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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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Workplace Stress and Aggression

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Stress is the excitement, feeling of anxiety, and/or physical tension that occurs when the demands placed on individuals exceed their ability to cope. The stories of stress are often about negative stress. An individual’s general biological responses to severe stressors prepare them to fight or flee—behaviors generally inappropriate in the workplace. Many factors determine how employees experience severe work stress, including their perception of the situation, past experiences, the presence or absence of social support, and a variety of individual differences.
Organizational sources of severe stress at work often include (1) workload, (2) job conditions, (3) role conflict and ambiguity, (4) career development, (5) interpersonal relations, (6) conflict between work and life roles, and (7) workplace aggression, especially bullying, sexual harassment, and violence. In addition, significant changes or other events in an individual’s personal life may also be sources of severe stress.
Severe stress may affect an individual physiologically, emotionally, and behaviorally. Severe stress is linked to various health problems. An arch-shaped relationship exists between stress and performance. In other words, an optimal level of stress probably exists for any particular task. Less or more stress than that level may lead to reduced performance. Job burnout is a major result of unrelieved and intense job-related stress.
Several personality characteristics are related to differences in how individuals cope with severe stress. Individuals with a Type A personality are more prone to stress and have an increased chance of experiencing physical ailments due to it. Some dimensions of the Type A personality, such as hostility, are particularly important in terms of stress-related illness. In contrast, the collection of personality traits known as hardiness seems to reduce the effects of severe stress.
Stress is a real issue for both individuals and organizations. Fortunately, various insights can help leaders and employees manage stress in the workplace. These insights often focus on identifying and removing workplace stressors as well as helping employees cope with stress.
Workplace aggression includes a variety of behaviors: psychological acts such as shouting or intimidating remarks, physical assault, and destruction or theft of property. Four of the more common types of workplace aggression include bullying, sexual harassment, violence, and aggression toward the organization itself. There may be overlaps in the behaviors associated with each type, as suggested by the harm model. This model represents a continuum of levels of violence from harassment to aggression to rage to mayhem. Mayhem may include murder or the destruction of organizational property. A variety of guidelines for minimizing and taking corrective action with respect to bullying, sexual harassment, and workplace violence were reviewed.

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