Executive stress: A ten‐country comparison

In recent years, many companies have become conscious of the dire effects of excessive managerial stress on the performance of the organization, as well as on the health of their executives. Moreover, the so called “boss's disease” was long considered strictly a phenomenon of the affluent, industrialized Western world. The results of this investigation, however, reveal that the spectre of executive stress is not only taking on critical dimensions for companies in developing countries (in terms of mental well being and job satisfaction) but that its incidence is worrying, especially in newly industrialized Japan. The pressures on managers to perform in a climate of rapid sociological, technological, and economic change in emerging countries such as Brazil, Nigeria, Egypt, and Singapore, as well as Japan, are beginning to produce negative effects. Executives in all five countries show a higher incidence of mental stress symptoms and job dissatisfaction than their counterparts from other highly industrialized countries surveyed, e.g., the United States, Sweden, and West Germany.