Gender based stress management of top managerial personnel: A study based on selected leading organizations in the Colombo district

Abstract

‘Stress’ is body’s way of responding to any kind of demand. Stress can have positive as well as negative results. Due to fierce competition in today’s business, managers in many organizations have to contend with stress when dealing with customers and employees. Therefore, the concept of Stress Management has become important in today’s world, especially in the commercial industry. Top managerial personnel are bound with organizational goals while leading their subordinates towards the same goal. Time boundaries and targets are the extra burdens born by the top level personnel. Based on gender this burden is different. The way one reacts to stress and it is managed are different based on gender. The objective of this research is to examine the management of stress of the people in the top managerial level posts, based on gender. Fifty managers were randomly taken as the sample of this study. Methods such as interviews, questionnaires were used to collect primary data and magazines, books, journals and websites were used as secondary data. Data analysis was done both quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings of this research proved that both men and women are stressed at work, but males manage stress better than females. The main reason identified was that males use varied ways to release stress and as females are bound by responsibilities towards both family and work that they tend to react more emotionally to stress than males. This acts as a vicious cycle placing further stress on females.