Stress Management Interventions in Industry

Today, occupational stress management is of high importance for organisational effectiveness and has become one of the most popular methods within the scope of work-site health promotion activities. Evaluation research on the effectiveness of stress management interventions started in the early 1970's and was mainly focused on inidividual-oriented stress management training. The number of evaluation studies on organizational-oriented stress management interventions is still very small and many questions such as the moderating role of process variables are not yet answered. This book gives an overview on occupational stress management interventions on the organisational level as well as on the individual level and explains how interventions on both levels may be combined. So far studies evaluating those combined approaches are hardly available. The study presented in this book aims at contributing to the extension of knowledge in this research field by evaluating an occupational stress management intervention combining individual and organizational oriented activities. The intervention has been realised in an European subsidiary of a large American enterprise in chemical industry. Special emphasis is placed on the role of process variables and their relation to intervention effectiveness. On this basis practical recommendations to improve process quality and effectiveness of occupational stress management programs are provided. The book addresses professionals and scientists who are active in the field of occupational health and stress management.