MARCH 2021 - OGOS 2021

MGT 430

INTRODUCTION TO ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR

STRESS MANAGEMENT REPORT

NAME STUDENT ID

NUREEN SYAFIQAH BINTI ABDULLAH 2020303749

NOORSYAZHIDA BINTI ZAILAL 2020958405

BATRISYA BALQIS BINTI KHAIRUL ABHA 2020997361

NABILAH SYAHIRAH BINTI MOHD KHAIRI 2020960467

CLASS: MAC2205C
LECTURER’S NAME: NORIDA BT ABU BAKAR

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 7/6/2021

 TABLE OF CONTENT

PAGE

TITLE PAGE i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

TABLE OF CONTENT iii

LIST OF FIGURE

1)Introduction
1.1 Covid 19 4
1.2 Stress 4

2)Body
2.1General Adaptation Syndrome 5
2.2Stress Level 6-7
2.3Stressor 8-9
2.4Approach to manage their stress 10 - 11

CONCLUSION 12

REFERENCES 13

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Upon the accomplishment of our stress report management, we personally received a lot of
support, encouragement and guidance from people around us, especially from our family,
friends, and lecturer in completing our assignments. Therefore, we would like to grab this
opportunity to deliver our gratitude to people who have been helping us directly and
indirectly in preparing this group assignment.

Firstly, we would like to wish our gratefulness to Allah SWT for the strength and blessing
during completing this assignment. In addition, never forget the person who has taught us a
lot especially in this management subject where we would like to thank our lecturer Mrs
Norida Binti Abu Bakar for giving us guidance and advice to improve this assignment.

Moreover, we would like to express our special thanks to our parents and friends who helped
us a lot in finalizing this project within the limited time frame.

Lastly, we would like to say thank you for giving us the golden opportunity to do this
wonderful project which also allows us to learn new things from the research.

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I) Introduction

1.1 Stress

Everyone has experienced stress as we get ordered and faced in daily life. But how well do
we know and understand about stress? Stress is defined as a particular relationship between
the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding a
person's resources and endangering a person's wellbeing according to Lazarus and Folkman,
1984. Stress can be any kind of trauma, anxiety, tension, pressure and pain. However Dr.
Radhika Kapur (2018) refers that stress sometimes is avoidable or unavoidable. Stress is also
described as an adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or threatening
to the person’s well-being.There are so many factors that can make people stressed, for
example financial problems, lack of love or heart broken, overworked, pressure of studies and
frustration. As we can see people experience stress and manage stress in different ways.
Stress consists of two types which are eustress and distress. Eustress is stress that is positive,
motivating and focuses energy. It is perceived as within our coping abilities and can improve
our performances. While distress refers to bad and overwhelming stress that is because of
anxiety and anxiety. It can lead to physical and mental health problems if the person does not
overcome this stress.

1.2 Covid 19

According to the World Health Organization, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an

infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus and spreads primarily through
droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The
virus was identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China. However, early cases of
COVID-19 were linked to people who had visited the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in
Wuhan in December 2019. The World Health Organization also declared a pandemic on 11
March 2020. This has caused public people panic as the government announced a lock down
immediately to prevent the virus from spreading widely. At the same time, this has caused
panic buying and supply shortage among people. All the public areas and educational

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institutions have been partially and fully closed. People have to work and have virtual classes
from home. Some of them even get fired as their company could not obtain profit and unable
to pay their salary.

2.1 General Adaptation Syndrome

General adaptation syndrome was started by Hans Selye, also known as the father of stress
research. In that research, Selye also determined that people have a fairly consistent and
automatic physiological response to stressful situations , which helps people cope with
environmental demands. General adaptation syndrome consists of three stages which are
alarm reaction, resistance and also exhaustion.

1) Alarm reaction
Alarm reaction stage occurs when a threat or challenge activates the physiological
stress response to our body and it also refers to initial symptoms from body experience
when people are under stress. Beside that, an alarm reaction is also known as fight or
flight response and could also be a physiological response that we need to worry about .

