The purpose of the paper is to identify the determinants of role stress amongst business school professors in India and explore the coping strategies followed by them based on the professional experiences shared by the professors. We employ Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to gain insights into the causes of rising levels of stress in business schools and the practised coping strategies from the professors’ perspective based on their narratives of lived experiences. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 64 professors from 29 public and private business schools in India. Analysis of qualitative data resulted in the emergence of 11 themes; we make recommendations based on the themes for the business schools’ management to assist the professors in alleviating role stress. As pointed out by Chong and Ahmed (2014), phenomenological studies are rarely used for inquiry in the higher education context. The insights gathered from IPA help in understanding the tenacious causes of role stress in the management institutes and the day-to-day coping strategies followed to reduce the same
