Work environment and leadership
The driving hypothesis of program D is that work offers a potential for increased wellbeing. The overall goal of the programme is to establish knowledge on how society and organisations can develop sustainable work environments and good leadership in an effective way, as well as to understand the prerequisites for this to happen.
In many occupational sectors, preferentially in industrialized countries with a rapidly changing and heterogeneous working life, the work environment has reached a level where focus is no longer mainly on eliminating risks and hazards, but on developing qualities like creativity, motivation cooperation and resilience in order to handle today’s global competition.
Thus, positive factors at work, enhancing health and wellbeing and contributing to a sustainable working life, have attained an increased interest during the last decade. Different models have been presented for how to define and characterize a healthy work place, based on research in different scientific disciplines. However, there is still a considerable lack of knowledge on which factors might be the most important for wellbeing at work, as well as what their impact may be at different levels in the organisation. In particular, there is a lack of longitudinal studies explicitly studying these matters.
Thus this programme focus on research concerning different aspect of a healthy workplace, i.e. a workplace that both looks to the wellbeing of the employees and to the wellbeing of the organisation. Managers have, emanating from their formal power, the possibilities in their leadership to support the creation of a healthy workplace. Therefore, the programme has a particular emphasis on leadership and organisational factors and their effects on employee wellbeing and organisational effectiveness.
Principal investigator
Per Lindberg