2) Resistance stage
Resistance stage occurs when it activates various biochemical, psychological, and
behavioral mechanisms that give a person more energy and engage coping
mechanisms to overcome or take off the sources of stress and it occurs after the alarm
reaction or fight to fight response. In this stage your body is more calm down than
alarm reaction stage

3) Exhaustion stage
Usually in these stages people are able to remove or take out the sources of stress or
can distinguish themselves to become more stressful. Moreover , regularly people
who reach this stage, risk long term physiological and psychological damage. We will
be able to quit up or believe that our situation is hopeless. The signs of exhaustion are
fatigue, depression, anxiety, and decreased stress tolerance.

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2.2 Stress Level

Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain caused by adverse circumstances. In stress level
it has 3 scales which are low, moderate and also higher. In research we found that female
students have a higher amount of stress compared to male and therefore during this pandemic
it could increase stress levels for students.Mostly scale stress of student is from 30 until 39
stress score, based on Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) .This is shown that the students are
having pressure during the pandemic due to the online distance learning (ODL)

Stress score from our group member

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Based on the stress score above ,the main reason it is at a high scale is because we cannot
focus on our class. As we know, through online learning we can get many problems such as
internet problems. Not every student has the best internet connection. Moreover, some of the
students are having mental breakdowns because of internet problems. Some of their places
have a bad internet connection.Besides that, we need to survive by ourselves. We will get a
lack of support from our friends compared to face to face classes. When we see our friends
study, it can motivate us to study hard also.

Next, student stress due to stress as we need to study every day not just on weekdays but also
on weekends. Beside that, we need to done all the assignment and a sometime lecturer also
give a assignment that need to submit in weekend as we all know weekend is only time that
student can realise their stress and also have a relax while spend their time with their family
and also their friend. While doing their assignment, students also need to recall back their
memory of what they studied that week by watching the video. As with online learning,
student concentration will decrease.

Beside that, we are under high stress due to the workload task that we have, as we cannot
manage our time table. Being at home , most students will spend more time on social media.
We will keep our assignment until a week before we submit as we do not have moral support
from our friend and we cannot see if our friend is doing their assignment or not . We just
assume that they have not made an assignment yet.

Other than that,the factor of stress comes from family problems. Every person has a different
family background and has their own problems. For example, at college we just be a student
as we do not have to take part in a job at home like taking care of your brother but by
studying at home we need to divide as being a student and also be a good son. Other than
that, due to this pandemic some parents cannot go to work as it will reduce their budget.
Through online learning, students need to spend more money on the internet, gadgets and all
equipment to study in a comfortable place. Due to stress above and stress score by student we
can conclude that students are having stress at exhaustion stage during this pandemic
COVID-19 and open distance learning.

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2.3 STRESSOR: THE CAUSES OF STRESS

Introduction

Before finding ways and alternatives on how to manage stress among the students, we must
first identify and understand the causes of these stresses which are known as stressors.
Stressors include any environmental conditions that place a physical or emotional demand on
a person. Lack of moral support, no time limit, low task control and personal conflict are
among the most common stressors related to students especially during the pandemic
situation.

Lack of moral support

Lack of moral support is one of the most pervasive causes of stress among the students. Since
during the pandemic most of the students need to experience Open Distance Learning (ODL)
which required the students to stay at home while continuing the semester thru online.
Therefore, these conditions may push the students to struggle alone in study without the
moral support from their friends and classmates. As a result, this will affect their overall
performance in studies such as in task performance, which indirectly threatens their
academic’s carry mark, quizzes and also final examination’s result.

No Time limit

Most students are believed to complete their assignments with more effort than they can
provide without any time limit especially during online learning where everyone is believed
to stay at home. However, most of the students are physically and mentally stressed more on
the limitless time that they need to encounter in completing their assignment even during
weekends and public holidays. This will affect the student's outcome which gradually results
in poor quality of work. We believe most of the students are staying with their family and
loved ones while at home. Therefore, weekends should be a time that they can escape all the
busyness of studying and focus more on family bonding.

