This research has been designed to construct an integrated job stress model for female employees who work in a conglomerate''s manufacturing company, and verify the efficacy of the model. This study also has the purpose of developing a new integrated ...
This research has been designed to construct an integrated job stress model for female employees who work in a conglomerate''s manufacturing company, and verify the efficacy of the model. This study also has the purpose of developing a new integrated stress management training program and verifying its efficacy, based on the research findings of many precedent stress management programs as well as the verified efficacy of the model proposed in this study.
Utilizing the structural equation modeling, Research I demonstrates the structural relations among the six theoretical constructs such as job stress, personality, social support, psychological strain, job satisfaction, and job performance, based on the result of surveying the four hundred sixty six female workers who work shift in a conglomerate''s manufacturing company. As far as the theoretical structure modeling is concerned, the final model was selected after the efficacy level of the base model and that of a proposed competing model were compared. With consideration of the factors such as simplicity of the model and significance of the paths, the base model judged to have the most efficacy was chosen[χ2(df=84, N=466)=252.6, p=.000; TLI=.938; CFI=.951; NFI=.928; RMSEA=.066]. The following nine paths in the theoretical construct have been proved to be statistically significant; Job Stress Factors -> Psychological strain, Job Stress Factors -> Job Satisfaction, Job Stress Factors -> Job Performance, Personality -> Psychological Strain, Personality -> Job Performance, Social Support-> Psychological Strain, Social Support -> Job Satisfaction, Psychological Strain -> Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance -> Job Satisfaction.
In Research II, for the purpose of reducing job stress and increasing job satisfaction, the stress management program with seven sessions long has been developed and applied to female shiftworking employees, and its efficacy has been verified. The program based its constitution on the following contents of the job stress model in Research I : 1) The group members are assisted to get a general understanding of the concept of stress in Session I, in that job stress factors such as role overload, role insufficiency, and role ambiguity directly influence job satisfaction or indirectly have influence on job satisfaction through psychological strain. 2) Paying particular attention to the findings that job stress factors, personality, and social support all have significant influence on job satisfaction in an indirect way through psychological strain, Sessions 2, 3, and 4 include a group of activities for developing psychological and physical strain management and emotional regulation skills, such as breathing method, relaxation training, imagery therapy, music therapy, and anger control training. 3) Based on the research result that social support also directly affects job satisfaction and has an indirect but significant influence on job satisfaction through psychological strain, the program gives the group members enough time to talk about themselves as well as exchange feedback in every session so that the members can be helped to develop continuous ties with the other group members and receive social support like emotional support or informational support. 4) Given that personality impacts job satisfaction, Session 5 and 6 consist of the activities for training the members'' assertiveness skills and developing their self-esteem because assertiveness and self-esteem are closely related to personality variables. Then, the final Session 7 is composed of the summary and evaluation of the entire group work.
The structured program was administered to a training group of thirty one workers and a control group of thirty three workers, and the program''s effectiveness was verified by comparing the results obtained prior to as well as posterior to administering the program. The research produced the following findings: first, the training group''s job stress factors such as role insufficiency, role ambiguity, and role boundary, and psychological straining decreased significantly after the administration of the program second, the training group''s job satisfaction improved significantly after the program, while the control group''s job satisfaction went down significantly posterior to the program; lastly, the hypothesis was not validated that the stress coping resources and self-esteem in the training group will increase significantly and job transfer intention decrease significantly after the program is administered.
The above research results validated the integrated job stress model constituted by the structural relations among stress stimuli(stress factors), stress responses (psychological strains), social support, personality traits, and organizational behavior variables(job satisfaction and job performance). The result that job stress factors, social support and personality variable all have significant influence on job satisfaction level through psychological strain and job performance, suggests that the two variables such as psychological strain and job performance are likely to function as the moderating variable to job satisfaction. However, it is also suggested that social support can be another strong predictor of job satisfaction because it directly has significant influence on job satisfaction without going through any other procedure. Therefore, it has been convinced that the theory-based contents such as general understanding of job stress concept, social support, and personality aspects need to be included for constructing a stress management program, and the decrease in psychological strain is a very crucial interventional element in the interactions of the three aspects job stress, social support, and personality. It seems, though, that more than anything else, a long-term training plan may be necessary for developing more stress coping resources, improving self-esteem, and bringing down job transfer intention. Also, it can be said that the key to the program''s success is to constitute each training session in an optimal way which positive changes can be brought about while the employees'' work types and work schedules are taken into enough consideration.
This research can be very significant in that it has examined the existing research findings that present only fragmentary correlations among the variables, proposed an integrated job stress model, developed a stress management program based on the proposed model, and attained the verification of the program''s efficacy. Especially, the fact that the stress management program was administered to the female workers in the setting of a manufacturing company and its efficacy was demonstrated may make this research more meaningful.
Key Word : job stress model, job stressor, social support, psychological strain, job performance, job satisfaction, stress management program