Job stress and employee strain in Indian executives

Abstract

This paper reports a study which examined: the effects of job stress on strain, the pattern of stress and strain in three different work groups, and differences in the levels of job stress and strain due to occupational level The respondents consisted of ‘executives’ from a large steel manufacturing organization. Regression analyses indicated that job future ambiguity had a significant negative effect on job satisfaction in each group of executives. Further, role overload (in the case of production executives) and role ambiguity (in the case of data processing executives) had negative effects on job satisfaction. Role overload accounted for fatigue among the personnel as well as among production executives. The data indicated that the patterns of stress and strain were different in the three groups of employees. The examination of differences due to occupational level indicated that the employees of middle levels had more role ambiguity than those at the higher levels. No significant differences were observed on other dimensions. The implications of these findings are discussed.