An Analysis of Sport Managers' Work Stress Levels in Various Variables

This paper was conducted to measure the psychological and psychosomatic symptoms related with the sport managers’ work stress in public sector and federations. In this research, total 185 sport managers including 31 sport managers from the Central Organization of Sport General Directorate, 113 sport managers from the provincial organization, 41 sport managers from the Independent Sport Federations were included. The relevant managers were applied the work stress scale developed by Houso and Rizzo (1972). According to the results of the research, as sport managers get older, the averages of work stress seem to increase. In younger sport managers, the averages of work stress were found to be lower. When the participant sport managers’ education levels improve, their work stress points fall down. In the first period of service of sport managers, the averages of work stress were high, in next years they went down over time.


Introduction
When a few people come together to reach a certain aim in collaboration in each part of society, management occurs. There is no human not being included in such a movement in society. That's why, each citizen exists in a social organization. These organizations are instruments which are arranged for other aims [1]. In fact, management has become an issue of many sciences since management is a social case, it involves all members of society, it is also identified with the concept of state [2].
Introduction of public goods and services provided to society by countries shows itself in various fields. One of these fields is youth services and sport [3]. Sport management requires utilising current human and material resources effectively and efficiently at most in order to succeed in certain sportive services [4]. Organizations make investments for their workers as their most valuable assets in order to survive within competition conditions rapidly increasing each passing day. Achievements or failures of organizations are absolutely directly-related with workers' stress-free moments. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze workers in an organization in which they mostly spend their lives and to reveal organizational stress factors. If any necessary importance is not given to organizational stress, it will lead to workers' dissatisfaction with works [5].
It is important to know the differences between what stress is and what factors cause stress. Various pressures, attitudes and demands from families, workplaces, schools, friends, and states are external stress resources. An individual's own pressures and expectations are internal stress resources as well. Internal stress resources are ambition, materializm, competition and obstinacy. Mostly internal stress resources are much more effective than external stress resources. All external and internal pressures, expectations are stress resources. Any reaction of a body to pressures from these resources represents stress. However nice it is or not, everybody knows that human body shows biochemical reactions to external requests. Even if stress resources are different, biological reactions do not vary in general [6].
Work stress poses a critical problem for both persons in any organization and any organization by itself. Work stress is an undesirable concept, which results in mental and physical diseases accompanied by physical stress resources related with work and inadequate struggle [7,8,9,10,11]. In addition to these, changing life conditions and increasing stress factors reveal that stress resources must be assessed in more global viewpoints [12]. Luthans classified stress resources in organizations in four groups. These are "organizational policies, structural features of organization, physical conditions and organizational processes". When organizations develop and attain a complex structure, stress resources triggering each other increase and organizations have difficulty in control [13]. Murphy (1995) researched the relation between work stress, personal characteristics and health, suggested that work stress may cause work dissatisfaction, depression, physical diseases and behavioral disorders [14,15]. Furthermore, stress resources need to be analyzed in more actual viewpoints due to changing life conditions and increasing stress factors [12]. A research on work stress and workers' happiness indicates that there is a negative relation between manager, family support and depression, anxiety and physical symptoms [15].
Another research was carried out by Huang et al. (2002) and the effects of work stress on workers' health were studied [16]. Fairbrother and Warn (2003) discussed the relations between work health, stress, work satisfaction and work conditions [17]. Jamal (2005), focused on personal and organizational issues resulted from workers having work stress and behaviour features of A type [18].
Due to sport managers' professions, they experience stress in psychological, physical and mental ways in work environment. Their own stress is reflected on sport managers' work comrades, friends, family and social life negatively. Sport managers' own stress in work environment substantially affects the expectations of the institution and society. For this reason, minimising stress experienced by sport managers in work environment is important for making efficiency in managers' working institutions. The purpose of this research was to measure the psychological and psychosomatic symptoms related with the sport managers' work stress in public sector and federations. For that purpose, the following questions were replied; 1-At which levels the sport managers working at public sector and federations experience stress? 2-Do the stress levels of the sport managers working at public sector and federations differ in gender, age, educational background, period of service, management period, work unit and graduation department?

