The increasing tendency towards individualization in the field of qualified work can be attributed to two principles: (1) an increasing importance of mechanisms similar to principles of the free market economy which allow organizations to manage their employees such as benchmarking or management by objectives (Cascio, 2003), (2) boundaries between work and private life get more and more blurred, a subjectification of work takes place. This situation can be easily transferred to the educational sector, where a process of decentralization takes place as main world-wide educational reform.These new freedom include on the other side also new demands and work tasks for school principals. It is reasonable that these new freedoms are ambivalent: school principals are free to decide about many aspects of their school as long as they reach their goals predetermined by school authorities but the goals itself are often contradictory or unrealistic and non-negotiable. To reach their goals nevertheless detrimental behavior for health, well-being and work-ability, so called „self-endangering work behavior“, could be one consequence of these new „freedoms“. Self-endangering work behavior is defined as different behaviors of employees to deal with excessive work demands and to reach goals which, however, in the long run are detrimental for employee health and well-being (Krause et al., 2015). Our aim is to examine the relevance of this concept for the occupational group of school principals and to test associations between different forms of self-endangering behavior and mental health outcomes. To answer these questions an online survey with primary and secondary school principals in lower saxony has been conducted in mid 2015 (n=1.336). The questionnaire contained e.g. four forms of self-endangering behavior (intensification of work, extensification of work, reduction of working quality and sickness presenteism) and direct health outcomes (e.g. psychosomatic complaints, emotional exhaustion). Controlled for sociodemographic variables (age, sex) and job variables (management role, type of school), regression analysis show that self-endangering behavior can explain about 40% of the variance of psychosomatic complaints and 47% of the variance of emotional exhaustion. Specifically, intensification of work as well as sickness presenteism serve as strongest predictors. The findings are discussed with regard to the need to focus more on principals in school health promotion measures.

Cascio, W. F. (2003). Changes in workers, work, and organizations. In W. C. Bor-man, D. R. Ilgen & R. J. Klimoski (Eds.), Industrial and organizational psychology (Vol. 12, pp. 401-422). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Krause et al. (2015). Selbstgefährdung als Indikator für Mängel bei der Gestaltung mobil-flexibler Arbeit: Zur Entwicklung eines Erhebungsinstruments. Wirtschaftspsychologie, 17, 49-59.