Spotlight on Cary Cooper, BUPA Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at the Manchester School of Management, UMIST, UK

Citation

McCourt-Mooney, M. (2000), "Spotlight on Cary Cooper, BUPA Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at the Manchester School of Management, UMIST, UK", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 15 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmp.2000.05015aab.001

Spotlight on Cary Cooper, BUPA Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at the Manchester School of Management, UMIST, UK

Spotlight on Cary Cooper, BUPA Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at the Manchester School of Management, UMIST, UK

Edited by Maggie McCourt-Mooney

Keywords: Stress, Health, Working hours, Organizational change, Corporate Culture, Quality of working life

In addition to his teaching role at the Manchester School of Management, Professor Cooper is Pro-Vice-Chancellor (External Activities) of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). He is author of over 80 books and 300 scholarly articles on such themes as occupational stress, women at work, and industrial and organizational psychology. A Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the Royal Society of Arts, Royal Society of Medicine and Royal Society of Health, Cary Cooper is also President of the British Academy of Management. He has been an adviser to the World Health Organization and ILO, and recently published a major report for the EU's European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Work Conditions on "Stress Prevention in the Workplace". Here he talks to Sarah Powell of the Global Health Care and Environment Forum about the phenomenon of workplace stress, changing work patterns and implications, cultural issues and stress management programmes.

Powell: You have noted that it was in the 1980s that stress entered the vocabulary of the workplace and came to the fore. Why then?

Cooper: To offer a historical perspective we need to differentiate the word pressure from stress. Pressure is stimulating, "growthful", motivating - but when pressure exceeds your ability to cope, then you are in the stress arena. Stress can manifest itself in all sorts of different forms. It can come in health-related forms like increased smoking or alcohol consumption. It can be a risk factor in heart disease or an immune system failure like ME, or some other illness. Or it can come in the form of behavioural changes - increased aggression, social withdrawal, etc. The dividing line between pressure and stress is different for different people.

Pressure leading to stress has always existed - it is not a particularly new phenomenon. But there are some characteristics of the time we live in now which I think make it more prevalent. In the past, communities and extended families acted as natural counsellors for people who were unable to cope with excessive pressures. We no longer have this because, by the end of the 1970s/early 1980s, we became more mobile in society. We no longer have the extended family or the community. We're working extremely long hours, so we are getting less engaged in the community that we live in.

The other change today is that jobs are intrinsically insecure. You could argue that that has always been the case for shopfloor workers. However, if you look back from the end of the industrial revolution until, say, the end of the 1970s, you will see that, although shopfloor workers came in and out of the labour market, they tended to go back to work for their employers. They may have been laid off from the automobile plants, the mines, whatever, but they would be re-employed when they were needed.

In those days people other than shopfloor workers, e.g. white-collar workers, professional and managerial people, were reasonably job secure. It was at the beginning of the 1980s that things changed. So what we have now is an additional stress, - that of intrinsic job insecurity in the workplace, or what I call the short-term contract culture.

The other coincidental factor that occurred at roughly the same time was the changing roles of men and women. As more and more women began to work outside the home, questions of male and female roles became a source of conflict with more concern about who was to do what. Since two out of every three women are now working, and many of them are not just pursuing jobs but trying to pursue careers, this is undermining men's conception of their own roles. That's a very substantial factor that did not exist 50 years ago.

The three factors cited combine to make stress more prevalent now.

Powell: What role do perhaps unrealistic expectations of work play? In a recent article you focused on the case of young pharmacists, for example. Given the increasing number of young people going to university, can such reality-induced stress be expected to increase?

Cooper: I think that people now in the work environment, i.e. the 30-, 40- and 50-year olds, and 60-year olds if they are still working, have seen what changes have taken place: the downsizing, the outsourcing, the short-term contract culture - they're aware of all of this. I really don't think younger people are aware of what they are coming into. Their expectations are still of relative security.

Meanwhile the general expectation is that young people will be able to cope with these changes but I'm not so sure they will. They still think that if you go to work for one of the big five accounting firms or a multinational, that will offer a pretty secure job. They don't realise that this is no longer the case - that there are very few jobs that are secure. I think they will adapt eventually but, no, I don't believe they have a realistic expectation of what they're going into.

When they do adapt, incidentally, how will that change the culture of work? This is interesting because I think that what is going to happen is that we in the UK are going to move towards an American model where people look after their own career and their commitment to the organization is minimal. That's the way we're moving and that is quite disturbing.

The time when the individual committed to the organization is gone now because organizations aren't committing to the individual. The more they outsource, the more they downsize, the more they create "the flexible workforce" - not flexible working arrangements but "the flexible workforce" - the more they effectively say: "Well, we're not really committing to you..."

There is a psychological contract between employer and employee and it is being broken on one side. This means the contract no longer exists. Once individuals perceive that to be the case, they will look after their own careers. In the early 1960s, the average manager in the UK had some 2 jobs in a lifetime. This will rise to 15 jobs in a lifetime.

Powell: Is this development in the UK also mirrored - although perhaps not at quite such an advanced stage - on the European continent, and eventually also in Asia?

