or the stress reactions of individuals (Ben Porath & Tellegen 1990). Current research,
however, draws little attention to the interpersonal stress relationships within
organizations, and it is possible to conclude that there is still a lack of knowledge about
understanding the stress dynamics, i.e. how the stress and emotional well-being of
managers can affect the stress and well-being of non-managerial workers.
As mentioned above, work-related stress is currently considered to be one of the
biggest problems in the work environment. Literature offers, on the one hand, a wealth
of insights into the links among the working conditions, occupational stress and
emotional well-being. On the other hand, however, little is said about the stress coping
strategies of managers as the main actors involved in the formation of working
conditions.
The presented chapter aims to enrich the knowledge in the area of coping with
demanding situations in the work environment, especially in management by means of
a theoretical insight into the issue examined and, subsequently, by two research studies
dealing with this issue. The objective of the first one is to find out whether there exist
any statistically significant differences in the assessment of the selected behavioral
strategies in coping with stressful or demanding situations among managerial and non-
managerial workers. A differential analysis was conducted on the sample of 129
respondents on the basis of the data obtained by means of two methodologies for
detecting the coping strategies: Brief Cope (Carver 1997) and CISS (Endler & Parker
1990). The results of the analysis confirmed the existence of statistically significant
differences between the male and the female managers in assessing the individual
coping strategies in demanding managerial situations. Based on these results it may be
concluded that in terms of assessment of the coping behavior, male managers use active
coping more extensively, whereas female managers have a greater tendency to use the
emotion-oriented coping strategies.
The second research study focuses on the statistically significant differences in
the assessment of the selected behavioral strategies in coping with demanding
situations between managers and non-managerial workers. Again, a differential
analysis was conducted on the sample of 340 respondents on the basis of the data
obtained by means of the two formerly mentioned methodologies for detecting the
coping strategies: Brief Cope and CISS. The results of the analysis confirmed the
existence of statistically significant differences between managers and non-managers
in assessing the individual coping strategies of managers in demanding managerial
situations. On the basis of the results obtained, it can be concluded that in terms of
assessment of behavior in demanding situations, managers use the problem-solving
strategies more extensively, whereas non-managers are more oriented at the avoidance,
emotional relaxation, and social support strategies, as compared to managers.
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