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Focusing on 420 women employed within the woman-dominated health care sector, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how any variation in their total workload (TWL) in terms of paid and unpaid work relate to various subjective health complaints (SHC) (n=420) and the neuroendocrine stress marker cortisol (n=68).

The authors explored how any variation in their TWL in terms of paid and unpaid work related cross-sectionally to SHC (n=420), and the neuroendocrine stress marker cortisol (n=68).

Hierarchical regression analyses showed that stress of unpaid work was most strongly related to diurnal variations in cortisol. Both stress of paid and unpaid work as well as TWL stress, but not hours spent on TWL, were related to SHC.

Taken together, objective measures of hours spent on various TWL domains were unrelated to outcome measures while perceptions of having too much TWL and TWL stress were linked to both cortisol and SHC, i.e. how individuals perceive a situation seem to be more important for health than the actual situation, which has implications for research and efforts to reduce individual TWL.

This study is unique in showing that unpaid work and perceptions having too much TWL relate to stress markers in women working in the public health care sector.

The purpose of this paper is to study the demand-control-support (DCS) model on burnout in male and female managers and non-managers, taking into account genetic and shared family environmental factors, contributing to the understanding of mechanisms of how and when work stress is related to burnout.

A total of 5,510 individuals in complete same-sex twin pairs from the Swedish Twin Registry were included in the analyses. Co-twin control analyses were performed using linear mixed modeling, comparing between-pairs and within-pair effects, stratified by zygosity and sex.

Managers scored higher on demands and control in their work than non-managers, and female managers seem to be particularly at risk for burnout facing more demands which are not reduced by a higher control as in their male counterparts. Co-twin analyses showed that associations between control and burnout as well as between demands and burnout seem to be affected by shared family environmental factors in male non-managers but not in male managers in which instead the associations between social support and burnout seem to be influenced by shared family environment.

Taken together, the study offers knowledge that shared environment as well as sex and managerial status are important factors to consider in how DCS is associated to exhaustion.

Using twin data with possibilities to control for genetics, shared environment, sex and age, this study offers unique insight into the DCS research, which focusses primarily on the workplace environment rather than individual factors.

The study aims to investigate the production offshore outsourcing practices of SMEs in the New Zealand printing, publishing and packaging industries. It identifies the techniques SMEs use to organise and manage their offshore outsourcing activities. The authors then develop a managerial framework to assist SMEs in their future offshore outsourcing ambitions.

The study takes a qualitative approach; obtaining data from a sample of 22 New Zealand SMEs in the printing, publishing and packaging industries that are actively offshore outsourcing production tasks. Data was gathered in the form of semi‐structured interviews with SME managers who have carried out offshore outsourcing.

To mitigate offshore outsourcing costs, SMEs use the internet to locate suppliers and use short‐term reliable contracts that are managed remotely or by intermediaries. Customer involvement was highly important during the entire offshore outsourcing process. Most SMEs developed long‐term business relationships with reliable suppliers. These findings are integrated into the SME framework, which identifies ways SMEs can overcome resource constraints and minimise risks when offshore outsourcing.

This study is confined to a single country and reports on findings for several related industries, i.e. the printing, publishing and packaging industries in New Zealand. This limits its applicability to research in other settings and other industries. However, it identifies an area of research (offshore outsourcing activities in SMEs) that could be extended to other industries and countries by future research.

The SME framework presents an easily understood approach that has been verified by SME managers who have successfully offshore outsourced production tasks. The research proves that SMEs can offshore outsource within the constraints of limited physical and managerial resources.

The study showed that the decision‐making process to outsource is supported by the transaction costs approach. Firms have to balance out total cost considerations in making their decision to offshore (including contingency costs) to ensure that the savings from outsourcing are greater than the transaction costs. The resource‐based view of the firm is also used to suggest that offshore outsourcing means that firms may be able to improve their own competences by providing (through their suppliers) access to more sophisticated and higher‐quality processes.

The research contributes to the growing area of SME offshore outsourcing research, providing detailed empirical evidence of SME offshore outsourcing activities occurring in New Zealand.