Cooper: No, not yet, but it will be. When you talk to other continental Europeans, Germans, Swedes, for example, it becomes clear that they all know they have to move in this direction. I perceive a different attitude on the continent from that in the UK. Effectively we're not really in the EU; psychologically we're linked to the USA - both in our work practices and in a whole range of things. In the UK it's all about free enterprise, competitive environment, while the continentals still have a sense of loyalty; they try to keep hours down; they commit to people; they ensure that employees take proper holidays.

But continental Europeans have seen that this "flexible workforce" has been good for the UK economy; it has made it fairly economically robust - our growth rates have been much higher than our continental partners over the last five to eight years.

In addition, once on the world stage, Europe has to compete with the United States as does Asia, which means that ultimately Asia will take that direction too.

Powell: Given what we're seeing, i.e. stress, unemployment, unhappy people, rising divorce rates, etc. don't you think people in power might just step back and decide we're going too far in following "market forces" and that perhaps it is time to move slightly back the other way? Does our current direction have to be irrevocable?

Cooper: No, it doesn't have to be irrevocable. In fact one good thing about the UK that's different from the USA is that many people in senior positions, whether in political positions or at the head of organizations, are much more reflective. They have realised that, yes, to begin with, if you outsource, downsize and all the rest, you will be more competitive, partly on the basis of fear - people see other people laid off and redouble their efforts so that they are not in the second and third tranche. But this doesn't stop the restructurings, the joint ventures, the downsizings, the mergers.

UMIST recently carried out a quality work life survey with the Institute of Management. We took a cohort of 5,000 managers - a representative sample of the UK managerial workforce - and we are following them every year for five years. We started in 1997.

What we have discerned to date is that, in the last 12 months, two out of every three UK managers in this cohort have seen a major restructuring in their organization involving a downsizing or an outsourcing, and this has occurred in each of the years surveyed. Managers have reported that this produces massively lower morale and loyalty.

What we are finding is that the gap in perceptions between board level and all other managerial levels is substantial. While board level managers view current developments relatively positively, just below board level, i.e. senior management all the way down to junior management, managers see these as highly negative in terms of motivation, loyalty and so on.

Powell: Might this be because such developments don't really touch the board that much?

Cooper: This is very interesting. We also asked managers a number of questions about the quality of their working life. This revealed that between 35 per cent and 45 per cent of managers work all weekend, that between 55 per cent and 60 per cent work every night, while 80 per cent work above their contracted hours every week.

Now when you look at these responses you find that such patterns are reported across the board from junior all the way up to chairman. Although there is a big divide between board level and all other managers on many issues such as the desirability or otherwise of restructuring, outsourcing, etc., when you ask them about the effects of hours of work, all managers, whether at board or junior level, consider long hours are having an adverse effect on their families, their relationships at home and, in fact, on their work itself. And yet they continue to work like this.

There is a really interesting irony here. Because we've tried, crudely, to get our labour costs down, we're overloading the people who remain. And they are not only overloaded but having to work long hours as a consequence. And because they see that jobs are going, they work long hours to demonstrate their value. This is the "presenteeism" phenomenon, a phrase I coined a number of years ago, which states that while you need to work long hours because you have too much to do, you also have to be seen to be working long hours. There is no evidence that long means effective. Meanwhile there is conclusive evidence that consistently long hours lead to ill health.

In the UK we still have the longest working hours in Europe but I think the problem is finally being recognised. Senior people are noting the sickness absence figures rising and seeing that more sickness absences are stress-related than ever before. They take on board that the UK now has the highest divorce rate in Europe. And when they notice that perhaps productivity is not as good as it could be - it is beginning to decline a bit - this leads some very senior people to question whether we are going in the right direction.

So is there some kind of, dare I say it, third way? When you see companies like Blue Circle who negotiate with their employees for some sense of job security, in return for a reduction in wage increases ... that looks quite interesting.

Powell: Returning to your point that the highest echelons of directors still see current changes in a positive light, might this be because these managers are in a very creative position, a control position, and because they are getting a "kick" out of it, which means they focus on the positive?

Cooper: You're absolutely right. I think the hiatus that we're seeing between the board and all other managers is partly there because there is so much business activity that is stimulating to directors personally - knife-edged stuff... Senior directors are in control so they have the information - it's like being involved in a battle - it's warlike for them, they are really getting a "buzz" out of it. They think therefore that everybody else feels the same, but what they don't quite understand is that the people below them don't have the information and consequently feel much more insecure.

Powell: On a positive note, looking at the changing patterns of work - outsourcing for example - and accepting that this is not good for everybody, would you not agree that it does nevertheless offer more control and more enjoyment for people who do take to it, i.e. to some degree there is a solution in flexibility?

Cooper: Let me deal with the positive. There will be some people who will love the short-term culture. Take the media business - radio, television - that's almost all short-term contract now. That's a freelance business.

Some people will adapt with no problem and they will love it and perform better because in a way it gives them more autonomy. For an individual who is robust enough, innovative enough, creative, and a good self-starter and initiator, yes that's great. But the problem is that not everybody can cope with it.

