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Recent studies point to work-related stress as an increasing problem for knowledge workers. This is a critical and not fully uncovered problem. The working life in knowledge-intensive companies is often described as good and stimulating. This study shows that some aspects of knowledge work can have a negative impact on daily activities and cause fr...
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Context 1
... sys- temic approach is therefore added in order to develop an understanding of the basic organiza- tional causes behind the risk for work-related stress. Galbraith (2002) has presented such a model for such an approach (the "Star Model", see Figure 2). It consists of five interrelated aspects, which form the foundation for organizational behaviour, productivity and culture (norms and values). ...
Context 2
... acknowledging the personal influence on the problems mentioned, the focus in this study is however on the organizational factors. Using J. Galbraith"s Star Model (2002), it is clear that organizational conditions such as reward systems, strategy, people practice, structure and flow of information all have an influence on the knowledge flow and work performance (see Figure 2). ...
Context 3
... systemic approach is therefore added in order to develop an understanding of the basic organizational causes behind the risk for work-related stress. Galbraith (2002) has presented such a model for such an approach (the "Star Model", see Figure 2). It consists of five interrelated aspects, which form the foundation for organizational behaviour, productivity and culture (norms and values). ...
Context 4
... acknowledging the personal influence on the problems mentioned, the focus in this study is however on the organizational factors. Using J. Galbraith"s Star Model (2002), it is clear that organizational conditions such as reward systems, strategy, people practice, structure and flow of information all have an influence on the knowledge flow and work performance (see Figure 2). ...
Citations
... According to Hessel [13], self-employed individuals experience less work-related stress than salaried individuals who organise and direct their work. This theory will be applicable when the problem of knowledge workers increases despite employee control and influence and when knowledge work has characteristics that can lead to frustration, work-related stress, and decreased performance [14]. Moreover, this indicates that working conditions reflect a positive social environment. ...
Employee experiences burnout has plenty of negative consequences: reduced quality care, poor outcomes, early retirement, and raised rates of depression and suicide. It will affect employees’ physical and mental health. This research aims to determine the main factor contributing to the burnout of employees. It covers the factor of burnout on work-life balance, workload, and sickness presenteeism. Burnout also may lead to Karoshi (death due to overwork) and Karo-jisatsu (suicide due to overwork). The theory mostly referred to is work-related stress theory which is the relationship between a person and their occupational environment. The research design of this study is quantitative research collecting data through questionnaires. The population would be employees in the food and beverage industries who attend the 8th Halal festival Malaysia at Serdang, Kuala Lumpur. There is a 119 sample size based on G power software. Purposive sampling was used in distributing the questionnaire, and it was manually distributed to the respondent. Statistic package for social science (SPSS) and Smart PLS is the tool to analyse the data of reliability, validity, correlation, descriptive analysis, regression and hypothesis testing. The total respondent doing this survey was 129, of which the majority of them were 100 female (77.5%) and 29 Male (22.5%). Half of the respondents were the age 21 until 30 years. This study result supports the variable work-life balance due to the most substantial effect of lower job control. Also, support between the workload and burnout because they often blur between work and nonwork boundaries. They could redesign the job to enable employees to have more control over their work.
... En annen utfordring er at flere av selvledelsesstrategiene har som formål å øke den indre motivasjonen knyttet til kjedelige og/eller vanskelige arbeidsoppgaver (Manz, 2015), mens dette typisk ikke er noe «problem» for kunnskapsmedarbeidere. Snarere kan problemet vaere at man er «overmotivert», og derfor ute av stand til å sette nødvendig grenser for hvor mye man jobber og hva man sier ja eller nei til (Ipsen & Jensen, 2010;Joo & Lim, 2009;Palm, 2008). Da kreves verktøy eller strategier som hjelper den enkelte til å disponere rett mengde ressurser til rett tid, i tillegg til å sørge for at man får prioritert tilstrekkelig restitusjon og hvile, snarere enn verktøy som øker motivasjonen og arbeidslysten. ...
