ABSTRACT
Role ambiguity and role conflict were among the first social psychological stressors to be studied in the workplace. The theoretical and empirical description of these two stressors in Organizational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity thrust them on to center stage in this research. Group cohesiveness and supervisor support were chosen because of a theory of social support, which since then has become much more well-known, holding that social support should buffer or moderate the relationship between work-environment stressors and strains. Inter-role conflict refers to conflicting messages about expectations for more than one role, one of which is usually the job. There are conceptual similarities and differences between role conflict and role ambiguity. Pearce concluded that, among the studies reviewed, only one role ambiguity index clearly referred solely to unpredictability; most of the others implicitly or explicitly included both environmental information deficiency and the person's perception of unpredictability.
