Managerial stress, job satisfaction and health in Taiwan

MANAGERIAL STRESS IN TAIWAN 61DISCUSSIONThe impact of managerial stressBeing one of the very few concerted e€ortsinvestigating managerial stress across the barriersof a single organization, a single occupation or asection of the national economy, and in a nonwesterncountry, this study generated valuableevidence of the impact of managerial stress in arapidly industrializing society. Among the topthree work stressors reported by the Taiwanesemanagers, `personal responsibility' and `relationships'may be particularly interesting and relevantin a Chinese culture. In Hofstede's 14 seminalwork on the cross-cultural comparison of workrelatedvalues, Taiwan was identi®ed as moderatein power distance (ranked 29/30 among 53countries), low in individualism (ranked 44among 53 countries), and moderate in uncertaintyavoidance (ranked 26 among 53 countries).Corroborating this general description of theTaiwanese culture, managers would be distressedin taking personal responsibilities, which ofteninvolve exercising power and tolerating uncertainties;Taiwanese managers would also be ratherconcerned about the interpersonal relationships atwork. The empirical evidence seemed quite consistentwith this theoretical reasoning. As noted byother researchers, 15,16 Chinese workers, especiallymanagers, value guangxi, the aliative relationshipbetween superiors and coworkers, which is acharacteristic of the large power distance culture.Although empirical evidence was inconclusive 16and not particularly strong, it did point to thevalue of conducting more cross-cultural comparativestudies to map out universality as wellas speci®city in the work stress experiences indi€erent societies.On the quantitative aspects of the experience ofmanagerial stress, Taiwanese managers perceivedmore stress than the general workforce in thecountry and were also more stressed than managersin Hong Kong 17 (t ˆ 3.78, p 5 0.001), the UK andGermany 18 (t ˆ 13.10 and t ˆ 8.69, p 5 0.001).This level of work stress was related to jobsatisfaction, mental health, physical health andturnover intentions (Table 3). Furthermore, workstress was a powerful predictor of job satisfaction(accounting for 4 percent of the variance) andmental health (accounting for 11 percent of thevariance). These results are consistent withprevious ®ndings. 18,19 The problems of smoking,drinking, lack of exercise and absenteeism were notsevere among this sample of managers (Table 1).While the behavioural symptoms of stress were notparticularly evident, due to the Chinese culturalcensorship of excessive smoking or drinking, theself-reported health indicators were rather clear:Taiwanese managers disclosed worse mental andphysical health than the general workforce in thecountry. Although the comparison methodadopted may warrant some methodological concernsÐ simply comparing the work stress andhealth of managers in this study with other samplesin the literature Ð the cross-sectional data suggestthat Taiwan managers may be under stress and riskof ill-health.In recent years, some research has demonstratedthat female managers are under higherstress than their male counterparts, 20±22 whereasother research yielded inconclusive results. 23In this study, a t-test revealed that Taiwanesefemale managers did report more stress relatedto the `managerial role' than their male counterparts(mean ˆ 15.20 vs 14.37, t ˆ 2.49, p 5 0.05),thus partially corroborating the previous studies.This seemingly consistent pattern of femaledisadvantage in managerial positions is veryinteresting as it provides indirect support forthe role con¯ict thesis, which states that thesocially approved characteristics of femininity(such as nurturance and submission) may oftencome into con¯ict with the requirements of a`masculine' managerial role (such as toughnessand assertion). The prevailing hostility againstfemales, the lack of female role models, unsupportivesuperiors (usually males), long-establishedbusiness practices with sexual overtures, andthe dilemma between career commitment andfamily duties may all compound to produce thehigh level of work stress encountered by femalemanagers in a paternalistic Chinese societysuch as Taiwan. 24,25 Hopefully, these ®ndingswill serve to raise awareness of the unduly highwork stress endured by these Chinese femalemanagers and, in turn, facilitate steps to reduceits detrimental e€ects on health and workmorale.Structural relationships among work stress,moderators and strainThe structural relationships depicted in Fig. 1were largely borne out by correlational andregression analyses. More speci®cally, most of theCopyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Stress med. 15, 53±64 (1999)