A dissertation submitted to the school of psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts (industrial psychology), by coursework. / Despite the potentially devastating effect that stress may have on the performance and
productivity of the workforce (Greenblo,1992), few South African companies have
thoroughly looked at and studied the various aspects of stress. By doing this, they should
then be able to develop and implement effective stress reduction programmes,
The aim of the present study, therefore, was to identify some of the causes, outcomes, and
moderators of stress, which could then be used as the basis for developing stress
reduction programmes. Some stressor-outcome relationships (such as job satisfaction,
self-esteem, propensity to leave the organisation, and health) were looked at, after which
the possible moderating effect of certain variables (gender, personality, coping style, job
pressure, and organisational support) were considered.
The study adopted a cross-sectional design and the data was collected using both
quantitative and qualitative means. The sample consisted of 290 managers all of whom
belong to one of the country's largest financial institutions, and work in one of'the
various branches in and around the Gauteng region. Correlations, t-tests, anovas and a
content analysis were used to evaluate the stressor-outcome relationships. In addition to
these statistical analyses, moderated multiple linear regressions were conducted in order
to test for any moderating variables.
Overall, most of the stressor-outcome relationships were found to be significant, but the
number of actual moderating variables was shown to be rather minimal. Inaddition. the
information which was derived from the content analysis served to add some insight into
the sometimes contradictory findings, An in-depth look at the findings of the present
study can be found in the discussion section, where possible reasons and explanation for
the result- are presented. Theoretical and practical implications of the study, together With
the limitations, are offered. Following this, some important guidelines and suggestions
for future research are considered. / AC2017
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/22399 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Chanoch, Debra, Lynne |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (192 leaves), application/pdf |
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