The Current Debate About the Meaning of Job Stress

Abstract

There is currently a great deal of disagreement about the meaning of job stress. This probably has happened in part because the topic has its roots in several diverse fields, including medicine, clinical psychology, engineering psychology, and organizational psychology. The differences among these fields in their interpretations of job stress are seen in both their choices of labels and in the substance of their theories and approaches to treatments. There are many specific controversies in the field, of which four are especially central to the meaning of job stress: the existence and nature of first mediators, awareness as a necessary component of stress, the possibility and effects of "good" stress, and acute versus chronic stressors.