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February 16, 2011 | Volume 5 | Number 2
February 16, 2011
In this recurring feature, we bring you new releases, best-of-class reference texts and resources you can use to promote employee well-being and organizational performance. Titles and descriptions come from both the APA Center for Organizational Excellence’s Amazon Associates Store and APA Books. This month, we focus on workplace stress, with volumes that explore causes, risk factors and tips for preventing job burnout.
By investing in employee health and stress prevention, organizations can benefit from greater productivity and reductions in healthcare costs, absenteeism and accident/injury rates. This selection of books explores different workplace stress topics that are relevant to employers and the psychologists who work with them, as well as HR professionals and benefits managers.
What other books on workplace stress have you found helpful and informative? Email us and let us know.
By Julian Barling, E. Kevin Kelloway, Michael Robert Frone (2005)
Questions about the causes or sources of work stress have been the subject of considerable research, as well as public fascination, for several decades. Earlier interest in this issue focused on the question of whether some jobs are simply more inherently stressful than others. Other questions that soon emerged asked whether some individuals were more prone to stress than others. The Handbook of Work Stress focuses primarily on identifying the different sources of work stress across different contexts and individuals.
Edited by Ana Maria Rossi, James Campbell Quick and Pamela L Perrewé (2009)
This book offers twelve chapters organized into three major sections that address occupational stress and quality of working life. The authors are an internationally renowned team of scholar-research-practitioners who are grounded in applied science and clinical practice. Section 1 includes five chapters that address the organizational and individual costs of occupational stress. The costs are humanitarian and economic; both human suffering and financial burdens are important. Section 2 includes three chapters that focus on ways to mitigate the negative effects of occupational stress. We must help those who are suffering but we must do more by preventing distress where we can and building on positive, strength factors where possible. Section 3 includes four chapters that examine and expand our understanding of work life quality. Work life quality is so important because of the effects it has on workers and leaders, as well as the spillover impact into families and communities.
Edited by James E. Driskell & Eduardo Salas (1996)
This book presents basic and applied research that addresses the effects of acute stress on performance. There are a large number of applied settings that share the commonalities of high demand, high risk performance conditions, including aviation; military operations; nuclear, chemical, and other industrial settings; emergency medicine; mining; firefighting; and police work, as well as everyday settings in which individuals face stressors such as noise, time pressure, and high task load. This book focuses directly on the effects of acute stress – defined as intense, novel stress of limited duration – on performance. The effects of stress on task performance, decision making, and team interaction are discussed, as well as the interventions used to overcome them.
By James Campbell Quick, Jonathan D. Quick, Debra L. Nelson, & Joseph J. Hurrell, Jr. (1997)
Preventive Stress Management in Organizations revises the classic work, Organizational Stress and Preventive Management, which introduced the epidemiological notion of prevention into the domain of organizational stress. The book offers a comprehensive, orderly framework for practicing healthy preventive stress management. The book begins with a panoramic overview of the stress field from its medical and physiological origins in the early 1900s through its psychological elaborations during the second half of the century and its current application and practice in organizations. The authors examine the sources of stress; the psychophysiology of the stress response and individual moderators that condition vulnerability for distress; the psychological, behavioral, and medical forms of individual distress; and the organizational costs of distress. At the heart of the book is a framework for preventive stress management that can be practiced by both organizations and individuals.
By James Campbell Quick, Cary L. Cooper, Joanne H. Gavin and Jonathan D. Quick (2008)
The health of managers, executives, and business leaders has a massive impact on the performance and prospects of modern organizations. If health problems are not tackled, people become less productive, less effective, and more destructive. It is clear that business leaders and human resource professionals cannot afford to ignore the impact of work-related health issues on company performance. Yet even acknowledging this fact still leaves us with a choice over how to proceed. Should we try to minimize those risks that typically lead to health problems or seek to strengthen executive health? While recognising that identifying health risks is the first step in any preventive health program, Managing Executive Health argues for a positive approach, which emphasizes physical vigour, psychological well-being, spiritual vitality, and ethical integrity. Key issues are illustrated throughout with case studies of high-profile figures from the worlds of business and politics.