... «Jobben vinner», rapporterer Thompson og Hatlevoll (2019, s. 48), og forklarer at mange ledere i deres undersøkelser blir styrt av ytre omstendigheter og oppfører seg mer som en brikke enn en aktør. I et arbeidsliv som blir stadig mer grenseutflytende med tanke på hva som er jobb og hva som hører privatlivet til, og i lys av at kunnskapsmedarbeidere ofte har svaert høy indre motivasjon, er ambisiøse og utviklingsorienterte (Ipsen & Jensen 2010), vil også fenomenet honningfellen kunne oppstå. Det innebaerer at en manglende grensesetting med tanke på hvor mye arbeid som skal gjøres, og uklarheter med hensyn til hva egentlig som er god nok arbeidsinnsats, kan få konsekvenser som overarbeid, at man går på jobb selv om man er syk, konstant tenker på jobb eller til og med blir utbrent (Mazmanian, Orlikowski & Yates, 2013;Michel, 2014;Perez-Zapata, Pascual, Álvarez-Hernández & Collado, 2016). ...
... En annen utfordring er at flere av selvledelsesstrategiene har som formål å øke den indre motivasjonen knyttet til kjedelige og/eller vanskelige arbeidsoppgaver (Manz, 2015), mens dette typisk ikke er noe «problem» for kunnskapsmedarbeidere. Snarere kan problemet vaere at man er «overmotivert», og derfor ute av stand til å sette nødvendig grenser for hvor mye man jobber og hva man sier ja eller nei til (Ipsen & Jensen, 2010;Joo & Lim, 2009;Palm, 2008). Da kreves verktøy eller strategier som hjelper den enkelte til å disponere rett mengde ressurser til rett tid, i tillegg til å sørge for at man får prioritert tilstrekkelig restitusjon og hvile, snarere enn verktøy som øker motivasjonen og arbeidslysten. ...
... «Jobben vinner», rapporterer Thompson og Hatlevoll (2019, s. 48), og forklarer at mange ledere i deres undersøkelser blir styrt av ytre omstendigheter og oppfører seg mer som en brikke enn en aktør. I et arbeidsliv som blir stadig mer grenseutflytende med tanke på hva som er jobb og hva som hører privatlivet til, og i lys av at kunnskapsmedarbeidere ofte har svaert høy indre motivasjon, er ambisiøse og utviklingsorienterte (Ipsen & Jensen 2010), vil også fenomenet honningfellen kunne oppstå. Det innebaerer at en manglende grensesetting med tanke på hvor mye arbeid som skal gjøres, og uklarheter med hensyn til hva egentlig som er god nok arbeidsinnsats, kan få konsekvenser som overarbeid, at man går på jobb selv om man er syk, konstant tenker på jobb eller til og med blir utbrent (Mazmanian, Orlikowski & Yates, 2013;Michel, 2014;Perez-Zapata, Pascual, Álvarez-Hernández & Collado, 2016). ...
Abstract: Self-leadership is an increasingly current topic, not only for the sake of
scholarly study and research, but not least for practical application in modern organizations.
The fundamental idea of self-leadership is that employees can take on
responsibility for many of the influence processes normally carried out by leaders
and leadership systems. Knowledge workers is a category of employees who might
be particularily in need of self-leadership, as their work is typically unstructured,
cognitively taxing, and requires the right kind of mix between alone time and extensive
collaboration. How to prioritize the right types of tasks, make sure to involve
the right people at the right time and protect oneself from collaboration overload,
generosity burnout or other types of overwork, are examples of dilemmas facing
knowledge workers in their everyday working lives. Research and theoretical contributions
addressing the particular concerns and needs related to knowledge workers’
self-leadership, however, are limited. In this chapter, we discuss some of the
most pressing issues in relation to self-leadership by knowledge workers and present
several strategies that may assist and equip them with suitable self-leadership
skills and capabilities. One of the main takeouts from this review is that behavioral
and structural strategies should be prioritized over cognitive ones. Moreover, senior
and experienced workers should make more use of the autonomy available to them
by making sure they work in a sustainable manner, as well as role-modeling such
behaviors and serving as coaches and mentors for more inexperienced workers.
