Organizational Factors that Cause Stress on the Job and Strategies for Dealing with Them

With globalization and productive fragmentation policies, there are a great variety of changes in organizations that are willing to compete. Outside the organizations, clients alter their preferences, suppliers modify prices and competitors apply new strategies for goods and services. Inside the organizations, work processes need improvement, machinery and equipment is replaced, quality patterns are improved and people need to acquire knowledge, abilities and competences. In this context, it is easy to imagine that diverse organizational factors can cause stress in the personnel. However, the stress caused by "negative" behavior in the workplace is seldom remedied. The objectives of this article are two: to determine the organizational factors associated with collective behavior identified as "negative" that cause stress in the workplace and identify some strategies that the workers adopt in these situations. A theoretical review of these themes was made using texts about organizational behavior; the technique was documentary analysis. Also, direct observation was carried out and a survey was applied to supervisors in the manufacturing and services sector. Conclusions were that it is necessary to concentrate efforts on studying the immediate work environment, and it is the task of the human resource administration to implement protection policies against "negative" behavior in the workplace. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]