| This study was based on the responses of 213 employees at six geographic Logistics Centers within a medium-sized Fortune 500 company that is a distributor of microcomputer hardware and software products headquartered in the Southeastern United States. Most participants were White, male, and worked in skilled maintenance occupations. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between employees' occupational stress levels and the effectiveness of their organizational unit. Perceived stress was measured using the Job Stress Survey (Spielberger, 1994), while organizational effectiveness measures included overall employee satisfaction, employee motivation, and turnover intention questions from the corporation's annual employee survey; performance appraisal ratings; and monthly audit defect ratings of picking, packing, putaway, and receiving activities. This quantitative study followed a non-experimental, correlational design, and data were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation, Analysis of Variance, and multiple regression. The results found that there was an inverse relationship between employees' individual occupational stress levels and the effectiveness of the Logistics Center in which they were employed. Further, the results found that Logistics Centers whose employees reported high levels of occupational stress had lower results on measures of organizational effectiveness than those Logistics Centers whose employees reported low levels of occupational stress. Exploratory multiple regression analyses showed that the three Job Stress Survey scales (Job Stress Index, Job Pressure Index, and Lack of Support Index) were significant predictors of turnover intention, overall satisfaction, motivation, and performance appraisal ratings. |