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Low task control

Low task control is a stressor because students face high workloads without the ability to
adjust the pace of the load to their own energy, new norms, and other resources. Furthermore,
the degree to which low task control is a stressor increases with the burden of responsibility
the students must carry in order to still pull a good grade in online learning. In contrast, these
students may blackout once they are no longer able to control the level of stress they faced
whether in achieving good grades and making their parents proud thru this online distance
learning.

Personal conflict

We believe that most of the students come with different family backgrounds which lead to
different conflicts and levels of stress. Personal conflict really plays their role as one of the
main stressor that occurs among the students especially during these pandemic situations.
This is because any family conflict that occurs at home cannot be prevented which increases
the stress level of these students since they cannot go anywhere and are just stuck at home. In
conclusion, this situation will affect the students physically and mentally which leads to low
focus on online class and school performance.

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2.4 Approach to manage their stress

Stress that happens during this pandemic among college students can lead to depression and
anxiety if left untreated. Students can cope with stress in a variety of healthy ways. Adopting
a stress management routine can assist in preventing and resolving these issues.

The management of university has to ensure students have flexible and limited study time.
Students who are overburdened by work are more stressed and have more physical concerns,
as they are already burdened by the situation of Covid-19. Lecturers should ensure any task
given to students must have a clear goal and advantage. Only because students are putting in
more effort doesn't mean students are learning more.

Social interaction is important for social engagement, and social support is necessary for
well-being. For example, students may take a break and socialize. With the existence of the
virus, our movements are limited and we have to take better care of ourselves especially in
terms of protection. Students do not have to do it face to face, but instead they can do it
through online meetings.

Online learning can be exhausting, but students have to face it anyhow. We have to make
preparations before online class, physically and mentally, and we should find joy in online
learning. For example, students can watch youtube videos on study vlogs (video-log), study
with me and study-related contents. These videos can also help students to be more focused
and motivate them to do better. On social media such as Tiktok, many people have been
doing 'live streams' while they are studying.

Regular exercise and maintaining a healthy lifestyle are good stress management techniques.
In Youtube, there are many choices that students can choose from including workout videos
such as cardio, dance, zumba, pilates, yoga. As we have to limit ourselves from going out,
this is a great way to exercise as we students can be protected from the virus and have a good
stress-reliever.

Below are the stress levels of our group members upon adapting the approach needed to
manage our stress level. It can be seen that there is a significant reduction in the level of

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stress. It can be interpreted that with good stress management in each of students, it can help
them to control their stress that they are facing during the outbreak of virus Covid-19.

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 CONCLUSION

We have to identify or recognize symptoms of stress, even small daily stresses from home,
work, school, family and friends. We also need to overcome and prevent stress from getting
worse as it can affect our physical and mental health. It can also affect people around you.
Severe stress can lead to depression and moodiness if the person is left to linger. Stress also
can cause health problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Too much stress can
make a person have anxiety and feel anxious. As a result, the person leads and influences to
make a bad decision, aggressive behavior, poor job performance, and do or say something
stupid. That is why we have to manage and cope with stress although no one is completely
free of negative stress (distress).

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 REFERENCES

1. Dean Bartlett. Sheila Payne and Sandra Horn (ed). Stress: Perspectives and Processes.
Open University Press. Buckingham. 2002.

2. Dr. Radhika Kapur. Stress Management: A Case Study. 2018. Research Gate.
From
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323825207_Stress_Management_-_A_Case_Study

3. Mc Shane, S. L., & Glinow, M. (2012). Organizational Behavioural.New York. Mc- Graw
Hill

4. Mc Shane Von Glinow,(2018).Organizational Behaviour.Eighth edition. | New York, NY :

McGraw-Hill Education

5. Logel, C., Oreopoulos, P., & Petronijevic, U. (2021). Experiences and coping strategies of
college students during the covid-19 pandemic (No. w28803). National Bureau of
Economic Research.

6. Baloran, E. T. (2020). Knowledge, attitudes, anxiety, and coping strategies of students

during COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 25(8), 635-642.

7. Wellmind Health. Test Your Stress. https://www.bemindfulonline.com/test-your-stress

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