WORK FACTORS AND STRESS - A CRITICAL-REVIEW

Occupational stress research encompasses a very large and diversified field, yet the areas sometimes remain relatively distinct. In this rev iew of the literature the author shows that there have been numerous s tudies and conceptualizations of the effects of negative work factors on stress, but very few have placed the experience of stress in a comp rehensive framework. Psychological approaches are presented and critic ally appraised as having several drawbacks, while it is argued that so ciological approaches are essential to explaining the context of occup ational stress. Labor process studies are closest to providing a compr ehensive framework for understanding the causes and consequences of st ress at work. The author develops an approach for extending labor proc ess analysis to incorporate the effects on stress of management's cont rol over work at a number of different levels of analysis, not only po int of production activities.