Documents Ingelgård, Anders 2 results

"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."

"Emotions and stress are inextricably entangled: being stressed has bodily as well as emotional implications for human beings. The widespread distinction between mind and body in organization theory, following the Cartesian doctrine, blocks the sufficient theoretization of stress. In general, there is a preference in organization theory toward linguistic, literary, and semiotic interpretations of organizational practices. Consequently, notions such as culture and discourse have been largely favoured. The limits of this tradition in Western thinking, Cartesian over Spinozist philosophy, are that mind is favoured over body, thinking over emotions, mind over matter. This paper presents a study of the experience of stress in a pharmaceutical company. It suggests that stress is to be conceived of as a bodily phenomenon while incorporating the emotional qualities of human beings. Being an outcome of a set of ambiguities, stress is produced in a social setting but has immediate bodily effects on employees."