Organizational Role Stress : A Case Study in the Swedish Public Sector

Sammanfattning: Work-related stress among employees in Sweden is reported to increase, women areexperiencing higher levels of stress than their male colleagues. Organizational Role Stress is a denomination for all stress related to an individuals role in an organizationand the annual cost for Organizational Role Stress in the European Union exceeds € 20 billion. Managers in Lycksele municipality emphasized a troublesome working situation where time is not enough to balance administrative responsibilities and operative leadership. Hence, the aim to investigate: “How does Organizational Role Stress affect the balance between administrative responsibilities and operative leadership among managers in Lycksele municipality?” Four key words were deduced from the research question: Organizational Role Stress, Administrative Management, Public Sector Leadership and Public Sector, which guided the search for existing theories to help substantiate and answer the research question. The study introduced the Organizational Role Stress Framework developed by Udai Pareek into a Swedish pubic organization with the aim to measure the impact of Organizational Role Stress. The Organizational Role Stress Framework contributed to a quantitative study amongmanagers in Lycksele municipality to measure the impact of Organizational Role Stress. The sample population consisted of 60 managers who were given an equal opportunityto participate in the study. In total, 49 out of 60 managers participated in the study, which corresponds to a satisfying response rate of 82 %. The main conclusion of the study is that Organizational Role Stress has a negativeimpact on managers’ ability to balance administrative responsibilities and operativeleadership. The Organizational Role Stress Framework can explain 50 % of the variancein managers’ problems with balancing the responsibilities in their roles. Furthermore, the findings also imply that two stressors from the Organizational Role Stress Framework namely: Inter-Role Distance and Role Overload are a better model to describe the problem among managers. These two stressors as a model can explain 52% of the variance among managers ability to balance administrative responsibilities andoperative leadership.