"The experience of stress is widely spread in contemporary society and is a major impediment toward sustainable competitive advantage and quality of working life. A wide range of workers is exposed to various forms of work conditions experienced as stressful. Nevertheless, the research on organizational stress suffers from two pivotal shortcomings. First, there is too narrow a focus on what we refer to as the medico-psychological aspects of organizational stress. When stress is conceptualized primarily as being more or less detached from organizational settings, socio-cultural aspects of stress are underrated. Second, organizational studies within the field of HRM and strategic management have not directed much research toward stress, and do not sufficiently acknowledge the human body as the locus of experience of stress. Research on stress is thus undersocialized and disembodied at the same time. The study of stress in organizations must be more pronounced in terms of the individual human being as the primary site of stress. This paper aims at problematizing the experience of stress within organizational theory. It suggests to a new approach that mediates the two previous existing perspectives on stress wherein stress is (1) embodied, yet socially embedded, and (2) conceived of as a strategic priority."

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