About me
I am a senior researcher specializing in work and organizational psychology.
My research focuses on understanding organizational change on different levels. More specifically, I am interested in understanding the implementation and change processes and particularly leadership that can facilitate these processes. Moreover, I am interested in intervention design and evaluation and I have a strong focus on work environment research, where I have been investigating work stressors such as job insecurity as well as their mechanisms.
I also run a research project on the implemention and evaluation of the activity based office at GIH and collaborate in a research program (NOWSTARS-New Organization of Work in Self-employment, Temporary Agency, Academia, and Retail in Sweden) hosted by Stockholm University, where I investigate job insecurity in Swedish academic.
Please find my complete publication list under 'Documents' below.
Research description
Leadership during implementation
Healthcare organizations need to undergo changes constantly to adopt the newest technologies and implement evidence-based methods 1 in order to secure the best quality care, patient safety and cost efficiency as required by the Health and Medical Services Act (1982:763). Therefore, successful implementations are in particular important for these organizations. One key factor that affects the implementation success is leadership. However, besides the importance of leadership, we know little about how and which leadership is important in implementation.
In my research I focus on the investigation of effective leadership behavior during an implementation process. A leadership training is developed focusing on strengthening leadership behaviors of line managers. This research has been conducted in collaboration with Centrum för epidemiologi och samhällsmedicin (CES).
Grants related to this reserach:
- Leadership- Key to successful implementation in healthcare (AFA AFA dnr: 140114) PI: Anne Richter
Read more about this project in Swedish media:
Watch a short filmclip about the implementation leadership (iLead) intervention
Work environment
Organizational changes have resulted in increased occupational stress, which has not only affected the workforce negatively in terms of health and work outcomes, but at the same time organizations are affected through decreased productivity and increased costs that arise with the decreased well-being of their employees. When translating this occupational stress into hard financial facts, it has been found that stress at work is one of the most costly factors for organizations, the society as well as insurance companies.
One of the stressors that has contributed to an increase in stress levels and a decrease of the working environment quality is job insecurity, which has been defined as the uncertainty about the future employment and/or employment conditions.
In my reserach I focus on the investigation of mechanisms that consist of inter-individual differences in the employees’ reaction to job insecurity as well as to study the factors that connect job insecurity to its negative outcomes in order to get a more holistic understanding of this important phenomenon as well as make job insecurity research applicable in organizations.
Grants related to this reserach:
- Identification of individual and organizational mechanisms of job insecurity. (FORTE dnr 2012-0947) PI: Anne Richter
- Positive psychology in the context of job insecurity (AFA arbetsmiljö post doc 2011)
Läs mer här.
The Swedish healthcare sector is one of the sectors where gender segregation is most visible with over 90% female employees. Reports have over and over shown the alarming fact that women have been on sick leave more frequently and longer. In the search for the causes of this societal problem working conditions in the female dominated sectors have been identified as problematic. Another problem in health care are the continuous changes to employees' work practices for patientsto receive updated and high quality care. However, 2/3 of these changes fail, resulting in negative consequences for patients, employees and organizational efficiency. Hence, there are two challenges health care needs to approach to create sustainability, where a) changes in work practices are realized to provide high quality care, but at the same time b) where employees can maintain a good health. This is the target of a new project we work on.
Grants related to this reserach:
- Investigating and creating sustainable change in Swedish health care (FORTE dnr 2016-07182)
Read more about this project in Swedish media:
Research visits:
2015
Department of Psychology, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. Collaboration with Kathleen Otto
2014
Department of Psychology, KU Leuven, Belgium. Collaboration with Hans De Witte, Tinne Vander Elst
2013
Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences (DBOS), Claremont Graduate University (CGU), USA.
Collaboration with Stewart Donaldson and Meghana (Meg) Rao
2010
Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Collaboration with Saija Mauno, Anne Mäkikangas and Ulla Kinnunen
Education
2017
Docent/Associate Professor in Psychology, Stockholm University
2011
PhD in Psychology, Stockholm University, Department of Psychology
PhD thesis: Job Insecurity and Its Consequences: Investigating Moderators, Mediators and Gender
2007
Licensed Psychologist with a specialization in work and organizational psychology and medicine, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Department of Psychology, Germany
Academic honours, awards and prizes
2014
Global Bridges to Advance Health Care Research Careers for Junior Researchers 2012
Post doctoral fellowship AFA (Arbetsmiljö Post dok) 2009
ICPSR scholarship from the Swedish national data service