Material and Method
This is a descriptive study with screening model, which was conducted to measure psychological study and psychosomatic symptoms related with work stress in public sector and federations. The research group consisted of total 185 sport managers randomly chosen including 31 sport managers from the Central Organization of Sport General Directorate, 113 sport managers from the provincial organization, 41 sport managers from the Independent Sport Federations.
Data were collected with the Work Stress Scale developed by Houso and Rizzo (1972 Data were analyzed with the SPSS 22.0 package program, resulting from the Kolmogorov Smirnov test applied for seeing whether data showed a normal distribution, the distribution was observed to be different rather than the normal distribution (z=0.14; p<.05). In the analysis of data, non-parametric Mann Whitney-U and Kruskall Wallis-H tests were used in the comparison of inter-groups data as well as the descriptive statistical techniques. The results were interpreted at the significance level of p<.05 the level of significance was interpreted.
When also examined the management period of managers, half of them (49,19%) had 1-10 years of management period, the others had 11 years and over. 16,76% of the managers has been working at the Central Organization of Sport General Directorate, 22,16% of them has been working at Independent Federations, 52,97% at the Provincial Directorate, 8,11% a the District Directorate as well. When looked at the graduation department of the sport managers, most of them (44,86%) graduated from İİBF. In accordance with Table 2, by examining the general average of the sport managers' responses to the work stress scale (2,62±1,07), the sport managers generally experienced stress. The managers mostly experienced stress by working in high tension (2,49±1,50), even if they did other things at home, they often thought about their works, they could not decide whether they experienced stress. When looked at the averages of other stress-leading items in the managers, they were similar to each other.  Any significant differences were not determined in the points from the work stress scale among the managers in accordance with the gender variable (p>.05). Any significant differences were not found in the managers' work stress points in accordance with the age variable (p>.05).
At Table 5, there were not statistically significant differences in the sport managers' points from the work stress scale in terms of educational background (p> .05). According to Table 6, the sport managers' points from the work stress scale significantly differed in period of service (p<.05). As a result of Mann Whitney-U test which was done to determine which groups the differences resulted from, there were differences in favor of the group with 11-15 years of service between the group with 6-10 years of service and the group with 11-15 years of service (U=142,000; z=-2,142; p<.05), in favor of the group with 26 years of service and over between the group with 6-10 years of service and the group with 26 years of service and over (U=300,500; z=-2,726; p<.05), in favor of the group with 26 years of service and over between the group with 21-25 years of service and the group with 26 years of service and over (U=1117,000; z=-2,486; p<.05). According to this result, when service period increases, sport managers' work stress levels reduce.  Table 7, the sport managers' points from the work stress scale did not significantly differ in management period (p<.05).
As a result of Mann Whitney-U test about whether which groups the differences related with management period resulted in, significant differences were seen in favour of the group with 11-15 years of management period between the group with 1-5 years of management period and the group with 11-15 years of management period (U=179,000; z=-4,193; p<.05), in favour of the group with 16 -20 years of management period between the group with 1-5 years of management period and the group with 16-20 years of management period (U=323,500; z=-3,591; p<.05), in favour of the group with 26 years of management period and over between the group with 1-5 years of management period and the group with 26 years of management period and over (U=323,500; z=-3,591; p<.05), in favor of the group with 11-15 years of management period between the group with 6-10 years of management period and the group with 11-15 years of management period (U=103,500; z=-4,897; p<.05), in favor of the group with 16-20 years of management period between the group with 6-10 years of management period and the group with 16-20 years of management period (U=227,000; z=-4,205; p<.05), in favor of the group with 21-25 years of management period between the group with 6-10 years of management period and the group with 21-25 years of management period (U=414,000; z=-1,926; p<.05), in favor of the group with 26 years of management period and over between the group with 6-10 years of management period and the group with 26 years of management period and over (U=164,500; z=-3,812; p<.05), in favor of the group with 26 years of management period and over between the group with 21-25 years of management period and the group with 26 years of management period and over (U=126,000; z=-2,796; p<.05). According to this result, when management period increases, sport managers' work stress levels reduce.
At Table 8, there were not statistically significant differences in the sport managers' points from the work stress scale in terms of work unit (p>.05).
At Table 9, there were not significant differences in the sport managers' points from the work stress scale in terms of graduation department (p>.05).

Conclusions
In this research which was done to reveal whether sport managers' work stress affected their social lives positively or negatively, these following results were obtained.
The sport managers working at the Central and Provincial Organizations of Youth and Sport General Directorate, the Independent Sport Federations were understood to have medium levels of work stress. Efeoğlu (2006) researched on workers in medicine sector and Tekgöz (2011) also researched on work stress, work satisfaction and life satisfaction levels of soccer referees, both of them found that the averages of work stress were at medium level [19,20]. Gökmen (2017) presented the average points of work stress as 2,54 for male participants as 2,48 for females among the public servants. These researches were parallel with our research results [21].
When looked at the points from the managers' work stress scale, any significant differences were not seen in terms of gender, age, educational background, work unit and graduation department variables. Efeoğlu (2006)'s research showed that demographical variables were not effective on work stress levels [19]. This result was parallel with our research. But the managers' period of service and management period variables significantly altered the managers' work stress levels [20]. Also, Tekgöz (2011) studied the relations between soccer referees' work stress, work satisfaction and life satisfaction levels, determined that soccer referees' work stress, work satisfaction and life satisfaction levels did not significantly differ in age, period of service, gender and educational background variables. Gökmen (2017) found that there were not any differences in work stress, work satisfaction including internal satisfaction and external satisfaction variables, age among public servants. This result was parallel with our research [21]. Torun and Tekin (2014), reported that there were not any significant differences between work stress of health institutions managers working in the province Ankara and age, gender, marital status, child number, marriage period, educational background and income status from personality features. However, there were significant differences in work stress levels between the sport managers' total service of period and management period within our research [22].
In conclusion, stress-leading factors must be determined and destroyed in order to turn the negative effects of work stress experienced in public institutions and organizations by the sport managers into the positive effects in social life. In particular, the sport managers must integrate some parts of their lives into sport in order to save themselves from work stress and so this will reduce their stress in work environment to some extent.