A Psychosocial Model of Stress and Its Application to Managerial Unemployment

Abstract

This paper describes a model of psychosocial stress attempting to explain the psychological response state of stress and physical disease (strain) related to stress, from the consequences of an individual's failure to master self-threatening problems. The model is phenomenological, focusing on an individual's perceived organizational and nonorganizational demands, and how these are modified by personality factors. Behavioral approaches for dealing with threat, and the effectiveness of such approaches, are discussed. The model is used as a framework to analyze qualitative and quantitative data derived from a study of unemployed managers. The themes which characterize the highand the low-stress managers are delineated, and the overall implications of the findings are discussed, with particular focus on the management of stress in organizations.