Abstract

The study was conducted to assess the effect of job stress on employee’s commitment case study of the Buea Divisional Tax Center. Using liker scale questionnaires, 20 respondents who comprised of both permanent and temporal staff of the organisation across different departments were issued the questionnaires.

The study utilized the descriptive research design with quantitative approach. An Ordinary Least Square Regression (OLS) was used to the test the null hypothesis that job stress had no significant effect on employee’s commitment. To this, a statistically significant effect of job stress was found on employee commitment at the 5% level of significance.

The researcher also uncovered that majority of the workers in the organisation do not experience job stress and majority in effect also indicated to being committed to the organisation. However, majority indicated that they found the work environment over demanding.

To this effect, the researcher recommended that clear job descriptions with assessable tasks be prepared and made available to each employee so as to ensure that employees are well aware of what is required of them and can budget their time and set priorities accordingly. This will both reduce the stress level and make employees more committed to achieving these predetermined tasks.

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION.

1.1 Background to the study

The study of stress has gained a lot of interests in recent times(Ekienabor, 2019). This is because, it has the ability to affect not only human output but also health, and man’s ability to relate with one another. According to Daniel (2019) the stress phenomenon has become a worldwide point of interest. People in different societies and communities all attempting to live a life of satisfaction, and fulfillment attempt to first of eliminate stress in their lives or do their possible best to reduce it to the barest minimum.

To achieve happiness, man believes stress must be delt with. This is because, it conveys with it displeasing emotional tension. This tension according to Moorhead and Griffen (1998) arises because of the adverse psychological and physical reactions that arise when a person is unable to meet up to and adequately fulfill the demands that are being made on him or her. Such feelings are displeasing, and makes most people fill incapable and unable to have control over certain aspects of their lives.

Stress can arise from various areas of a person’s life; family, health, spiritual, education, finance, relationship, and work. Man in essence even though deters stressful situations, cannot completely avoid it. In pursuit of self- actualization, we all must engage in economic activities to gain financial empowerment. most will sort out employment as a means to gain finance in order to solve life’s problems in Organisations which require the skills they can offer and reward the employees.

Organisations seek to employ not only skillful workers who can deliver on tasks, but those who are willing to fully commit to organizational tasks, both current and future. This means by implication that employees work requirements are likely to increase with time, and more demands will be made on them. Organisations in an attempt to keep performance at a satisfactory

level and to keep stakeholders happy, will require that employees earn their wages by keeping to time at work, delivering tasks on time, taking extra responsibilities and evaluating performance controls to ensure staff are meeting up to targets. In essence, as put by Daniel (2019) employees are generally working longer hours, to meet up. This results to stress arising both on the job and when coupled with other life’s responsibilities and still, organizations always require maximum level of commitment from employees.

Commitment in an organization is not a new concept. Management always seeks to ensure that workers are committed. They hold the opinion that committed workers work harder, seek extra responsibilities at no added costs, take self-initiated activities for the benefit of the organization and can withstand period of challenges within the organization. However, can commitment be affected by work stress, and can stress at the job place cause dwindling consequence on organizational commitment? Managers are more likely to use organizational commitment as a criterion of whether to retain a worker or not (Jabri & Ghazzawi, 2019).

1.2 Problem Statement:

Every job has stress as a common element and as such it is important for all workers to be able to face it.  The nature of jobs has gone through  extreme changes over the last decade  and it           is still changing rapidly. Stress in a workplace has touched almost all professions, starting from executive levels to co-workers who are directly engaged in the production. The result of the job stressultimately affects the physical as well as mental health(Daniel, 2019).

It is the place of management to create an environment convenient enough to employees to in their best effort. It is being reported by Irawanto, Noemiyati and Diana (2015) that organizations that to create possibilities for employees to report their stress factors, and takes effort to resolve these are more or less likely to secure loyalty and commitment from employees. Even though others argue that stress is not negative, as pressure and challenges can actually push employees to commit more, work harder and be more productive.

However, the researcher notices that in most cases management of business organizations in the Buea Municipalities may be carried away with delivering on key performance metrics to keep stakeholders satisfied, and place emphasis on work related obligations of employees, such as coming to work on time, leaving only after working hours, increasing working hours, evaluating performance and mounting pressure for delivery of tasks and projects (Dar, Akmal, Naseem, & Khan, 2011). These, increase stress on employees in the work place. Such pressures and tensed working environment create unhappiness, and cause employees to start seeking alternative jobs, and economic activities in a bid to escape from the stress in the work place.

It is in line of this that the researcher conducts this study to assess the effect of work stress on organizational commitment of employees in the Buea Municipality. As such the researcher intends to answer the following research questions.

1.3 Research Questions

1.3.1 Main Research Question

How does stress affect employees commitment toward work in tax centers?

1.3.2 Specific Research Questions

What are the stress factors in tax centers?
How committed are the workers in tax centers?
How does stress affect the commitment of workers?

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