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It is hypothesised that there is an increasing gap between organisations′ concerns about stress at work and what the standard stress management training courses provide. To tackle this hypothesis two questions are asked. Why do organisations demand interventions to help manage stress, and what interventions do the stress management suppliers provide? It is tentatively concluded that what is required is to deal directly with organisational issues, such as workaholic expectations and changes at work which are not often dealt with by stress management programmes. Three approaches are suggested to confront these sorts of issues directly: team building, management action groups and one to one development counselling.

Presents a report of research which surveyed managers’ views on stress, their beliefs about stress interventions and who should be responsible for addressing job‐related stress problems. Stress management interventions have embedded in them a range of practices that offer opportunities for individual development and employee wellbeing. Equally, though, there is a strongly‐held belief that many interventions fall short, because they offer only a partial solution or fail to recognize the wider contextual‐structural issues within which organisational behaviour takes place. One reason for this may be that little attempt has been made to find out what managers understand by stress and the extent to which they think that their organisation has a responsibility to address problems of stress. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to explore these issues, using a sample of 540 New Zealand managers. The results draw attention to a number of issues including: do managers’ views of stress reflect acknowledged definitions? Who should assume responsibility for managing stress? What do managers mean when they indicate that an intervention is effective? Are stress interventions any different from standard human resource practices and is there a role for theory in stress interventions?

Stress damages us and our performance. It is a real part of most manager's experience and can be said to occur when significant demands exceed perceived management responsibilities and routines. Stress can be the essence of working life, and certainly need not always be damaging to us. But when it becomes excessive, it is something unwanted.

Gives an overview of events in the field of stress management. Describes the relationship of stress to the human autonomic nervous system and discusses the physiological effects in relation to type A/B behaviour. Investigates the sources and methods of detection of stress. Examines methodologies for stress management, the design of stress management programmes for industry application, and the results which selected corporations have achieved. Reviews a critique of current stress management programmes available to industry.

If organization development is to achieve the objective of improving organizational effectiveness, it is essential that companies adopt a proactive and preventive approach to stress management. Such an approach would reduce the costs of stress which result directly from organization development and, additionally, the costs of previously existing stress factors such as high labour turnover, absenteeism and reduced productivity. A practical all‐encompassing model is presented which brings the organization towards a philosophy of “total stress management” (TSM). Organizations which develop this philosophy, through the adoption of the practical action model, will be able to reduce the cost of stress substantially.

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 “stress management industry” has developed whereby organizations and individuals offer stress management interventions. These interventions claim to address a problem, about which there is still a great deal of uncertainty. Most of the literature about stress and its management has been derived from, and thus limited to, large organizations. Explores the issue of stress management as it is experienced by owner‐managers of small and medium‐sized businesses in the UK. Looks at some of the more recent theoretical and empirical literature and concludes with recommendations for stress management within the small firms sector.

Work‐related stress is a major concern for employers, and the UK Health and Safety Executive has introduced Management Standards for employers to support them in managing stress in the workplace. Managers have a key role to play in minimizing stress‐related risks for their staff. Management behavior has a direct impact on staff well‐being – managers can prevent or cause stress in those they manage. Managers also act as “gatekeepers” to their employees' exposure to stressful working conditions and are vital to the identification and tackling of stress in the workplace. This means that managers need to understand what behaviors they should show in order to manage their employees in a way that minimizes work‐related stress. New research has identified management behavior/competencies that prevent and reduce stress at work and this paper aims to present this.

The first phase of this research involved interviews with nearly 400 employees and managers, and focus groups with over 50 human resources (HR) professionals. They were asked for their views on what manager behaviors are important, in terms of behaviors that are effective and behaviors that are ineffective for managing stress in staff.

The behaviors identified were grouped into themes to create a framework of 19 management “competencies” for preventing and reducing stress at work.

The resulting competency framework can be incorporated into managers' management approach, into HR practices such as training, selection and appraisal of managers and into other stress management activities in order to manage stress at work more effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the work‐related attitudes (job satisfaction, job stress and the propensity to remain) of Australian academics and their association with organisational, institutional and demographic factors.

Data were collected by distributing a survey questionnaire to 750 academics, from 37 Australian universities.

The results indicate a moderately low level of job satisfaction, moderately high level of job stress, and high propensity to remain. The findings reveal that the organisational factors (management style, perceived organisational support, and the characteristics of the performance management system) exhibited the most significant association with academic work‐related attitudes, with the only significant institutional factor, the declining ability of students, negatively impacting on job satisfaction and job stress. The findings revealed that work‐related attitudes differ, based on discipline, with science academics found to be more stressed and less satisfied than accounting academics. Different organisational and institutional factors were associated with the work‐related attitudes of academics from these two disciplines.

The findings will make university management aware of the work‐related attitudes of staff, and the factors that are associated with such attitudes, thereby assisting management in developing management policies, and taking appropriate action to address the concerns of staff.

The study provides an initial comparison of the work‐related attitudes (job satisfaction, job stress, and propensity to remain) of Australian academics across the accounting and science disciplines. The study also provides an important insight into the association between specific organisational and institutional factors, with the work‐related attitudes of Australian academics across both disciplines.

Given the parallel processes of stress development and organisational changes towards increased managerialism, the purpose of this paper is to understand the way in which employees’ stress is perceived and managed in female- and male-dominated sectors, characterised by new management-oriented steering methods.

The paper is based on a thematic analysis of interviews with managers and employees at one Swedish female-dominated work setting and one male-dominated work setting. The paper offers an analysis of how managerial approaches to stress mediate the ways in which employees may come to govern their own subjectivity through stress-management practices. Drawing upon Foucault’s and Rose’s work on governmentality and freedom, these practices are understood as implicated in the everyday exercise of power over the self.

The main finding is that a logic emphasising proactivity was more prevalent at the female-dominated workplace, while a logic emphasising trust was most prevalent at the male-dominated workplace. Both logics perceive self-management and self-realisation as ways to manage stress, but in the proactive regime, self-management and self-realisation tend to turn into new modes of exploitation. Approaches to stress management in the proactive regime in fact seem to further diminish levels of discretion and control, which, according to previous research, are typically already low in female-dominated work.

Based on these findings, the study argues for the importance of combining a self-managerial approach with trust in order to avoid turning the individualisation of work into a source of stress at female-dominated workplaces.

The paper contributes to a more complex understanding of women’s work stress by highlighting its interconnection with a proactive stress management regime.