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Vingard et al., 1995; Ong, Jeyaratnam et al., 1995). In order to understand psychosocial factors in the
workplace, one needs to take into account the ability of an individual to make a psychological connection
to his or her job, thus formulating the relationship between the person and the job. For instance, the
International Labour Office (ILO, 1986) defines psychosocial work factors as “interactions between
and among work environment, job content, organizational conditions and workers' capacities, needs,
culture, personal extra-job considerations that may, through perceptions and experience, influence
health, work performance, and job satisfaction.” Thus, the underlying premise in defining psychosocial
work factors is the inclusion of the behavioral and psychological components of job factors. In the rest of
the chapter, we will use the definitions proposed by Hagberg and his colleagues (Hagberg et al., 1995)
because they are most highly relevant for occupational ergonomics.
Work organization is defined as the way work is structured, distributed, processed, and supervised
(Hagberg et al., 1995). It is an “objective” characteristic of the work environment, and depends on
many factors, including management style, type of product or service, characteristics of the workforce,
level and type of technology, and market conditions. Psychosocial work factors are “perceived” charac-
teristics of the work environment that have an emotional connotation for workers and managers, and
that can result in stress and strain (Hagberg et al., 1995). Examples of psychosocial work factors
include overload, lack of control, social support, and job future ambiguity. Other examples are described
in the following section.
The concept of psychosocial work factors raises the issue of objectivity-subjectivity. Objectivity has
multiple meanings and levels in the literature. According to Kasl (1978), objective data is not supplied
by the self-same respondent who is also describing his distress, strain, or discomfort. At another level,
Kasl (1987) feels that “psychosocial factor perception” can be less subjective when the main source of
information is the employee but that this self-reported exposure is devoid of evaluation and reaction.
Similarly, Frese and Zapf (1988) conceptualize and operationalize “objective stressors” (i.e., work organ-
ization) as not being influenced by an individual's cognitive and emotional processing. Based on this, it is
more appropriate to conceptualize a continuum of objectivity and subjectivity. Work organization can be
placed at one extreme of the continuum (that is the objective nature of work) whereas psychosocial work
factors have some degree of subjectivity (see definitions above).
Psychosocial work factors result from the interplay between the work organization and the individual.
Given our definitions, psychosocial work factors have a subjective, perceptual dimension, which is related
to the objective dimension of work organization. Different work organizations will 'produce' different
psychosocial work factors. The work organization determines to a large extent the type and degree of
psychosocial work factors experienced by workers. For instance, electronic performance monitoring,
or the on-line, continuous computer recording of employee performance-related activities, is a type
of work organization that has been related to a range of negative psychosocial work factors, including
lack of control, high work pressure, and low social support (Smith et al., 1992). In a study of office
workers, information on psychosocial work factors was related to objective information on job title
(Sainfort, 1990). Therefore, psychosocial work factors are very much anchored in the objective work
situation, and are related to the work organization.
26.3 Examples of Psychosocial Work Factors
Psychosocial work factors are multiple and various, and are produced by different, interacting aspects of
work. The Balance Theory of Job Design (Smith and Carayon-Sainfort, 1989) proposed a conceptuali-
zation of the work system with five elements interacting to produce a “stress load.” The five elements
of the work system are: (1) the individual, (2) tasks, (3) technology and tools, (4) environment, and
(5) organizational factors. The interplay and interactions between these different factors can produce
various stressors on the individual which then produce a “stress load” which has both physical and
psychological components. The stress load, if sustained over time and depending on the individual
resources, can produce adverse effects, such as health problems and lack of performance. The models
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