Middle Managers' Planning and Perceived Stress

Problem: A hardening business climate all over the world has resulted in company downsizing, which in turn has increased the workload and created a more stressful workday for middle managers. This has developed a new pressure upon middle managers to manage their work days efficiently, and in order to do this they have to make good use of their restricted time. One way to handle this is to utilize more efficient planning and time allocation, which also might have an impact on middle managers’ perceived stress. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze everyday planning and its potential impact upon the perceived stress among middle managers in medium sized organizations. Method: We use a qualitative method in this study and, in order to receive the information needed, ten middle managers from five different companies have been interviewed. The middle managers work at medium sized manufacturing companies located in the Jönköping region. The empirical material is analyzed together with the frame of reference which constitutes the basis for the conclusions. Result: From the study it can be concluded that middle managers feel that it would be almost impossible to manage their work days without planning. All middle managers claim that they are in control of the work days, but it seem like it is often occurring that upcoming projects, assignments, or different unexpected occurrences instead control their days. The middle managers experience stress originating from both social and emotional stressors, and since the feelings of experienced time stress are often occurring, a conclusion may be that the middle managers perceived stress can be related to their planning