ABSTRACT
The practice of developing programs to help employees manage stress in the workplace has been on the increase over the past couple of decades, and there are currently no signs of abatement. As a research domain, however, job or occupational stress has been fraught with contradiction, confusion, and controversy. It is not always clear, for example, what occupational stress is, and terminologies often vary from one piece of literature to another (Beehr, 1991). In spite of this, most people agree that the topic is important. It is important enough to the field of organizational behavior management (OBM) that the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management devoted a special issue to it in 1986 (reprinted as a book; Ivancevich and Ganster, 1987).
