Question

In your opinion which causes of work stress, or organizational stressors, are likely to be among the most common experienced by air traffic controllers? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

There are four types of organizational stressors: task demands, physical demands, role demands, and interpersonal demands.

For air traffic controllers, task demands are probably the most common organizational stressor that they experience.

Among the task demands, we have the need of quick decisions, critical decisions, and the fact that some information may be incomplete.

The job of an air traffic controller is complex, difficult, requires taking quick, and specially, critical decisions all the time. A bad decision by a traffic controller can be very problematic, and even prove fatal, because of the delicate nature of the job. For all these reasons, air traffic controllers are likely to be subjected to this specific organizational stressor.