Opening Pandora’s Box

Abstract

Within the last decade, stress has emerged within the academic literature as one of the key managerial problems within the areas of human resource management and occupational psychology. As the opening quotation suggests, stress has both acute and chronic properties. The worst-case scenario is that stress can ultimately result in severe illness or even in death (Palumbo and Herbig, 1994). Even the less dramatic manifestations of the problem can result in serious consequences by impairing the individual’s abilities to cope. The costs of stressrelated illness can be considerable. One estimate suggests that it could cost up to £1.3 billion, annually, in the UK alone (Summers, 1990). The phenomenon of stress transcends the private-public sector divide and is manifested across the range of occupational classifications. Despite the apparently high frequency of its occurrence, the concept is largely poorly defined and the literature indicates the existence of a number of paradigmatic camps. Unpacking this concept, and its associated managerial implications, is akin to opening Pandora’s Box (Elliott and Smith, 1993a). At one level the concept must be examined in order to provide a greater understanding of the issues although it soon becomes rapidly apparent that the problem is seemingly trans-scientific in that it goes beyond the current abilities of science to prove_(Weinberg, 1972). At a cynical level, one could argue that stress has become the latter day equivalent of a bad back as a means of having paid time off work. Its symptoms art easy to manifest whilst diagnosis and causality are difficult to prove. A more balanced view would suggest tha rapid change in organizations — typified by the last 15 years in the UK — create stressors for the workforce, which may become manifested as an apparent inability to cope.

“Few managers can afford to ignore the effects of stress. More working days are lost through stress-related illness than ever before. It now has a greater impact than days lost through strikes. ... The impact of stress is not restricted to illness. It also has a detrimental effect on important functions of management such as the effectiveness of decision-making, the quality of interpersonal relationships, the standard of work, the quality of working life and, of course, ultimately, the level of productivity.” (Cranwell-Ward, 1990 p.3)