STRESS IN A CAREERS CONTEXT
The purpose of this chapter is to apply key stress models and concepts to building career theory. There are several reasons why the time is particularly ripe for researchers to consider stress in a careers context: Over time, job stress aggregates to career stress, career events are key sources of stress, and career researchers have not generally tapped the voluminous stress literature in formulating models and empirical research.
First, within stress research, job stress in organizations has emerged as a central focus (Beehr and Bhagat, 1985; Matteson and Ivancevich, 1987; Murphy and Schoenborn, 1987; Sethi and Schuler, 1983; Spector, Dwyer, and Jex, 1988). There are considerable human and organizational costs associated with job stress, including depression and burnout, ulcers, low job satisfaction, absenteeism and turnover, decreased productivity, lawsuits, and health care costs. It has been estimated that job stress costs American industry $150 billion annually in diminished productivity, absenteeism, and medical costs (Landers, 1987). In addition, 15% of worker's compensation claims are now stress related (Dentzer, McCormick, and Tsuruoka, 1986). Job stress as a management problem continues to capture major media attention, as evidenced by a Wall Street Journal special report section on medicine and health with a lead article entitled “Is your job making you sick?” (Bennett, 1988). A recent cover story by Newsweek (Miller, 1988) headlined stress on the job. Jobs are the building blocks of careers. Therefore, over time, stressful job experiences aggregate to yield stressful careers.