Inaugural lectures
Wednesday March 18, 2009 at 5.30pm - Lecture theatre U020, Brockington Extension
How Does Work Cause Stress?
Professor Kevin Daniels,
Business School
Contemporary policy on work-related stress is based upon psychosocial job characteristics models. In these models, jobs are assigned semi-permanent properties (such as high demands, low control over decision making). Policy guidance indicates that changes in these properties should reduce work-related absence, psychological ill-health and physical ill-health.
In this lecture, Professor Kevin Daniels will argue such an approach to work-related stress is limited. Instead, Kevin will argue that psychosocial job characteristics have no reality independent of the person performing the job. Therefore, the person and how that person interprets work must become central to understanding how work influences psychological well-being, and therefore how well-being can be protected in organisations.