8/3/2019 TM Stress Reduction http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/tm-stress-reduction 1/40 Broome et al. WORKSITE STRESS REDUCTION 235 Author’s Info: J. Richard N. Broome, Box 87395, Houghton, 2041, Republic of South Africa; +27 11 483 0685; fax +27 11 728 1280; email [email protected]. Authors’ Notes: This paper summarizes the principal findings of a South African doctoral dissertation in Business Administration from the University of Cape Town (Broome, 1995). Worksite Stress Reduction Through the Transcendental Meditation Program J. Richard N. Broome CIDA City Campus, Johannesburg David W. Orme-Johnson Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention Jane Schmidt-Wilk Maharishi University of Management An experiment on stress reduction using the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique and Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) was con- ducted at a South African firm with 80 employees. Psychological stress decreased significantly over 5.5 months for the TM group (p < .0002) with 67% of the decrease in the first two weeks; for the PMR group (p < .03); and near significantly for on-site controls (p < .09). Six weeks of TM practice produced greater reductions in psychological stress than six weeks of PMR (p < .03). Off-site active controls who received business-skills training showed nonsignificant decreases. Posttest stress levels were higher than for on-site groups (p < .04). Blood pressure decreased at 5.5 months for systolic (p < .05) and diastolic (p < .04) for the TM groups but not significantly in PMR or on-site controls. Subjec- tive reports and changes in company climate generally supported the results, which are discussed in terms of the theory of collective con- sciousness from Maharishi Vedic Science. Stress in organizations has been documented to produce wide ranging psychological, physical and behavioral ill effects. The costs of stress are variously estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars annually, or 12% of U.S. GNP (Siu, Lu, & Cooper, 1999). The visible portion of these costs
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Author’s Info: J. Richard N. Broome, Box 87395, Houghton, 2041, Republic of SouthAfrica; +27 11 483 0685; fax +27 11 728 1280; email [email protected].
Authors’ Notes: This paper summarizes the principal findings of a South African doctoral
dissertation in Business Administration from the University of Cape Town (Broome,1995).
Worksite Stress Reduction Through the
Transcendental Meditation Program
J. Richard N. BroomeCIDA City Campus, Johannesburg
David W. Orme-JohnsonCenter for Natural Medicine and Prevention
Jane Schmidt-Wilk Maharishi University of Management
An experiment on stress reduction using the Transcendental Meditation(TM) technique and Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) was con-ducted at a South African firm with 80 employees. Psychological stressdecreased significantly over 5.5 months for the TM group (p < .0002)with 67% of the decrease in the first two weeks; for the PMR group(p < .03); and near significantly for on-site controls (p < .09). Six weeks
of TM practice produced greater reductions in psychological stress thansix weeks of PMR (p < .03). Off-site active controls who receivedbusiness-skills training showed nonsignificant decreases. Posttest stresslevels were higher than for on-site groups (p < .04). Blood pressuredecreased at 5.5 months for systolic (p < .05) and diastolic (p < .04) forthe TM groups but not significantly in PMR or on-site controls. Subjec-tive reports and changes in company climate generally supported theresults, which are discussed in terms of the theory of collective con-sciousness from Maharishi Vedic Science.
Stress in organizations has been documented to produce wide ranging
psychological, physical and behavioral ill effects. The costs of stress are
variously estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars annually, or 12% of
U.S. GNP (Siu, Lu, & Cooper, 1999). The visible portion of these costs
Company climate. The Industrial Barometer, an instrument devel-
oped by Litwin & Stringer and adapted for South African conditions by
Gelfand as reported by Nasser & Schmikl (1986) was used to measurecompany climate. Participants completed the entire questionnaire, con-
sisting of 40 questions. The dimensions of interest were Warmth and
Support, which were defined by Litwin & Stringer in 1968 as follows:
Warmth: ...the feeling of general good fellowship that prevails inthe work group atmosphere; the emphasis on being well-liked; theprevalence of friendly and informal social groups (Nasser &Schmikl, 1986).
Support: ...the perceived helpfulness of managers and otheremployees in the group; emphasis on mutual support from aboveand below (Nasser & Schmikl, 1986).
The organizational climate measurements were not originally the
major thrust of this study. They served to supplement the limited produc-
tivity measures and objective changes documented gleaned from inter-
views.
