Introduction
Flatter organizations, virtual teams and changing employee values mean that today's managers face a rapidly changing environment to work in. There is an enormous pressure on organizations to work in non-traditional environments. Stress has become a common phenomenon of our daily common life. The Encyclopedia of stress Flick (2000) defines stress as "real or interpreted threat to physiological or psychological integrity of an individual that results in physiological and/or behavioral response." In other words, stress is a response of the body to the challenging events or any other events that places a demand on an individual. Globalization is at the center of this. It is one of the big reasons for the stress related to work. Working global means that managers and employees have to work in quite an uncertain environment; have a global mindset and be able with the unexpected. Globalization has also presented the managers and employees of organizations with many challenges. Some of the key ones include the ability to work better in limited resources, accepting the mobility, and the ability to cope up with the stress levels. Apart from these the management styles have to be completely dynamic and flexible to changes. Moreover the concept of globalization has affected both the public and private sectors. Therefore, organizations treat this phenomenon very seriously as it directly affects their performance and ultimately their existence. Stress develops when there is a mix of demands and pressures on the person on one hand and knowledge and abilities on the other. Researchers on medical science have identified three components that cause stress. These are job and organization, social sector and intra-psychic sector. Businesses today are always on the change and therefore organizations are constantly on the way out looking for new ways of doing business. The literature of management also shows that companies that have been adaptive to changing cultures have been more successful (Kotler, 1992). A new age of technology, the advent of digital age has bought about geographical boundaries seemingly closer and which has become some of the main reasons for the increase in the work related stress. Apparently with lives moving as fast as a click of the mouse, work stress is increasing. Employees cannot afford to relax in such a business environment. Therefore, it is safe to state that amidst the complexity of life, stress is inevitable. In this paper, we shall assess the stress from the work perspective and also look at the difference in the stress levels in both public and private sectors. There is a focused market in which we look in and that is the Indian market.
Work Stress
According to researchers like Ivancivich (2001) and Hebard (1996), amongst all other required skills like overseas experience, desire to go overseas, knowledge of specific areas, international managers need to be well averse with the idea of stress management. Work related stress has become the top agenda for many government agencies nowadays. This is primarily due to the financial and psychological implications it puts on the country. Work related stress can be defined as any level of mental or physical strain that is gained due to pressures in the profession. Work stress is given much impetus since it directly affects the government in the public sectors and the business in the private sectors. A number of factors are held responsible in the study of stress. These are the multi dimensionality of the subject, the definition of stress, its direct relationship on the changing behavior of individuals and the increasing negative effects of stress on productivity. Work stress is further defined by Beeher and Newman (1978) as "a condition arising from the interaction of people and their jobs and characterized by changes within people that force them to deviate from their normal functioning." There is a change in perception of the effects of stress on an individual. Some researchers like Spielberger (1979) suggest that work stress works positively within the organization and is one of the most important factors in improving productivity within the organization. Stress is therefore multi-dimensional and depends upon the organization whether they see it as a problem or as a solution. However, all one can suggest that medically, stress acts on the negative side of all individuals. It leads to frustration and haste and most importantly decreases the employee's job satisfaction. On the flipside, lack of work may cause complacency within the organization. Therefore it is important for managers to know where to draw the line between work and stress. Growing globalization has increased the needs of managers and under immense pressure they find it difficult to draw the line between work and stress. In simple words, managers should know exactly how much they can yield out of their employees by keeping them satisfied with the work.
Literature Review
It has been identified that globalization has been the primary cause of concern for the work related stress. Globalization is broadly defined as the idea by which we understand the transition of human society into the third millennium (Waters, 2002, p.1). It is also defined as a strategic effort to treat the world or a significant part of it as a single market in which to do business in (Tallman and Fladmore-Lindquist, 2002). A research conducted by (Madeline, W) suggested that there are concerns over the impact of stress on the IS manager's health and productivity. The rapid growth in information technology and communication has caused and awareness of the global economy amongst the minds of the people. El Sayed and Westup (2003) have said that the recent developments of technology and information have led to the formation of new and complex networks between national and global organizations. Stress in organizations has been deeply studied by many researchers (Robbins and Sanghi, 2006). There are various causes of stress that have been reasoned out by these researchers. Amongst them is the belief that problems in roles depend on job characteristics and their individual perception. It becomes vital therefore that job characteristics and personal factors would influence role stress. Various researchers have found out the different factors which affect work stress. Age, hierarchical level, and functional assignments are some of the factors researched by Srivastav (2005, 2007). Other researchers have stated the relationships of length of service and role stress. Many, on the other hand have denied any significant relationship of role stress and length of service (Sen (1981), Surti (1982)).
Gupta (1988) and Kumar (1997) have found out a positive relationship between the length of service and organizational role stress. This shows that there is no continuity in the outcomes of the research. Researchers are themselves confused about the exact causes of work related stress. Given the fact that work stress depends on individual perception, we can say that the researchers did a fairly good job of determining some factors. Non-agreement on certain points can be considered since the whole concept of stress is perceived differently by different individuals. In this paper, the author tries to assess the difference in the levels of stress experienced by the public and private sectors of India. The effects of stress are varying. Some researchers suggest that stress plays an important role in motivating the employees and for the overall business while a majority of researchers say that stress in organizations lead to various problems. Other than the healthy concerns, stress causes false decision making, haste and frustration.
The sources of stress are innumerable. They are classified into different dimensions. The following are some common dimensions stress causes are classified into.
2: Financial or psychological stress a result of loss of job or other financial troubles.
3: Sources related to work
4: Ambiguous role definitions
5: Responsibility of other people.
