee health) has been a relatively neglected area of research among industrial/organizational psychologists. The empirical research that has been done is reviewed within the context of six facets (i.e., environmental, personal, process, human consequences, organizational consequences, and time) of a seven facet conceptualization of the job stress–employee health research domain. (The seventh facet, adaptive responses, is reviewed in the forthcoming second article of this series.) A general and a sequential model are proposed for tying the facets together. It is concluded that some of the major problems of the research in this area are: confusion in the use of terminology regarding the elements of job stress, relatively weak methodology within specific studies, the lack of systematic approaches in the research, the lack of interdisciplinary approaches, and the lack of attention to many elements of the specific facets.