An Exploratory Study of Occupational Stress in the Indian Bureaucracy

INTRODUCTION Stress has emerged as a rather familiar term in contemporary circumstances. It is so frequently used in common parlance that most people have developed some appreciation about its meaning. It is a concept borrowed from natural sciences. The roots of the term itself can, however, be traced back to the Latin word 'Stringere', meaning to tighten. Over time, the term, stress became popularized to signify hardships or adversities. Marshall and Cooper (1979) pointed out that the term 'stress' can be "used to denote any of the 3 things: (i) an excessive environment force; (ii) the harm caused; or (iii) the individual reaction." Pestonjee (1999) defines stress as something resulting from a "combination of various individual and organizational stressors". Kahn and Quinn (1970) have proposed a widely accepted definition of stress as "an experimental or noxious stimulus with general results in psychological change, behavioural change, perceptual cognitive change, affective change and in both overt and intra-psychic coping efforts." Ordinarily, it is believed to occur in situations where there is excessive pressure being placed on someone. These situations can vary from a simple everyday hassle experienced by us to a full blown catastrophe, such as natural disasters. Lies somewhere in between this wide spectrum of events causing stress, the stress originating from one's place of work. Work or Occupational stress can be defined as the physiological and emotional responses that occur when workers perceive an imbalance between their work demands and their capability and/or resources to meet these demands. It is important to consider that stress responses have a cognitive origin. Reactions to stress occur when the said imbalance is perceived as prominent and the workers believe they are not coping in situations where it is important to them that they cope,