Keywords: self-leadership, self-influence, knowledge workers, collaborative overload,
holistic perspective, sustainable self-leadership strategies
... Besides, work stress is an unease experienced by people when they realize that their abilities are not up to coping with the demanding circumstances in their organizations (Karimi & Alipour, 2011). Ipsen and Jensen (2010) posit that work stress is a prevalent occurrence. ...
This paper aims to look into leadership styles and employees’ demographic factors as predictors of work stress among bankers in south-west Nigerian. The paper adopted a quantitative research approach. Besides, the current paper adopted a purposive, stratified, and simple random sampling. The empirical results indicated that out of the two leadership styles, (namely the transactional leadership and the transformational styles) examined in this paper, the transactional leadership style significantly and negatively predicts work stress among bank employees in south-west Nigeria; and employees’ demographic factors (such as marital status, level of education, and residential area) significantly predict work stress among bankers in south-west Nigeria. Notably, the current results positively influence work-stress management within the Nigerian banking industry as transactional leadership style significantly reduces work stress amongst bankers in south-west Nigeria. It will also help the management of banks in south-west Nigeria develop policies that support appropriate training programs, attain professional qualifications (for instance, ICAN/CIBN/ACCA), and be near workplaces. Banks in south-west Nigeria can minimize work stress through frequent adoption of transactional leadership style, and in supporting employees to achieve academic progress and enhance their nearness to the workplace. Nevertheless, this paper proposed some recommendations to decrease work stress among bankers in south-west Nigeria.
... One of the main factors that reduce job satisfaction is stress in the workplace (Jain, Giga and Cooper, 2013;Karabatak and Alanoğlu, 2019;Meier and Spector, 2013;Tuten and Neidermeyer, 2004), which also affects a lower willingness to exhibit prosocial behaviours (Brief and Motowidlo, 1986;Ipsen and Jensen, 2010;Raza et al., 2015). Being under stress is associated with experiencing negative emotions such as fear or frustration (Hart and Cooper, 2001), which redirects energy from helping others or building relationships with colleagues to dealing with one's tension. ...
... Excessive workload and inefficient work organization takes up time and energy, which an employee could devote to engaging in helping others or transferring their knowledge. Knowledge workers notice that they have limited possibilities and willingness to share knowledge if the number of tasks exceeds their resources and the sense of an inefficient organization of working time, or an inability to reconcile all the requirements causes feelings of guilt and tension (Ipsen and Jensen, 2010). Social organizational behaviour that positively affects employees' well-being can only occur if job demands are perceived as low or mild; otherwise, employees devote their resources to dealing with the demands of their work, which reduces their psychological readiness to engage in social behaviour (Xiu et al., 2019). ...
... According to Lehrer (2005), several international agencies, for example, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) are tackling issues, which surround work stress. Furthermore, Ipsen and Jensen (2010) noted that work stress is a popular occurrence. The World Health Organisation indicates that over 50% of workers in industrialised nations have protested owing to workplace stress. ...
This paper focuses on examining the relationship between work stress and workplace deviant behaviours in the Nigerian banking industry. Hence, the paper plans to propose ways of reducing work stress in the workplace, which will consequently reduce workplace deviant behaviours in the workplace, particularly within the Nigerian banking industry. However, the current study adopted a quantitative research approach, a survey research design. Besides, one non-probability sampling method and two sampling approaches were used, namely purposive stratified and simple random sampling, respectively. The findings revealed that work stress has a statistically positive significant relationship with workplace deviant behaviours in the Nigerian banking industry. Moreover, the results of this investigation have major implication for organisational behaviour, managerial decisions, and harmonious employee employment relationship in the Nigerian banking industry. Increased work stress significantly increases workplace deviant behaviours in the Nigerian banking industry. Hence, the Nigerian banking industry can minimise workplace deviant behaviours through a decrease or reduction in the level of work stress. There have been little if any studies are done to ascertain the relationship between work stress and workplace deviant behaviours in the Nigerian banking industry. The current investigation noticed a significant moderate positive relationship between work stress and workplace deviant behaviours in the Nigerian banking industry, indicating that the Nigerian bank employees will engage more in deviant behaviours if they encounter increased levels of work stress in the Nigerian banking industry, as well as engage less in deviant behaviours in proportion to the low levels of work stress encountered.
