Facts

Contact person:
Tuija Muhonen
Financer:
  • Forte – Swedish Research Council for Health Working life and Welfare
Responsible at MaU:
Tuija Muhonen
Project members at MaU:
Time frame:
01 January 2017 - 31 December 2025
Faculty/department:
Research environment :
Research subject:

About the project

Human Service Organisations (HSOs) such as schools, social and health care are facing major changes and challenges, which impact the working environment (demands, resources, harassment etc) for both employees and managers. We will contribute to the research area with a new construct, Organisational and social safety climate that together with the Job Demands-Resources theory will form the theoretical framework for the programme. The overall aim is to develop approaches and tools that can be used for research, practice and intervention in order to develop a sustainable working environment for HSOs in the future.

During the first three years of the programme we aim to: 1) further develop existing methods and instruments that can be used to assess the organisational and social safety climate in different HSOs, 2) conduct studies of employees’ and first line managers’ work situation 3) conduct studies on work place bullying and harassment with the focus on victims and witnesses. This will provide new knowledge about the demands, resources and victimization behaviours as well as methods that can be applied in order to develop organisational and social safety climate in HSOs. On the basis of the empirical and methodological knowledge gained in the different projects the subsequent three years of the programme will be devoted to intervention studies involving employees, first-line managers and senior management in HSOs. The results will clarify how the HSOs by creating a sound organisational and social safety climate can meet the future challenges such as stress, victimization at work, retention and recruiting problems.

The programme will be based at the Centre for Work Life and Evaluation Studies (CTA), Malmö University. Our research group is multidisciplinary and has competence in a wide range of theories and research methods. Besides international scientific publication, the results will be presented in a book, on our website and at conferences.