Managing the Stress of Bringing the Economy in the Eastern German States to the Level of the Western German States

Abstract

A select group of managers in the private and public sector working in the new and old German federal states were administered the German version of the Pressure Management Indicator (PMI; Williams, Kirkcaldy, & Cooper, 1999 ). Twenty-four scale scores were assessed encompassing diverse aspects of occupational stress, individual differences (type A, locus of control, and coping), and outcome variables (work satisfaction, physical and psychological health). Several differences were observed between those managers reared and educated in the former East Germany and those from the former West Germany. East-German managers, for example, were characterized by an external locus of control with regard to their jobs and revealed higher type A scores compared to their West-German counterparts. Furthermore, although there were no differences in the evaluation of working climate nor in subjectively perceived occupational stress, specific outcome variables such as self-reported physical and psychological health did differ between West- and East-German managers. The implications of these findings are discussed.