The relationship between life balance and work stress in corporate executive

The topic of work stress continues to garner increasing interest in the minds of helping professionals and organizations around the world. While the area of work stress has been explored from multiple perspectives, research from the standpoint of impact on the corporate executive demands more focus. In addition, realizing the interconnectedness of all areas of life through the model of life balance, intuitively it could be supposed that investigating in detail the connectedness between life balance and work stress would yield significant benefits. This study explored the relationship between life balance and work stress in corporate executives. First, a thorough review of the literature was presented, looking initially at the development of the concept of stress, then turning attention to the area of life balance, with a culmination of the review including a consideration of the connections which exist between these two concepts. Second, from a research standpoint, through the use of Testwell: Wellness Inventory (National Wellness Institute, 1999) and Pressure Management Indicator (Williams, 2000), insight was gained into executive perceptions of personal stress and life balance. A sample of executives from multiple organizations was drawn and feedback on the instruments evaluated using multiple regression methodology to determine if statistical significance was presented between the six areas of life balance, theorized by Hettler (1984), and the aspects of mental and physical stress experienced by the individual. Analysis of the research would be expected to reveal a statistically significant predictability does indeed exist. In particular, the areas of social balance and spiritual balance would be anticipated to be two areas with the highest predictability to the experience of work stress. As a result of this study, suggested areas for potential intervention were identified which could be considered by helping professionals or organizations for implementation which could have the greatest positive impact in minimizing the negative effects of work stress for the individual and organization.