... Though previously thought to be the case, knowledge workers' great autonomy does not exempt them from risks of work intensification; in fact, such autonomy may even contribute to it (Ipsen & Jensen, 2010;Michel, 2014;Pérez-Zapata, Pascual, Álvarez-Hernández, & Collado, 2016). The largest contributing factor to work stress is how work is organized in terms of pace, intensity, quality of communications and social relations, employment security, and more (Schnall, Dobson, Rosskam, & Elling, 2018). ...
... The largest contributing factor to work stress is how work is organized in terms of pace, intensity, quality of communications and social relations, employment security, and more (Schnall, Dobson, Rosskam, & Elling, 2018). And while an employer is responsible for the organization of work traditionally and legally, when it comes to knowledge work in practice, it is the workers themselves who are responsible to a high degree (Ipsen & Jensen, 2010). In this thesis, I add to theories of management of knowledge work at the micro-level, by an examination of selfleadership in knowledge work and organizational attempts to foster it at the individual and team levels, in the empirical settings of innovative software development, consulting, and activity based working. ...
... However, it has also been suggested by several scholars that this "freedom" has a shadow side. Boundaryless work is stressful for many people (Albertsen, Rugulies, Garde, & Burr, 2010;Allvin et al., 2006) and expectations of self-leadership/self-management can lead to self-exploitation (Pérez-Zapata et al., 2016), "self-entrapment" (Michel, 2014), overwork and intensity (Ipsen & Jensen, 2010). ...
In this thesis, I add to theories of management of knowledge work at the micro-level, by an examination of self-leadership in knowledge work and organizational attempts to foster it at the individual and team levels, in the empirical settings of innovative software development, consultants, and activity based working; the methods are mainly interviews and thematic analysis (I-III), and survey and statistical analysis (IV). The main research question has been: How can organizations support sustainable and productive self-leadership in their employees?
In paper I, a ‘seeing work’-skill emerged in all interviews with managers, implicating situational judgment and attention as core to what is ultimately seen as successful self-direction. In paper II, consultants indicate the expectation to “infer” demands as leading to internalization of demands and seeing oneself as a source of stress. While consultants expressed a belief in internal self-discipline strategies of a more reactive nature to self-lead, in fact, external and proactive strategies (selecting or modifying the working environment) were the most effective in practice, echoing recent research on limited self-regulatory resources.
Paper IV examined quantitatively the hypothesis, based on papers I & II, that having timely access to work relevant information (“information richness”) would have a stronger relationship with lower cognitive stress and better performance, than internal, self-focused self-leadership strategies, in the setting of Activity Based Working Environments where employees have high autonomy to decide how, where, when, and with whom to perform work. This hypothesis was confirmed, suggesting that when organizational situations cannot be strongly structured, for example because the best work process is not known, or innovation or different collaboration constellations are needed, they need instead to be enriched so that employee orientation and co-ordination does not become too much of a burden on the individual employee, disrupting cognitive functioning and performance.
Paper III is a case study of agile coaches at Spotify and how they practise enabling leadership, a key balancing force of complexity leadership theory (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007). Coaches practise enabling leadership by increasing the context‐sensitivity of others, supporting other leaders, establishing and reinforcing simple principles, observing group dynamics, surfacing conflict and facilitating and encouraging constructive dialogue. The AC as complexity leader values being present, observing and reacting in the moment. Findings suggest flexible structure provided by an attentive coach may prove a fruitful way to navigate and balance autonomy and alignment in organizations.
The re-conceptualization of self-leadership in this thesis points to the importance for the individual of 1) being able to navigate ”weak situations” and to ”see” or ”create” one’s own work tasks so as to make a valuable contribution to the organization, and 2) for the ability to offload cognitive demands onto the environment, in a broad sense. Supporting self-leadership, then, would mean supporting these two main mechanisms. And with a resource perspective, organizations can offer support by building or offering resources, of various kinds, that allow for employees to have more resources to spare for where and when they are truly needed.