Subjective perception of benefits. Subjective perceptions often pro-
vide a more holistic account of results than objective measures. Al-though objective measures are less prone to subjective bias, their narrow
focus may reflect only a limited range of what happened. For example,
decreased blood pressure may be only a small part of a constellation of
changes that occur. Subjective perceptions were obtained from inter-
views with employees in the host company. The interviewer asked
specific questions about changes noticed in the work climate, stress
levels, productivity, interpersonal interactions, and in an open-ended
format, invited the employees to mention any other changes they noticedduring the intervention and in the ensuing two-and-a-half years.
Procedures
The 64 volunteers for training were randomly assigned to one of six
treatment conditions: four TM groups to execute the Solomon four-
group design (Groups 1–4) and two PMR groups (Groups 5–6), with
about 10 volunteers per group. Groups were stratified by management
level and sex, so that management, supervisory and clerical levels were
all evenly represented in each group. Treatment conditions for thesubgroups were as follows.
Extending this question to whether the respondents had noticed any
changes in productivity of the company as a whole since learning the TM
technique, responses were also positive from four out of nine respon-dents. Comments were:
The company has had much more exposure and vision. We aremuch more in the public eye. We seem to have grown, and I thinkthat has been over the past three years.
Yes. A lot more willingness amongst the staff to help instead of leaving people sitting here until ten at night to sort out theirproblems. ... in our department, problems were put on the table and
sorted out there and then ... we were sticking together ... the staff were more united.
I would say three years ago [i.e., the year the TM program wasimplemented], yes there was probably a change ... I think it had avery good effect ... What has happened here is the company hasgrown to such an extent.
Respondents were then asked whether they had noticed any other
changes in the organization since so many had learned the TM technique.
Responses indicated many substantial changes in the company over thethree years since learning the TM program. In the words of one respon-
dent:
1992 (the year after TM instruction) was much better. And this year(1993) was a fantastic year. But there were a number of factorscoming together here, and I would be most hesitant to ascribe it toTM. We hired new people and we were lucky in getting goodpeople because our opposition went down. We got some of their bigaccounts and some of their people. So both ways we scored. I am
convinced it’s the good people we had. It really made us successfulbecause all our strength is people. The company has grown hugely.Our market share has picked up one or two percent.
When asked the direct question, “How would you rate the overall
health of the company since January 1991?” the Marketing Director
replied, “Could say it’s healthier. It’s gone up and down. In between,
turnover has gone up about 20% compounded.”
DISCUSSION
This was a study of two stress reduction practices, the Transcenden-
tal Meditation technique and Progressive Muscle Relaxation on psycho
ings or is explained as due to the operation of some environmental
nuisance variable. Candidate explanations include Hawthorne Effects,
social interaction effects, self-initiated treatments, expectation, placeboeffects, regression toward the mean, pretest sensitization, or perhaps just
doing the test is a powerful stress-reduction technique in itself. For
example, Murphy (1984) suggested the following explanation:
It has been the author’s experience that workers have a great deal of interest in stress management programs and positive attitudes aregenerated whenever an organization allows employees to participatein such programs. Workers feel that the organization is concernedabout them, and this results in a desire among participants to makethe program successful. Such a state of affairs would explain in partthe positive effects seen in controls on self-report measures.Significant decreases in physiological measures observed in controlgroups may be a function of taking the time out of the workday andsitting in a comfortable chair for 40 minutes or more (Murphy,1984, p. 8).
In the present study, the on-site controls were initially generally
negative towards the programs. Yet two of them eventually insisted on
learning the technique. As a group the remaining non-volunteers de-
creased in stress whereas off-site controls did not. A possible argument
against attention effects or the Hawthorne effect in this experiment is
that off-site controls also received attention—a management skills
course—but they did not change significantly on stress. Moreover, the
stress-reducing effects of the TM program are triangulated by a wide
variety of empirical data, including the significant reductions in blood
pressure in the present and other studies (see Table 5), reductions in the
major stress hormone plasma cortisol (e.g. Jevning, Wilson, & Davidson,
1978; Jevning, Wilson, & Smith, 1978) and increased autonomic stabil-
ity (Orme-Johnson, 1973). There are many other examples.
Regarding Murphy’s (1984) suggestion that any kind of resting
might have the same effect, a meta-analysis of 32 studies has found that
the physiological effects of the TM technique are significantly greater
than ordinary eyes-closed resting for the same period of time (Dillbeck
7So much so, that in an extraordinary paragraph, Murphy (1984) asserts that theimprovement in controls may be statistically significant because of the small size of the
control groups. He writes: “It is significant that studies which found significant effectsin both control and trained groups utilized small comparison group sizes (n = 12 or less).
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