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1, 2015 63
Sumeet Gupta
Indian Institute of Management,
GEC Campus, Sejbahar,
Raipur (C.G.), 492015, India
Email: sumeetgupta@iimraipur.ac.in
Abstract: Employees, being human beings, carry their emotions to work place
which affect their performance in the workplace. Therefore, organisations are
now emphasising on becoming ‘emotionally aware’. Being emotionally aware
benefits both employees as well as the organisation in the long run. Industrial
organisations are primarily task-oriented and focus on routine matters and
activities to meet the organisational goals rather than on other dimensions
(particularly human and behavioural dimensions, i.e., various groups and
individuals which constitute the organisation). An individual has to deal with
various problems according to his role. Various role conflicts or role stresses
have implications for the effectiveness of the individual and of various groups
working in the organisation. By assessing, exploring and changing core values,
beliefs, emotions and then learning and reinforcing, maintaining new
behaviour, sustained personal and organisational growth can be achieved. This
study examines the relationship between emotional awareness and the
organisational role stress. The outcome of this study may help organisations to
resolve short-term emotional outbursts and subsequent stress in employees as
well as manage these effectively for an overall growth of the organisation.
Managers may want to consider that effective coping with stress will improve
one’s effectiveness in the organisation.
Keywords: organisational role stress; ORS; emotional intelligence; emotional
awareness; human resource; work place emotions.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Bhattacharya, S.R. and
Gupta, S. (2015) ‘A study on emotional awareness and organisational role
stress among the middle management level employees’, Int. J. Work
Organisation and Emotion, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.63–82.
Biographical notes: Satya Ranjan Bhattacharya is working with SAIL (Large
PSU) for the last 33 years. He has worked in various capacities and presently
he is an Assistant General Manager, a Metallurgical Engineer, MBA (HR and
Prod) and done his Master’s in Clinical Psychology. For the last 19 years, he is
rendering services as corporate trainer in behavioural aspects, emotional
management and stress management as his core interest area.
1 Introduction
Cut-throat competition, career consciousness, job insecurity etc. increase stress and
hence are the major issues of concern in organisational psychology. Organisational role
stress (ORS) is generated when there is a conflict between organisational and
non-organisational roles such as required work commitment, expectations from people,
lack of skills/resources, lack of clarity about one’s roles and duties in the organisation,
organisational policies, interpersonal conflicts and decreased sociability (Singh, 1987).
Part of building an effective organisation is to overcome the role stress that an employee
carries. An individual has a role to play in an organisation and his role enables him to
build his links with other person and organisation. Emotions play a vital role at work in
day to day activities. All moments of frustration or joy, grief or fear, lead to an enduring
sense of dissatisfaction or commitment, the experience of work is saturated with
emotions (Murensky, 2000). Dissatisfaction, high expectation/demand, helplessness, and
lack of control over one’s own situation influences an individual and cause stress. While
we are subject to stimulus/threat (stressors), our body automatically prepares to handle
the emergency through responses we call them fight-or-flight that is “bodies’
mobilization to attack or flee from the threatening situation” (Hilgard and Atkinson,
1975).
Emotions are contagious and even one person can influence the emotional tone of a
group. Emotionally aware individuals as part of the organisation contribute to
emotionally aware organisations. Emotionally aware individuals can perceive, understand
and regulate the emotions of self and others, thus making/contributing significantly
enhancing interpersonal and intrapersonal effectiveness and may facilitate in improving
employee’s workplace attitudes and behaviour. David Wechsler defined intelligence as
“the aggregate or global capacity in an individual that motivates him/her to act
purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment”. Emotional
aware of an individual or group of employees helps in better handling of personal,
emotional and social abilities that influences ones’ skills to succeed in coping with
environmental demands and pressures (Goleman, 1995). Emotionally aware individuals
can perceive, understand and regulate the emotions of self and others, thus making a
significant factor for enhancing interpersonal and intrapersonal effectiveness (Leonard,
2008).