... Such prescriptions soon become outdated, inflexible, and counterproductive. At the same time, many jobs are becoming boundaryless in terms of where, when, and how work should be done (Allvin et al. 2013;Aronsson 2018), especially for knowledge workers (Donnelly 2006;Ipsen & Jensen 2010). Consequently, the regulation of work is becoming a task for the individual herself -from external boundaries and organizing to individual, internal boundaries and organizing (Hanson 2004). ...
In press, Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies 2019-2
Being self-directed is one of the most sought-after employee attributes. The present study examines managers' approaches to and conceptualization of employee self-directedness through semi-structured interviews with 13 managers from five companies in the Stockholm area. Analysis suggests two different emphases in trying to increase self-direction, with differing underlying assumptions: an evaluation emphasis where self-direction is conceptualized as an inherent property of the individual, and a cultivation emphasis suggesting a more interactionist perspective of self-direction as an emergent behavior based on the interaction of individual and situational characteristics. Further, a "seeing work"-skill emerged in all interviews, implicating situational judgment and attention as core to what is ultimately seen as successful self-direction. Managers with a cultivation emphasis mentioned as viable tactics those focused on supporting sensemaking and thus enriching the working situation to enable better discretionary situational judgements.
... The high degree of freedom, influence, rewards, support etc. are valued as key factors in jobs characterized by a good psychosocial working environment for example in models such as Karaseks and Theorell's "Job Demand Control (JD-C) Model". (Karasek 1979;Karasek & Theorell 1990) However, several studies have pointed at work-related stress and strain being an increasing problem in knowledge-intensive companies (Buch & Andersen 2008;Ipsen 2007;Ipsen & Jensen 2009;Kalimo 1999;Mogensen, Andersen, & Ipsen 2008;Stavroula, Griffiths, & Cox 2003;WHO 1999). ...
... In order to change the current practice and formulate sustainable preventive changes it is necessary to understand the causes for work-related problems as well as the current management practice of these problems. (Ipsen 2007;Ipsen & Jensen 2009;Kompier & Cooper 1999;Singer et al. 1986) This paper will briefly address how shared mental models were established and how preventive actions were implemented. The main focus in this paper is on the organizational level interventions; the processes and the results based on a participatory approach. ...
... A reflective workshop was thus conducted where several managers not associated with one another were asked to respond to and discuss a narrative which had been drawn up based on the preceding analysis of more knowledge intensive companies (Ipsen & Jensen, 2009). The outcome of the workshop was a list of plausible preventive organisational actions which could be taken. ...
Knowledge work represents a job with high level of influence, freedom and
autonomy. Earlier studies indicate that such working conditions reflect a good
psychosocial environment. Although knowledge workers describe their job as being
both sovereign and motivating, several studies have pointed at work-related stress
and strain being an increasing problem in knowledge-intensive companies.
Behaviour modification is the dominating approach to stress management. Contrary
to the typical stress management practice and understanding of knowledge intensive
work two qualitative studies point to potential options for preventing work-related
stress based on changes in the daily activities and management.
Keywords: knowledge work, stress management, prevention, organizational level interventions, process, implications.
This paper examines the sources of knowledge workers’ work intensity and the self-leading strategies they apply to deal with it. The paper is based on focus group interviews with management consultants in a Danish management consultancy firm. Work intensity was identified as resulting from a combination of: (1) a results-only focus, (2) vagueness, (3) boundaryless work, and (4) low control of the quantitative load. A framework for self-leading strategies is developed based on the dimensions of reactive/proactive and self-focused/externally-focused strategies in different combinations. The results indicate that while consultants expressed a belief in internal self-discipline strategies of a more reactive nature, in fact, external and proactive strategies were the most effective in practice. In conclusion, the paper contributes to an extension of self-leadership theory to better account for current research on self-control.