Since the industrial revolution, most people have worked within some form of organizational structure. What is needed then is to provide people with the right training, to show them how to market themselves, to give them the IT they need in order to work independently. What I think employers should do is to introduce flexible working arrangements, to help train people to manage their own time, to think through how they do things, to familiarise themselves well with IT. Many people today could work partly from home and partly from a central office.

Flexible working arrangements are what the two-earner family needs - such arrangements suit their needs. Homeworking and a consequent decline in the need to travel to work would also reduce pollution in our cities, allowing transport to function properly. Meanwhile it could save companies expensive stakes in the middle of big cities.

It's not inevitable that we shall continue to pursue American-style work practices but it looks likely that we shall do so to some degree. It is quite possible that, later on, companies may look at the model they've developed and note that outsourcing has become more difficult and expensive because there are fewer providers and these are effectively controlling the market. There may then be a move to bring facilities back in-house rather than to buy in.

Powell: It is said that women are particularly adapted not only to today's demands for flexibility but also to working methods such as teamworking; do you see particular scope for women in new working patterns?

Cooper: You've hit what I think is a very important topic. To change the UK economy, to change the culture, you would need to get rid of men and introduce women - but that won't happen. I think that women managers are what we need in the future, in the immediate future, from the point of view of all the change that is taking place. So many things are a threat to the individual.

Women have already had discontinuous careers, coming in and out of the labour force, doing part-time work. In the UK now five times as many women are working part-time as are men. Five million women are currently working part-time against only one million me, although, incidentally, that figure for men has doubled from 500,000 only ten years ago.

What I am saying here is that women are very flexible. They are much more people-oriented, having been socialised in their role in the family for decades, for centuries. They are expert in managing relations in the family, so all you are doing is taking those talents and putting them in the work environment - and I think that's good.

Women are certainly pushing up the glass ceiling: there is evidence that they are getting to more senior management positions. However, there are still very few women at board level. The problem is that, although women are very good at managing people, and doing their job - because they like to do it well, they are extremely bad at organizational politics. They are appalling at this.

Men are good at managing their careers, at knowing what meetings to go to, at knowing which jobs to do and which jobs not to do, i.e. what is in their political interests. Women meanwhile do the job whether or not it is in their political or career interests - that's why the glass ceiling is only gradually being pushed up, and not crashed through.

Now if you make women more political, you'll make them like men, and you don't want to do that either. What you want in a manager are the characteristics that many women have, and you want women to get to senior positions so that they can influence the culture they are operating in; so that they create flexible working arrangements, will be praise-orientated as opposed to punishment-orientated in their management style, and won't just look after their own main chance.

Women will want to do well in their careers, but they'll understand the importance of doing a particular job well, and they'll understand what security means to people.

Powell: If, as reported, uptake of stress management programmes in the workplace appears to be by the "worried well" rather than the extremely distressed, how can such initiatives be targeted towards, and uptake be encouraged among, those in most need?

Cooper: There are three different types of initiative that have been taken by industry. I call them primary, secondary and tertiary. Starting with tertiary: this means providing a vehicle by which people who are distressed can go and get help, i.e. this is after the event and involves employee assistance programmes (EAPs), stress counselling and the like.

I believe many of the worried well participate in these initiatives. Some are very distressed too but such programmes don't necessarily touch everybody. People tend to worry that their employers will discover their participation even though such programmes are outsourced.

EAPs are useful because people do need somewhere to go when they're not coping. As long as you find a vehicle which reassures people that nobody is going to hear about them, then such programmes are going to be effective.

The secondary initiative is to arm employees so they have the right skills to cope with the pressures. These include time management, assertiveness training, and so on. Such training has always played a role.

But perhaps the most significant development here in the UK, which is more or less the market leader in this (more than the USA which tends to concentrate on after-the-event assistance), is stress audits and risk assessments. These involve using established instruments to identify what is going wrong and where this is occurring in the organization. Such audits are being carried out by quite a number of big companies.

This sort of initiative represents quite an advance because it is preventive. It involves trying to establish a base line, going back, and every year or two re-auditing to find out if there are changes, and if there are negative changes, determining whether you are talking about rising job dissatisfaction levels, or poor mental health levels. The aim is to be able to identify where there is a problem in the organization and then to pinpoint the intervention. That's what good companies should be, and are, doing.

Powell: Taking all these things into account, when you look towards the future and you look at the issues that you deal with, for example, stress etc., are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

Cooper: I'm pretty optimistic that we are beginning to look at what underlies the changes that are exerting pressure on people. Interestingly enough, I'm being invited by very senior people to come and talk to them about it; they could ignore people like me very easily, but they do not, they are listening, they are thinking about it, they are reflecting, they are wondering whether actually it's good for their business.

Also I'm optimistic because the kind of people who are running UK industry are very well trained now, they look at all the factors. These are the people we need because they have realised that the most valuable resource we have is our human resource. I'm optimistic that they are thinking "if we go down this road, what will this lead to in 2020?"

Note

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  1. An extended version of this interview appeared on the Global Heath Care and Environment Forum at http://www.mcb.co.uk/ghcef