Therefore, this study takes a holistic approach for being aware and then managing
emotions in intelligent ways in the work place, to determine better relationship
management, stress management and management of other human factors in work
A study on emotional awareness and organisational role stress 65
conflict (REC), role overload (RO), personal inadequacy (PI), promotion policies and
career growth (PP and CG), self-role distance (SRD), RA, resource inadequacy (RIn),
role erosion (RE), role isolation (RI).
a SRD: each individual faces a unique pattern of adjustive demand. The term
personality (personal psychology/construct) is used broadly to refer to all those
factors that describe a person’s propensities to behave in a certain way by virtue of
his/her self concept, His motives and values, his sensitivities and fears, his habits and
the like (Majumdar, 1977). When his/her role in the organisation and personal
psychology mismatch he/she is succumb to conflict between the person and his job
results in SRD.
b IRD: it is experienced when there is a conflict between organisational and
non-organisational roles (e.g., the role of an executive versus the role of a husband).
c REC: different expectations from various significant persons about the same role
lead the role occupant into confusion about who to please (Gupta and Pratap, 1987;
House et al., 1983; Kahn et al., 1964).
d RO: when the role occupant feels that there are too many expectations from the
significant role in his role set, he experiences RO.
e PI: individual feels that he does not have the necessary skill and training for
effectively performing the functions expected from the role. This happens when the
organisations do not have the periodic training to enable the employees to cope with
the changes both within and outside the organisation (Marshall and Cooper, 1979).
f RS: results from difficulty in taking over a new role due to lack of preparation. The
role occupant keeps on stagnating in the old role which is familiar, comfortable and
secure. It is the feeling of being stuck in the same role. Such a type of stress results
in fear about lack of opportunity for future progress in one’s career (Shrivastava and
Sinha, 1983).
g RE: it means that the importance of role is reduced. Role occupant feels that some
functions which should belong to his/her role are transferred to/or performed by
some other role. This can also happen when the role occupant performs the
functions, but the credit goes to someone else. Another manifestation is in the form
of underutilisation in the role.
h RI: the role occupant feels isolated from the main stream from the organisational life,
indicative of the absence of strong linkages of one’s role with other roles.
i Rin: the role occupant suffers from lack of resources for performing the functions
expected from his/her role.
j RA: the role occupant suffers from lack of clarity about the demand of his/her focal
role. This many arise from lack of information or understanding in relation to
activities, responsibilities, personal styles or norms (Rao, 1987).
We have considered first five stressors for the purpose of this study as they are most
relevant in a manufacturing organisation where jobs are well-defined.
A study on emotional awareness and organisational role stress 69
The research model for this study is presented in Figure 1. Emotional awareness is a
predictor of ORS. ORS is modelled as a formative construct with personal psychology,
IRD, REC, role-overload and PI as formative indicators.
Personal
Psychology
Inter-role
Distance
H1 Role-
Emotional Organizational
Expectation
Awareness Role Stress
Conflict
Role Overload
Personal
Inadequacy
Older people are considered more self-aware especially as they get lot of feedback
over the years. However, there are a large number of young people with high emotional
intelligence and many older people who have high emotional intelligence and many older
people who have not developed any of these competences. Literature does seem to
suggest that most people will improve in these competencies of emotional intelligence
simply through life experiences or could develop their emotional intelligence through
learning and training. The relationship between emotional quotient and age is marginal
showing that only a small majority of older people are higher in emotional quotient and
that there are many young people with higher emotional quotient scores than their older
counterparts.
H4 Emotional awareness of the organisation increases with employees’ age.
H5 ORS decreases with the employees’ age.
4 Method
4.1 Measures
We employed survey research method in this study. The data for the study was collected
by means of a questionnaire. A large Indian public sector company engaged in steel
manufacturing was selected to study the key factors of emotional intelligence and
perceived stress level among the middle managers. Since the organisation was a large
one, the respondents comprised a varied mix in terms of profession (different
departments in the same company), cultural background and age.
The two major constructs examined in this study are emotional awareness and ORS.
The measures for these constructs were adapted from previous studies. ORS has been
studied as a multi-dimensional construct in previous studies (Pareek, 1980a, 1980b). The
development of stress depends on one’s personality, IRD, REC, RO and PI. There were
various other factors considered by Pareek (1983) which we do not include because of
parsimony as well as their inapplicability in the current firm. Thus, ORS has been studied
as a formative construct based on the above-mentioned factors. The items for ORS were
adapted from existing literature.
