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The purpose of this paper is to provide an interview with Cary L. Cooper, Distinguished Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at Lancaster University

Interview.

In this wide‐ranging interview, Professor Cooper discusses numerous prevalent workplace issues, including productivity, wellbeing, job insecurity and presenteeism.

The interview offers insight for HR professionals from one of the foremost thinkers in organizational psychology and behavior.

Using e-mail is a time-consuming activity that can increase workload stress. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the individual’s e-mail load, workload stress and desired e-mail load, drawing from the cybernetic theory of stress.

Based on prior theory, the authors first hypothesized relationships among e-mail load, workplace stress and desired e-mail load. The authors then tested these relationships on a sample of 504 full-time workers in the USA, using survey data and covariance-based structural equation modeling techniques.

The authors find that higher e-mail load is associated with higher workload stress; higher workload stress is associated with lower desired e-mail load; lower desired e-mail load is associated with lower e-mail load; and higher workload stress is associated with higher psychological strain, higher negative emotions and lower organizational commitment.

The study provides a novel understanding of workload stress due to e-mail load, through the lens of cybernetic theory. It contributes to the e-mail overload and technostress literatures by conceptualizing desired e-mail load as a potential outcome of workplace stress and as a regulator for e-mail load. For practitioners, the study highlights the importance of managing employees’ e-mail load to prevent the negative effects of workplace stress and associated strains.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Much research has been conducted on the causes and consequences of stress (Ivancevich, 1986; Cooper & Payne, 1988; Sauter, Hurrell & Cooper, 1989). More recently, researchers have turned their attention to strategies that might be used to remedy the problem (Cooper, 1987). A number of papers address the issue at a conceptual level, suggesting different ways of categorising stress intervention techniques. Matteson and Ivancevich (1987) draw a distinction between preventive and curative strategies. DeFrank and Cooper (1987) suggest that interventions can focus on the individual, the organisation or the individual/organisational interface. Murphy (1988) presents three levels of intervention: primary (stressor reduction), secondary (stress management) and tertiary (employee assistance programmes).

This study aims to explore how coping strategies (CS) mediate the relationship between job insecurity (JI) and subjective well-being (SWB) leading to presenteeism among millennials. This study has been tested based on the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001) and the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). In India, employees in the information technology (IT) and business process management sectors have been facing increased job insecurity over the last couple of years. The advent of technology has increased job insecurity among millennials, specifically in the IT sector. The Indian IT and information technology–enabled service (ITES) sector witnessed mass retrenchments by companies in 2016–2017. Instead of reskilling, the companies decided to lay off their employees. During the pandemic, the IT and ITES industries witnessed a massive culture shift in terms of technology and work engagement. Postpandemic, the recession is looming large on these industries. In 2022, tech layoffs have witnessed 135,000 employees impacted globally and many may lose their job in the coming year. This study chose Indian millennials because they form a large part of the Indian workforce, especially in the IT and ITES sector.

In this study, cross-sectional design is used where different individuals are part of the study at the same point in time. A sequential mixed method of research is adopted for this study, owing to the kind of research questions and the requirement to include critical realism. A qualitative study was carried out post the quantitative study, to corroborate the results from the quantitative study. Quantitative methodologies address questions about causality, generalizability or magnitude of outcome, whereas qualitative research methodologies explore why or how a phenomenon occurs, describe the nature of an individual’s experience during the study relevant to the context and/or develop a theory (Fetters et al., 2013). Because the study is about the millennial workforce in IT and the ITES sectors, the sample population comprised employees in Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) of Delhi in northern India. Out of a total of 374 ITES companies listed in the national association of software and service companies (2018), 103 are based out of Delhi/NCR; hence, companies from Delhi/NCR were chosen for the study. The other reason for opting for companies based in Delhi/NCR was that many millennials from second- and third-tier cities also are employed in these companies bringing in varied cultural perspectives. This study included 588 employees working in ITES organizations based in the National Capital Region of India. Mediation analysis for statistical verification was carried out with regression-based analysis in SPSS macro process (version 4).

The impact of job insecurity on the positive and negative affects of the subjective well-being of millennials was found to be substantial. Coping strategies moderated the relationship and it was seen that both engaged and disengaged strategies of coping had an impact on the positive affect of subjective well-being but did not have any impact on the negative affect of subjective well-being. The positive affect of subjective well-being was negatively related to presenteeism, and the negative affect of subjective well-being was positively related to presenteeism.

This study is carried out only in the ITES industry and on millennials. With the advent of technology, other industries are going through challenges concerning layoffs even though the severity of the same might be less. In times to come, for strategizing employee engagement, it is necessary to understand how the workforce copes with various work-related stress factors. The positive affects and negative affects of well-being and responses have been studied from an employee perspective only. Further research should be conducted to explore responses from both employers and employees to establish presenteeism and the antecedents of presenteeism in conjunction with positive and negative affects of well-being. There is further scope to study the impact of job insecurity on adaptive presenteeism in older generations and various industries given the current job scenario and talent-reskilling issues.

This study brings forth original insights into the impact of constant job threats on millennials employed in the IT and/or IT service sectors. The key findings contribute to literature knowledge and help managers recognize the unfavorable consequences of continuous job threats on the well-being of employees. There is an immediate need for managers to recognize the problem and devise various policies and communication strategies to enable millennial employees to cope with the constant changes in the organization, owing to various technological, political and environmental factors. Organizations should be mindful of this impact, which can subsequently have serious consequences on the productivity of the employees, resulting in decreased overall performance and health of the organization.

This study of job insecurity as a job stressor, triggering coping strategies in Indian millennials working in the ITES and IT industry, presents original insights. This study explores and presents how the impact of job insecurity may increase presenteeism as a result of coping. This study brings value to practitioners and this study may help organizations improve the overall well-being of their employees, thus improving productivity. On the contrary, it also opens opportunities for exploring the impact of job insecurity as a challenge stressor.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/02683949510081356. When citing the article, please cite: Kathryn M. Young, Cary L. Cooper, (1995) “Occupational stress in the ambulance service: a diagnostic study”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 10 Iss: 3, pp. 29 - 36.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/02683949510081356. When citing the article, please cite: Kathryn M. Young, Cary L. Cooper, (1995) “Occupational stress in the ambulance service: a diagnostic study”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 10 Iss: 3, pp. 29 - 36.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/02683949510081338. When citing the article, please cite: Anna Litwinenko, Cary L. Cooper, (1995), “The impact of trust status on health care workers”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 10 Iss: 3, pp. 12 - 16.

Aims to present a critical appraisal of the research relating to the sources of stress and stress reactions experienced by women managers. Considers the available data and level of understanding, and the assumptions that traditional approaches have been based upon. Presents conflicting findings and considers the implications of such results. Offers an overview of the current knowledge pertaining to women and managerial stress, raising a number of questions for which there are currently no answers.