While there are other few causes of stress as well, we shall limit our research onto the above factors with particular focus on the work related stress.
Since stress has multiple dimensions to it, it is studied in different disciplines such as Clinical and Applied Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Psychosomatic Medicine, Industrial Relations and Epidemiology. There are various negative effects on stress with regards to the business of any organization. As researched by (Maslach and Jackson, 1981; Matteson and Ivancivich, 1987), stress can cause staff turnover and absenteeism (Warshow, 1979). They also concluded that it can negatively effect productivity and employee health (Cooper and Payne, 1988). Work stress is a major factor as it influences human functioning in emotional, mental and psychological ways (Arroba and James, 1987). Kinney (1985) stated that biological changes affect the way we think while Speilberger (1979) said that work stress is one of the most important factors affecting work productivity. Deneen (1998) noted that the stress level of employees have increased twice the number of times from 1985 to 1990 and have cost the US economy more than $200 billion. Job stress as stated by Turner (1998) that effects of stress ranges from traumatic experiences such as fire or bombings, to injury or violence. There have been a innumerable studies carried out on the effects of work related stress in United States which have all shown a fall in the overall turnover of the organization facing stress problems. In fact, work stress has been taken so seriously in the United states that once it was named as the "disease of 20th century (Krohe, 1999). Wages is one factor which seriously affects job satisfaction. The problem is a bit too serious for a country like India. India being a predominantly rural country with a population of more than 1 billion people has access to cheap labor. Looking back at the Indian population and labor literature, Indiahas grown at an annual rate of 2.27 percent in urban areas and 0.66 per cent in rural areas (Chaddha, 2001). The public and private sectors account for majority of the employment in India. Out of the total employment, the public sector has enjoyed about 70% of the organized employment which is seen as a decrease from the year 1991.
A diverse literature is still lacking in some parts. The literature does not have the particular distinction between the public and private sectors of India. The work stress level in these sectors is undetermined. In this paper, we seek to find out the major differences between the stress level of public and private sectors of India. We shall first take a look at the Indian market and the employment ratios's and then look at two different sectors separately to make a distinction. We conclude by highlighting the key differences in both the sectors.
The Indiai Market- Employment Figures in Public and Private Sectors
India is predominantly an oil producing country. Unemployment rates in India are high and more so in the rural areas (7.86%) as compared to the urban areas (3.86%). Indiai labor statistics make an official distinction between the organized and un-organized sectors based on size and unemployment. The organized sector is what we focus on. It consists on the public and private sectors. The employment in the public sector consists of civilian government employees and public enterprises. Units employing over 10 or more workers fall in the private organized category while others are in the private sector unorganized category. Such is the current architecture of the country in terms of employment.
Key Factors Affecting Stress Levels
Stress levels have been long related to job satisfaction (Singh, 2009). Job satisfaction is connected strongly to wages and salary. Therefore, wages and monetary gains have an important part to play in the assessment of stress levels. While assessing the remuneration and monetary levels in India, it must be noted that India has mostly expatriate labor.
Within the unorganized sector, the most robust relationship is between earnings and productivity (Patel and Gandhi, 1998; Mitra, 2001). However, there is hardly an evidence of the wage differentials of the Indiai labor market since there is scarcity of data. Data supplied from the annual report of OCCI in 2009 suggested that there was higher remuneration of workers in the public sector as compared to the private sector. People employed in the public sector owned by the government have nearly twice as high the number of salary as their counterparts in the private sector (of course taking average into consideration). Authors who have tried to account for the differences in human capital in the public and private sectors in India and investigating wage differentials have all relied upon the Degree Holders and Technical Personnel (DHTP) conducted by the 1981 Census of India. Madheswaran (1998) have decomposed the DHTP and showed that the average ratio of the public and private wage was divided to 0.85 superior to the private sector. Blinder and Oxaca (1973) also found that the private sector employees are much highly paid than the public sector ones and the reason for that goes to the fact that private sector pays a much higher premium than the public sector. Thus, there is a strong discrimination in terms of the wages and ultimately the job satisfaction in the public and private sectors.
Comparison of Work Stress
The organizational work stress is dependent on various factors. Managers as well as employees are facing the problems of stress despite changing technologies that have made lives easy. Many studies conducted over the years have accounted the stress levels of employees in various organizations. Amongst the public sector genre, banks are studied deeply. Studies conducted by Kumar et al (2009) concluded that women in the private sector banks are more susceptible to high stress levels than the men. Public sector banks have more room for development and a low attraction in the eyes of the employees. Therefore, the study depicts results suggesting that the stress levels in private banks are more than those in public banks. In India, public sector is also blamed for being lazy in their tasks. Private sectors cannot afford to be complacent and therefore experience higher levels of stress. Women prefer jobs in public sector and government organizations as compared to men due to reasons of low workload and preference in organizations. In India, most of the government aided educational institutes have a majority of women employees. There is a wide preference in terms of job timings in public sector as compared to the private ones. Aziz (2003) conducted a research on the Indian IT industry and found out that men were more stressed out than women in the industry. This is contradictory to the results of the public sector bank. Therefore, the gender differences in stress levels vary from one industry to another. Public sectors generally differ in the perks and wages they offer to their employees. India especially being a poor country, jobs are not preferred by public sectors. In the urban market, workers are generally younger in the private sector than in the public sector. In terms of other factors, the educational level of employees is more or less same in both the sectors although the public sector again enjoys a slight edge over the private sector. In the formal private sector, there is still a high proportion of illiterate women. In the un-organized private sector, comprising of home based businesses there is almost 40% illiterate population. Private sectors have a majority of production related jobs. Technicians and professional applicants are a majority in the public sector.
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