Abstract : The occupational stress is one of the major problems of the western industrial societies. The cost of stress amounts to 200 billions $, in other words 10 times the cost of the annual strikes or the global amount of the 500 companies profits listed by Fortune Magazine. The current research is the French part of the international research undertaken in 22 countries. The French sample comprises managers of the private and the public sectors of the economy. The last part of the paper resumes the global results of the international research; the originality of the scientific contribution lies in the comparative approach dealing with the cultural differences and tackling with the problems of bias originated by the translations in different languages. The international research questions the universality of the concepts of management, and takes into consideration the cultural differences changing the psychometric properties of the stress scales. Such a research work is pioneering the field of occupational stress.
