Understanding Managers’ Mental Health: The Cornerstone for Better Organizational Performance and Workers’ Health

Managers’ mental health has only been a topic of interest for a few years, whereas employees’ mental health has been widely discussed in the scientific literature. Managers are exposed to specific psychosocial risk factors and their effects may vary according to their hierarchical level and gender. The COVID-19 crisis and the many changes in the work organization have also affected managers’ mental health by creating a lot of uncertainty and by forcing them to adjust and develop new skills in managing remote employees. Managers are at the heart of organizational success. They often find themselves caught between the organizational demands and their employees’ needs. Their own mental health influences their ability to implement preventive interventions in organizational health but also influences their leadership style and their management practices which are central to ensuring employees’ mental health.

The aim of this article collection is to deepen our understanding of managers’ mental health, the conditions in which managers exercise their role, and better know the consequences, the responsibilities, and how to prevent managers’ mental health issues. Scholars are invited to consider a variety of resources (e.g., organizational support, leadership style) and constraints (e.g., individual, group, organizational) that may affect managers' mental health, as well as the consequences of their good or poor mental health (e.g., performance, leadership behaviors). We encourage scholars from a variety of disciplines and using different methodological perspectives to submit their manuscripts in order to promote knowledge comparison on this topic. We hope to be able to better understand the managers’ working conditions and propose recommendations to foster their well-being and thus promote more optimal and sustainable organizational and workers’ health.

We welcome both empirical and conceptual manuscripts. Empirical papers may be qualitative, quantitative, or using a mixed research method. We also invite scholars from a variety of disciplines related to organizational psychology and from diverse cultures to submit their papers. Studies using a variety of work settings (e.g., public/private sector) and using a multi-level approach are also welcome. We welcome submissions on the followings topics of interest, but not limited to:

• Managers' well-being, work engagement, psychological distress, burnout, stress, fatigue, etc;
• managers' working conditions that may affect managers’ mental health;
• the antecedents of managers' mental health (e.g. resources and constraints, psychosocial risk factors);
• the consequences of managers’ mental health (e.g. performance, leadership behaviors, management practices, consequences on employees’ mental health, engagement, and performance, etc.);
• mental health interventions aim to foster managers' health.