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This article acknowledges the need for managers to be more politically sensitive, due to social and organisational changes. The dual nature of the link between politics and stress is explored. First, the question of how political situations lead to stress is examined. In order to analyse the second link a model of political sensitivity and a model of stress are presented. This enables the effect of stress on the dimensions of political skill to be assessed. In conclusion, the implications of these links for management and organisation development are drawn.

A model of organisational stress management is presented, as a four stage process, comprising: getting the organisation to recognise stress; training individuals in stress management; providing helping skills; and providing a stress audit. It is argued that each of these stages involves a series of interesting tasks, that can be either facilitated or hindered by a range of organisational supports or constraints. The management of stress is of major importance to all management functions – not only personnel – in the light of its heavy potential costs.

The management of stress both at home and at work is vitally important if employers are to get the best out of their workforce. Focuses on a four‐stage mode for helping others handle pressure.

Two recent papers on the psychological impact of redundancy, have pointed out that there are frequently very positive reactions to the experience. Their remarks do not apply to those seeking voluntary redundancy to achieve substantial financial benefits, but to those who have redundancy forced upon them who then discovered that it gave them an exciting opportunity to start a new career and a new life. Apart from the fact that “redundancy” could do with some positive publicity, their finding raises the question as to what kinds of people respond to redundancy in this proactive fashion. This study was designed to examine the validity and utility of a personality typology which has the appearance of being very relevant to understanding people's reactions to changing circumstances.

In a recent paper, Hartley and Cooper reviewed the available studies of redundancy using a psychological framework and came to the conclusion that insufficient systematic work had so far been done ‘to assess the impact of the phenomenon on the psychological state of the redundant worker, his family and the wider community’. This lack of examination of redundancy from a psychological approach was a state which Hartley and Cooper felt should be remedied. And, in the title of their paper, they pose an implicit question by the inclusion of a question mark — ‘Redundancy: a psychological problem?’. Yet, as Wood notes, there is in fact little specification of either the potential or reported psychological effects of redundancy. Hartley and Cooper document the reported impact of redundancy in terms of the various stages of the process and note that most studies have tended to concentrate on the period of unemployment following the loss of the job rather than on the period previous to the redundancy. A number of these studies, they note, have been attitudinal, describing the feelings of the affected population, or a sub‐sample, towards a number of relevant issues, most notably the redundancy itself. While they consider that the issue of redundancy has been studied from the viewpoints of both labour economics and sociology, Hartley and Cooper are more concerned to highlight the lack of concern displayed so far by psychologists. They quote the study of the closure of a steel works by Warr and Lovatt, in which psychological wellbeing was singled out for examination and was found to be associated with length of time unemployed. This study is, however, exceptional in the emphasis placed on the psychological effects of redundancy. Hartley and Cooper go on to comment on the central place given in previous studies to the job search process, both in terms of attitudes and behavioural patterns. From job search, attention is directed to a review of the studies of the unemployed in general as opposed to the redundant in particular. Attention is drawn throughout the paper to the lack of concern shown to date with the examination of redundancy as a psychological problem.

Their reluctance to engage in politics often deters women from moving into senior management. “Many women's reluctance to work at making the right impression and to engage in politics holds them back”, says Judi Marshall, who draws this conclusion from a study of 30 senior women managers.1 It highlights one of the main reasons for political skills being a key area for women managers. The purpose of this article is to encourage women to overcome this reluctance and acquire these skills in order to enable them to reach their full potential.

Clear and shared goals are seen as important to the effectiveness of teams. Yet evidence from the authors’ team development workshops for teams of directors and chief officers in local government is that these groups are almost all dissatisfied with this aspect of team working. Reports on the authors’ findings using Woodcock and Francis’s “Nine Building Blocks” questionnaire and discusses the reasons why these teams face difficulty with goals and objectives. Concludes with discussing several practical approaches to helping teams to clarify an agreed set of goals.

Anyone who has been in regular contact with the media during the last 10 years must have been impressed by the amount of information and interest in health and the stresses of modern life. Much of the attention has been centred on the role of work in creating stress and its possible contribution to major illnesses such as heart disease, stomach ulcers and hypertension. This interest has been stimulated by an ever growing amount of research into stress at work. Friedman and Rosenman in California have carried out many large scale studies of the role of behaviour/personality in causing heart disease. This lead to a semi‐popular book called A‐Type Behavior and your Heart. Three large surveys have been reported in the last few years: Caplan et al. carried out a survey of 2,300 persons from 23 different occupations for the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. They collected data on perceived stressors at work, perceived strain and perceived supports from inside and outside the organisation. Physiological measures were taken from a sub‐sample of 390 The results are very complex but the most stressed persons were in occupations which involve tasks that are simple but inescapable such as in machine‐minding. Such jobs are low in status and the strain is possibly exacerbated by lack of support from both inside and outside the organisation. Zaleznik et al. studied over 2,000 managers and supervisors from a large Canadian Corporation. Pearlin and Schooler conducted a survey of 2,600 persons for the National Institute of Mental Health. As well as exploring the nature of the stresses and strains experienced by these people the authors asked about the different kinds of strategies they used to cope with their problems. Four different problem areas were explored: marital, child‐rearing, economic and work. It was found that the people with a greater range of coping strategies felt less strained except in the area of work. The authors suggested that this was because the in dividual person can do little to remove the stresses at work since they are inherent in the system. Coping with work problems, they argue, needs to be done more at the level of the system.

Looks at the process whereby certain members of corporate management teams are marginalized as a result of the central and powerful role of central departments such as finance and personnel. Investigates the impact on the effective working of the team and the consequences for the organization as a whole.

Deals with the question of whether senior managers in the public and private sector differ psychologically. There are many ways in which such a difference might be measured. Examines one aspect: the predisposition to adopt particular roles in teams. Compares the results found by Meredith Belbin from a sample of participants attending management courses at Henley Staff College with a sample of senior British local government officers using Belbin′s Team Role questionnaire. The differences are marked, posing interesting questions about the reasons for the differences and their consequences. There is clearly need for further research.