Managing workplace stress: Organizational approach

Abstract

Evolution of the modern labor market creates new risks, including socio-psychological, among which workplace stress has a special place. In order to prevent productivity and financial losses, company management needs to handle the new type of risk. Existing technologies of stress management proposed by psychological literature are insufficient. We elaborate a new group of theories that consider workplace stress as a social problem and propose that not only individuals but also organizations are responsible for regulation of stress-based risks. The paper describes key approaches to stress research and systematizes different levels of stress factors including organizational and macrosocial factors. We then present and analyze European models of stress management on the firm level and the elements of government policy for the workplace stress regulation and highlight the key research gaps that specifically important in the Russian context.