A Study on Occupational Stress and Quality of Work Life (QWL) in Private Colleges of Oman (Muscat)

1. Introduction Education sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in Oman and Lecturers play an important role in shaping up the future of students. They constantly engage themselves in the pursuit of quality pedagogy. Since new teaching methodologies are evolving rapidly, it has become more demanding in carrying out their roles and responsibilities in an effective way. The main causes of stress among the lecturers were reported as their multiple academic and administrative roles assigned to them. Lecturers feel stressed when they are not able to balance their personal and work life need, which leads to decrease in quality of teaching and lack of efficiency which in turn affect the relationship between the student and lecturers. Stress has been increasing due to the evolving needs, tough competition, work pressure and short deadlines. When occupational stress is felt, it will not only affect the performance of work but also affect health of employees in the form of heart attack, migraine that can lead to death. (Yahaya, et.al 2010). Quality of work life is an outgrowth of human relation movement. Robbins (1989) defined Quality of Work Life (QWL) as a process by which an organization respond to employee needs by developing mechanisms to allow them to share fully in making the decisions that design their lives at work.QWL affect employee's work responses in terms of organizational identification, job satisfaction, job involvement, job effort, job performance, intention to quit, organizational turnover and personal alienation (Efraty & Sirgy, 1990). The lack of quality of work life is due to inappropriate placement, less recognition and participation and inadequate health and insurance programs. Occupational stress affects quality of work life which ultimately affects job satisfaction. Present study analyzed the phenomena of occupational stress and QWL among the business management lecturers in private colleges in Oman. 2. Literature Review Review of literature was done to report the studies related to occupational stress and QWL. Following research examined the underlying phenomena of stress and QWL separately and together in various professions, organizations and sectors. It provides a foundation to identify the research gap for the present study. Beheshtifar & Nazarian (2013) reported that occupational stress was a perception of discrepancy between environmental demands (stressors) and individual capacities to fulfill these demands. Occupational stress was more, where there was more discrepancy in perceptions. Nasiripour, et. al., (2009) explored the level and sources of occupational and personal stress among 172 rural health workers in Mashhad district. It was found that role overload and role ambiguity were the main sources of stress and it adversely affected the quality of their service. Bokti & Talib (2009) determined the level and relationship of occupational stress, job satisfaction among 40 male Navy officers and non officers from the Naval base in Lumut, Malaysia. Result revealed that majority of the male navy personnel had moderate levels of job satisfaction in the favorable nature of work facet. Hasan (2014) compared occupational stress among 100 teachers of primary government and private school in Haridwar and found that private primary school teachers were highly stressed in comparison to the government primary school teachers. Jeyarai (2013) determined the occupational stress level of 120 government teachers and 185 aided/ contractual school teachers and found that aided school teachers had more occupational stress level than government school teachers and were also less satisfied with teaching. Reddy & Anuradha (2013) examined the occupation stress of 327 higher secondary school teachers of Vellore district in Tamil Nadu and found that 88 percent of teachers were experiencing moderate and high levels of occupational stress. Tashi, K (2014) examined the level of stress among 150 Bhutanese teachers and found that stress was experienced by them. …