Abstract
Over the past three decades, the modernization of the hospital sector has given rise to a new way of organizing the activity and a new distribution of power in hospitals. New management methods have been transposed from the private sector with the aim to improve and modernize the public sector action. However, the objectives of these two sectors are not the same: satisfaction of the public interest for one of them and profitability for the other one. This difference can be beneficial (emulation in link with competition, substantial savings), but also a source of resistance and stress. This new public management destabilizes the different hospital actors who must respond, in the same time, to the principles of public service and to the economic logics of performance. In this context, role stresses can they develop for caregivers? This research is particularly concerned with the different strategies used by the healthcare managers to cope with this kind of potential role stresses. Different changes implemented with the new public management in hospitals, have modified the role and functions of healthcare managers who are henceforth at the interface between a culture of care and a management culture. This research comprises an exploratory study conducted among 15 French healthcare managers in a public hospital and a confirmatory survey conducted among 445 French healthcare managers in 39 public hospitals. The results show that the healthcare managers are in a delicate position that raises different type of daily role stresses. Strategies used by healthcare managers to cope with these role stresses have been also identified.