By Lawrence R. Murphy & Edited by Steven L. Sauter (1995)
This book presents research for psychologists on the changing nature of work in American society and on the organizational factors that promote or decrease job stress.
By Valerie O’Hara (1995)
Plenty of titles talk about on-the-job stress, but few provide an in-depth focus on what to do. Wellness at Work advises individuals on how to “de-stress” a work environment through using assessment tools to measure stress and techniques to alleviate it. From relaxation exercises to using nutrition, this book provides many important keys to workplace success.
Edited by Ken Addley (1997)
This textbook on stress at work includes chapters on outcomes and effects of stress, legal issues, prevention, coping and health considerations. Also included are several case studies.
By James H. Humphrey (1998)
Job Stress discusses how stress affects our bodies and minds and identifies its causes, explains why stress can take such a toll on us and what factors in the workplace seem to do most harm. It provides a birds’ eye view of the specific stresses most common in business and industry, healthcare and teaching, identifies causes and effects of stress in the workplace and provides coping behaviors and techniques for employees and managers. Practical applications of proven stress management techniques focus on enhancing a sense of well-being and productivity.
By Chris Peterson (1998)
This book focuses on the causes of stress and ill-health in the workplace and differential distributions among occupation and gender groups. And addresses the factors at work that lead to stress and ill-health among blue-collar workers compared with white-collar workers. The extent to which management control has an effect on differences in stress and ill-health between women and men is also examined.
By Randall Ross & Elizabeth M. Altmaier (1994)
This practical guide focuses on the intervention strategies which can be employed by counsellors to help individuals suffering from emotional and physiological stresses engendered in the workplace. Throughout the text, key points are illustrated by a wealth of case studies, while individual chapters define the nature of occupational stress and provide information about the emotional, behavioural, physiological and cognitive symptoms which can occur. Ross and Altmaier also discuss the factors influencing the problem: factors which can be tied to the individual, to the work setting and to the larger social context. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for both managers and counsellors concerned with the control of occupational stress.
By Lorne Sulsky & Carlla Smith (2004)
This text is written by working psychologists focused at the level of the individual worker. It critically reviews the literature across the broad domain of work stress in a fairly non-technical manner, while retaining scientific integrity. Because of rapid changes in work environments from technological advances and a myriad of economic, social and other factors, this ongoing transformation of work stress creates a “moving target” for this subject. Giving structure to this fluid topic, the text outlines a conceptual model in chapter one that approaches work stress as a process. This model serves as an organizing framework for the book, and as a way to integrate a variety of research streams within a unified “conceptual umbrella.” Instead of approaching work stress as a problem, the authors use their experience as active psychologists to help readers understand work stress as a process, and to help them cope with stress in the modern workplace.
By Anna Maravelas (2005)
An alarming 88% of Americans cite hostility, desk-rage, and workplace incivility as top concerns. How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress will help executives, supervisors and managers and the people that work for them-protect pride, profit and productivity from these disabling emotions. This book will teach you how to handle the daily onslaught of frustration without losing momentum, mood or confidence, avoid the conflict and cynicism that drains profits, resources, and relationships, discover why anger makes people irrational, lonely, and depressed and how to quickly calm agitated colleagues and customers and create a blame-resistant, emotionally resilient workforce.
By Bob Stahl and Elisha Goldstein (2010)
In A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, mindfulness experts Bob Stahl and Elisha Goldstein adapt Kabat-Zinn’s groundbreaking program into an accessible workbook format. Readers turn to this book once a week for eleven weeks, gradually improving their ability to relieve intense stress and reconnect with the present. The workbook invites readers to participate in formal and informal practices and use fill-in exercises to reflect and track their progress. After each weekly session, readers can apply the techniques they learned that week into everyday life, gradually learning to replace stress-promoting habits with mindful ones. The audio CD bound with this book offers extensive and helpful supplemental material that readers can listen to anytime to receive a refresher course on MBSR techniques and useful guidance for incorporating these techniques into their days.
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