Cross-Cultural Insights from Studies in Occupational Stress & Health

Sharon Glazer, Ph.D.

Program Director, Organizational Psychology

Cross-Cultural Organizational Psychology

Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology

Rutgers

https://gsapp.rutgers.edu/op

Occupational stress is a global challenge that affects countless individuals and organizations. Despite thousands of published articles on this topic, we continue to grapple with how best to mitigate stressors, manage strains, and foster healthy workplaces. This presentation addresses occupational stress and well-being from a cross-cultural lens, unveiling the roles of individual and environmental factors across cultures. Dr. Glazer shares key findings from her extensive cross-cultural studies, which delve into the roles of personality, social support, values, leadership, temporal orientation, and meaningfulness in life on stressor-strain relationships. Understanding occupational stress from a cross-cultural lens is imperative for several reasons. First, it shows myriad ways people interpret and respond to stressors, which may (second) enable more effective interactions with individuals in and from different cultures. Third, it provides deeper insights into cultural factors that influence work behaviors. By improving individual- and group- level work experiences, we can boost the perceived (and actual) health and durability of organizations. For example, knowing the cultural contexts in which supportive leadership enhances well-being allows management in organizations to tailor interventions accordingly. In short, Dr. Glazer underscores the pivotal role of cultural context in deciphering when and how explanatory variables affect stressor-outcome relationships, ultimately promoting healthy organizations.

SHORT BIO

         Sharon Glazer, Ph.D., is the Program Director of the graduate programs in Organizational Psychology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She began her academic journey in 1998 as a Lecturer at Northern Kentucky University and then transitioned to San José State University in 2000, where she rose up through the ranks to Full Professor by 2010. From 2010-2013, Sharon was at the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language as a Full Research Professor, serving as Principal Investigator (PI), and then from November 2013 she joined The University of Baltimore as Chair and Full Professor, where she remained until August 2024.

         In her 25+ years of teaching, research, and consulting, Sharon’s foci have been on organizational development, organizational theory, consulting skills, cross-cultural organizational psychology, and occupational stress & health. Her research has been supported by several grants, e.g., National Science Foundation, Fulbright Fellow, Erasmus Mundus, and NASA. Sharon recently completed a cross-cultural project on trust, impulsivity, and risk-taking across 6 countries (4 languages), a State of Maryland project on workplace climate for professionalism, and she is currently working on an engagement study for the Maryland Department of Transportation. Sharon has 70+ published works, 150+ conference presentations, and 60+ invited presentations that summarize original studies and synthesize current trends. She is currently a co-editor of both a Springer monograph and book series and co-authoring the 4^th edition of Cross-Cultural Psychology (to be published by Cambridge University Press).

         Sharon has taught and conducted research as a visiting professor in a dozen universities across Western and Central Europe, Israel, New Zealand, and Canada. In service to her profession, she is Secretary General for the Alliance for Organizational Psychology and a badged member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s (SIOP’s) United Nations committee. She also served as Treasurer of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Editor of the International Journal of Stress Management, co-chair of SIOP’s International Affairs Committee, and member of several local, national, and international committees. External to academia, Sharon consults to nonprofit, for-profit, and government organizations.

         Finally, Sharon is an elected Fellow of SIOP, International Academy for Intercultural Research, and International Association of Applied Psychology, and a member of several additional domestic and international professional associations. In 2021, she was recognized with The University of Baltimore’s President’s Faculty Award, her college’s Distinguished Scholarship Award, and the ISMA Federation International Award from the International Stress Management Association.