Role demands refer to conflicts that arise between the employee's personal values and supervisory and organisational values. Conflicts in expectations among peers, supervisors and the employee can induce stress. In downsized organisations employees often experience role over-load. That is the expectation that an employee will accomplish more work in less time and with fewer resources. Role ambiguity is a source of job stress because it represents the employee's poor job understanding and the uncertainty of not knowing where to start on a newly assigned job.
Interpersonal demand refers to the pressures created by groups and the employee's co-workers.
Lack of cooperation, collaboration, trust and support among members of a work group will create job stress for many members of the group. Organisational structure is the extent to which the organisation is highly formalised with extensive work rules and policies that constrain the work choices of employees. Centralisation is also an aspect of organisational structure that can act to limit employee discretion in decision making. Extensive rules, high centralisation and low levels of employee participation in decisions that affect employees are all examples of structure characteristics that may induce stress. Organisational leadership is the dominant culture created by the leadership style of top executives.