Emotional awareness has been measured using the emotional intelligence instrument
as developed by Thomas and Kamalanabhan, 2011). These studies mention various
dimensions of emotional intelligence (such as empathic and caring organisation, space
given in organisation for emotional expression/understanding and Importance given in
the organisation towards behavioural competencies). The scale for emotional awareness
was developed considering these dimensions together. Emotional intelligence could be
studied as a multi-dimensional construct with formative indicators (the above-mentioned
dimensions) or items drawn from these dimensions so as to have a unified scale. The
overall items were drawn from these three dimensions to develop the scale for emotional
intelligence. The instrument was developed on the ‘five-point Likert scale’ with anchors
at strongly disagree and strongly agree. The survey instrument for the study is presented
in Appendix.
74 S.R. Bhattacharya and S. Gupta
Standard
Characteristic Class Freq. Mean
deviation
Age <= 45 28 43.21 1.38
46–50 31 48.32 1.45
51–55 31 52.42 1.17
> 55 10 58.2 1.03
Designation AGM 79 --- ---
DGM 21
Length of <= 20 19 19.36 0.68
service in this
organisation 21–30 64 25.45 2.83
31–40 17 33.11 2.87
> 40 0 0 0
Table 1 show that the respondents being in the similar class had fair distribution in terms
of age and length of service in the organisation. Most of the respondents were in the age
group of 46–55 thus being mature in terms of their age to deal with people. The length of
service is also fairly high with around 81% of respondents having served for around 25 or
more years.
A study on emotional awareness and organisational role stress 75
Construct Item 1 2 3 4 5 6
Empathic and caring ECO1 0.73 0.02 0.05 0.00 –0.10 –0.21
organisation ECO2 0.80 –0.04 –0.06 –0.11 –0.04 –0.16
Emotional expression/ EEU1 0.63 –0.13 0.14 0.06 –0.11 0.35
understanding
Importance of IBC1 0.59 –0.20 –0.21 0.09 0.38 –0.12
behavioural IBC2 0.70 –0.07 –0.20 0.18 0.07 –0.09
competencies
IBC3 0.70 0.14 –0.15 0.21 0.01 –0.03
Personality/personal PPP1 0.03 –0.03 0.34 0.08 0.62 –0.44
psychology PPP2 –0.03 0.14 –0.08 –0.06 0.79 0.09
PPP3 –0.03 0.21 0.19 0.15 0.60 0.24
IRD IRD1 –0.06 0.68 0.14 –0.04 0.20 0.16
IRD2 –0.13 0.72 0.12 0.08 –0.10 –0.22
IRD3 0.03 0.83 0.12 0.04 0.10 0.01
IRD4 0.02 0.85 0.22 –0.07 0.11 0.15
PI PI1 0.18 –0.02 0.10 0.78 –0.04 0.01
PI2 0.04 0.02 0.03 0.74 –0.05 0.19
PI3 0.08 0.13 0.51 0.64 –0.03 –0.02
PI4 0.03 –0.05 –0.01 0.71 0.23 0.07
RO RO1 –0.07 0.22 0.77 0.15 0.14 –0.04
RO2 –0.07 0.22 0.74 0.08 0.00 0.14
RO3 –0.26 0.16 0.69 –0.02 0.04 0.30
REC REC1 –0.28 0.01 0.10 0.11 0.07 0.74
REC2 –0.09 0.10 0.32 0.28 0.13 0.65
Initial Eigen Values 4.48 3.26 2.27 1.54 1.26 1.19
% of Variance 20.36 14.83 10.30 6.99 5.73 5.40
Cumulative % 20.36 35.18 45.48 52.47 58.19 63.59
From Table 2 we can see that six factors are extracted with ‘eigen values’ greater than 1.
All items were loaded on each distinct factor with a factor loading greater than 0.5 for all
items. Total variance extracted is 63.59%. Thus, the convergent and discriminant validity
of the constructs is established. The items for emotional intelligence are loaded together
depicted a single-factor structure for the construct emotional awareness. The formative
factors of ORS are loaded cleanly and separately indicating a multi-dimensional factor
76 S.R. Bhattacharya and S. Gupta
structure for the construct ORS. Hence, ORS is formulated as a formative construct with
personality/personal psychology, IRD, PI, RO and REC. In the next step, we adopt the
two-stage methodology (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988) using LISREL to examine the
structural model-based.
d The average variance extracted (AVE) for each factor must exceed 50% (Fornell and
Larcker, 1981).
