Abstract:

Works stress has been studied in different organizations and countries. Regarding the educational context, work stress has been an issue mainly considered as a teachers’ problem, but there is a lack of studies also considering stress behavior in the support staff. This personnel also has an important role in the formative process. There have been also a few studies that additionally include organizational climate as a variable that has a relationship with stress. This research was conducted in a University in Ecuador, in a sample of 185 workers (131 members of the support staff, 54 teachers/researchers), with the purpose to compare climate perception, work stress perception, stressors and coping mechanisms between groups. We applied and inventory composed by a single question to measure work stress perception, and three questionnaires to measure the other two variables (a climate scale, the OSI questionnaire and the Brief Cope questionnaire). We used media comparison and correlation calculations to establish differences. Our results show that there were not significant differences regarding work stress perception and stressors between groups, but there were significant differences in the case of coping mechanisms and climate perception. The support staff showed significantly higher values regarding the use of self-blaming, denial, disinvestment, and alcohol abuse as coping mechanisms when compared to teachers. However, teachers have significantly lower perception of the climate in the three levels where it was studied (individual, group and organizational level). Considering the influence of the climate in all the sample, we had that work stress and coping mechanisms were not significantly correlated, but were significantly correlated to climate perception, which was a really interesting finding. This situation was different when considering separated samples. We also conducted comparisons taking into account the gender in each group and between groups. We additionally considered differences between individual, group and organizational climate; as indicators of climate strength. This research is a very important starting point in order to include all the workers that are directly and indirectly involved in the educational process, where the organization has an important impact as well as a great responsibility. This research finally shows the relationship between climate and stress, which can serve to make changes in the organizational behavior in order the increase the life quality of all workers.

Keywords:

Work stress, coping mechanisms, stressors, organizational climate, educational context, teachers, support staff.