10.1 The Problem of Stress 35 all my professors act like I'm not taking any courses but theirs!"In addition to conflict between different tasks or projects,role conflict may also involve conflict between organi- zational demands and one's own values or conflict among obligations to several different co-workers.As we will see in Chapter 14.the modern organization is best thought of as an open system in which part of the organization (eg.worker,work group,department,divi- sion)interacts with its environment.That means that there is ample opportunity for role conflict and ambiguity,because every time an entity interacts with an environment,oppor. tunity for confusion exists. A more specific form of conflict is role overload,a stressor that occurs when an indi- vidual is expected to fulfill too many roles at the same time,another consequence of inter- acting with the environment (eg.customers,supervisors).Role overload can cause people to work very long hours,increasing stress and subsequent strains.Some workers complain that they are stressed from working 24 hours a day.seven days a week.On the television show Saturday Night Live.cast members joked that some people have a different 24/7 plan for avoiding stress:a work schedule of 24 hours a week.seven months a year.Most of us would agree that such a schedule(with full-time pay)would be a great way to reduce stress! Indeed,research shows a positive correlation between role stressors and a variety of work and health problems,induding tension,anxiety,and a propensity to leave the organization (Day Livingstone,2001).In addition,research indicates that role stressors have consistent effects on commitment and turnover intentions in samples of nurses in Hungary,Italy,the United Kingdom,and the United States,providing support for the importance of role stressors across cultures(Glazer Beehr,2005). Work-Family Conflict A different type of role stressor is work-family conflict,which occurs when workers experience conflict between the roles they fulfill at work and the roles they fulfill in their personal lives (Bellavia Frone,2005:Grzywacz Butler,2008).As dual-career families etween the roles th何轴 have become the norm rather than the exception,work-family conflict has become a wide- 蓝ork and in their penenal spread source of work stress.Given that working women continue to take on most of the responsibilities within the home.women often fill more roles than men (Cleveland. Stockdale,Murphy,2000).In a study of men and women working in high-ranking posi- tions,women were more stressed by their greater responsibility for household and family duties.In addition.women with children at home had significantly higher levels of stress hormones after work than women without children at home or any of the men in the study (Lundberg Frankenhauser,1999).However,these findings do not necessarily mean that the effect of work on women is exclusively negative.In fact,there is little evidence to indi- cate that a woman's employment harms her marriage or her children (Cleveland et al, 2000).One study concluded that,compared to men.women appear to have better coping strategies to handle stress(Korabik McDonald,1991).In particular,women are more likely than men to have access to social support.which we discuss in Module 10.3 as a criti- cal factor in reducing stress and its harmful effects. Nevertheless,several studies have demonstrated the serious consequences that work- family conflict has on the health and well-being of both men and women (eg.Allen Armstrong.2006;Grant-Vallone Donaldson,2001).Thus,this type of conflict seems to be an equal-opportunity stressor"(Allen,Herst,Bruck.Sutton,2000).A study of 2.700 employed adults found that individuals who reported experiencing work-family conflict were as much as 30 times more likely to experience a significant mental health problem. such as depression or anxiety.than employees who reported no work-family conflict (Frone,2000b).As we mentioned in Chapter 1.research is also beginning to investigate work-school conflict for college-age students,and balancing school and work appears to be equally challenging(Butler,2007)