The results of confirmatory factor analysis are presented in Table 3.
As shown in Table 3, a few path loadings were well below 0.7 (particularly EEU1,
PPP1 and PPP2). The individual path loadings were all greater than twice their standard
error (except EEU1). The t-statistic was significant for all the items except PPP3. The CR
for each construct was greater than 0.7 except for PPP and the AVE for EMOA, PPP and
PI were lower than 0.5. The ‘Cronbach’s’ alpha was low for PPP whereas for all others it
was acceptable. Since these factors are formative indicators of a larger construct ‘ORS’,
we can use them in this study.
Discriminant validity is the degree to which the measures of two constructs are
empirically distinct. We assessed discriminant validity of the measurement model by
comparing the squared average variance extracted for each construct with the correlations
between that construct and other constructs. As shown in Table 4, the average variance
extracted for each construct exceeded the squared correlations between that construct and
other constructs thus indicating discriminant validity.
A study on emotional awareness and organisational role stress 77
indicating a good fit, being below the maximum desired cut-off of 0.06. ‘Root mean-
square residual (RMR)’ was 0.099, almost at the threshold of the desired limit. Goodness-
of-fit index (GFI) was 0.79 and adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI) was 0.74, both of
which indicate a moderate fit only. Other fit indices also showed moderate fit: CFI =
0.90, NFI = 0.75 and the non-normed fit index (NNFI) = 0.88. These results suggest that
the structural model fitted the data only moderately. Figure 2 shows the standardised
LISREL path coefficients and the overall fit indices.
Personal
Psychology
-0.51**
Inter-role
Distance
0.32** Role-
Emotional Organizational
Expectation
Awareness Role Stress -0.40**
Conflict
R2 =69% -0.85***
Role Overload
-0.72***
Personal
Inadequacy
The results of hypothesis testing provide support for the influence of emotional
awareness on ORS. Since the construct ORS is formed from five formative indicators
having negative relationship with the ORS, we can conclude that the relationship between
emotional awareness and ORS is negative. Thus H1 is supported. Hypotheses H2 to H5
were testing using bivariate correlations. The results of bivariate correlation analysis are
shown in Table 5.
Table 5 Results of bivariate correlation analysis
From Table 5, we can infer that emotional awareness is positively related to age and
length of service thus supporting H2 and H4. However, organisational stress is not related
to Age or Length of service and thus H3 and H5 are not supported.
A study on emotional awareness and organisational role stress 79
The results of hypothesis testing provide support for the influence of emotional
awareness on ORS. Since the construct ORS is formed from five formative indicators
having negative relationship with the ORS, we can conclude that if the organisational
workspace is emotionally aware, there will be lesser ORS. The results of this study have
the following implications for establishing organisational climate and culture:
• timely corrective measures to take care of stressed employees to avoid and eliminate
accidents and to create safe working environment
• in helping employees identify own body messages and decide what it needs to be
happy.
The results of this study, however, must be interpreted in the background of its
limitations. First, the instrument used for measuring emotional awareness is meant for
measuring emotional intelligence/emotional awareness of an organisation, rather than an
individual. Hence, there are chances that the individual perception may not be the same
as the overall organisation. This could result in deviation in the results. However, this
could be further verified using several other tools of emotional intelligence/emotional
awareness in the work place along with the tools to measure stress level of employees in
the same organisational system. Secondly, the sample size was only 103 which may pose
some limitations in analysis given the heterogeneity in the sampling frame. Following
factors contribute to the heterogeneity:
The main objective of the study was to examine the relationship between emotional
awareness and role stress. Based on a survey of 100 middle managers (AGMs and
DGMs) of a large public sector organisation engaged in steel manufacturing, we found
that emotional awareness has a strong relationship with ORS. Thus, managers/
organisations may create an emotionally aware environment to reduce organisational
stress and motivate its employees to be sensitive to the emotional needs of other members
of the organisation. This may not only bring a culture of cooperation amongst employees
but may also lead to improved productivity and overall performance of the organisation.
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Appendix