Research Update Institute of Work Psychology (IWP) 2017 www.sheffield.ac.uk/management/research/iwp
Welcome to IWP 2017 The Institute of Work Psychology (IWP) is made up of enthusiastic work psychologists and organisational behaviour researchers at the University of Sheffield, UK. This Research Update summarises our research over the last 12 months and identifies some particular projects. More information can be found by clicking the names in bold. Many of our projects already benefit greatly from collaboration with colleagues in other institutions and countries, and we would very much like to continue this tradition. We would be delighted to hear from anyone with overlapping interests or with ideas for potential collaboration, including research proposals from potential PhD students. The Institute of Work Psychology was founded in 1968 as the Social and Applied Psychology Unit and became the Institute of Work Psychology in 1994. As part of the very successful Sheffield University Management School, it applies both qualitative and quantitative methods to ensure academic rigour in its research. The Management School’s Triple Crown accreditation places it in the top one per cent of business and management schools worldwide.
New Director of IWP – Karina Nielsen
Karina joined the Institute of Work Psychology in October 2016, from a position as Professor of Work and Organisational Psychology at the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research interests emphasise processes and methods of changing organisations, with a particular interest in participatory interventions. She has developed and tested models for how organisations can design, implement and evaluate interventions that aim to promote employee wellbeing through changing the way work is designed and managed. Karina is particularly interested in evaluation design, and has developed evaluation methods that may help researchers and organisations understand what works for whom in which circumstances.
Several new members have joined IWP in the last twelve months and we’d like to extend a warm welcome to them: Emanuela Girei, Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and Work Psychology, Kristin Hildenbrand, Lecturer in Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, and Karina Nielsen, Chair in Work Psychology. The Institute has a strong tradition of doctoral research, and current PhD students and their topics can be found on the final page. We would like to congratulate other students on the recent completion of their studies: Sarah Brooks, Andreana Drencheva, Darius Ikyanyon, Ciara Kelly, Caroline Knight, Adriana Maldonado Torres, Stephen McGlynn and Ahmad Qammar. Congratulations to all, and we wish them a successful career.
IWP Conference: 19-21 June 2018 IWP will be holding its sixth biennial international conference at Sheffield University Management School between 19 and 21 June 2018. Previous conferences have been very successful, and we hope to see you there. Keynote speakers and the schedule for paper submission will be announced here.
What are we working on? This Research Update covers the Institute’s four strategic themes, reflecting our traditional areas of expertise and highlighting newer areas of interest.
Work and Bullying Wellbeing in the workplace
We see the wellbeing of workers as fundamental to an organisation’s ability to deliver high performance, and a programme of research into work and wellbeing has been central to IWP since its inception.
Carolyn Axtell is exploring the impact of new technologies and new ways of working on wellbeing, with a strong interest in participative forms of intervention and issues of assessment. Karina Nielsen is active in several projects with colleagues from the Nordic region, one examining the impact of perceptual congruence between managers and employees during organisational interventions and another designed to bring together researchers from different disciplines to develop models for how we can best evaluate continuous and evolving interventions. Malcolm Patterson studies the impact of operational practices and psychosocial factors on organisational performance and wellbeing. He has worked on
projects to develop the evidencebase on the nature of relationships between employee development and organisational effectiveness. Together with Caroline Knight and Jeremy Dawson he has reviewed and investigated interventions to increase worker engagement.
recovery and loss in wellbeing associated with holidays and their aftermath. He has been modelling changes in anxiety, depression and burnout using innovative modelling techniques, including discontinuous and non-linear mixed-effects type models.
Christine Sprigg continues her work into cyberbullying and bullying at work, in conjunction with colleagues and students at Loughborough and Sheffield Universities. She has worked with Carolyn Axtell and other colleagues on an Economic and Social Research Council seminar series on ‘Big Data’ and wellbeing.
Peter Warr is working on a general review of wellbeing at work and in life more generally, treating the construct in several different ways. His current research focuses on three aspects: different components of wellbeing, self-initiated cognitive and behavioural influences, and (with Karina Nielsen) links between wellbeing and behaviour.
Chris Stride, in his role as applied statistician, is investigating the impact of perfectionism on wellbeing and patterns of
Health & Social Care Identity, Leadership and Innovation This theme extends across a number of fields to which we are able to make a strong work psychology contribution. Kamal Birdi is part of a multidisciplinary programme within the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Grand Challenge for Water, leading a project to identify barriers and facilitators of inter-organisational collaboration for innovation in the water industry. He has also been using his CLEAR IDEAS innovation-development model to create new research partnerships between academic and health organisations.
employees benefits similarly from the same leader behaviour. Rose Shepherd explores how practices to manage crowd events are influenced by contextual factors, such as political agendas and the mass media. She adopts an ethnographic methodology, involving documentary analysis (e.g., stated policies, social media), interviews and event observations, to analyse the discourse around differing crowd events.
Sarah Brooks is working with the UK Police Service to understand how perceived formality shapes the ways in which police officers voice or choose to remain silent when challenging their superior officers. She is currently investigating the factors that shape how police officers share information about unethical behaviour. Penny Dick is examining public sector reform in the specific context of police partnership working. Building on a pilot intervention aimed at reducing demand for public services, this work focuses on processes involved in producing outcomes which include not only demand reduction but also improved quality of life for targeted individuals. Kristin Hildenbrand is studying leadership, wellbeing and work-life balance. She has recently completed a project aimed to stimulate debate on whether the wellbeing of all
Anna Topakas continues her work on leadership and followership, with a focus on interpersonal relationships, cognitive processes, identity and emotions. Her research concerns the cognitive processes of followers in forming leadership perceptions, and the effects of followers’ leadership perceptions on individual and group outcomes. Kamal Birdi, Laura Dean, Kristin Hildenbrand, Karina Nielsen, Anna Topakas and Peter Warr, in conjunction with several PhD students, are investigating the role of leadership and identity in facilitating performance and wellbeing in non-traditional settings such as in crossfunctional teams and through inter-agency collaboration. The project is at initial stages, and the team are interested in establishing national and international collaborations.
Our next theme describes a specific organisational field in which IWP has developed a strong reputation. Diane Burns uses ethnographic, participatory and action research methodologies to carry out primary research into the organisation of health and social care. She has recently been awarded a grant from the Wellcome Trust (“Doing Care Differently”) to pilot different ways of doing homecare. Jeremy Dawson has been working on a number of projects in the health care sector which include an evaluation of Schwartz Center Rounds and the development of a new measure of effectiveness for general medical practice teams. From January 2017 a new project is examining how cultures of openness and transparency have changed in the National Health Service. Rachael Finn is undertaking two projects: one funded by the UK Department of Health to evaluate the leadership role of Health and Wellbeing Boards in reforming public health in England; and one funded by the Health Foundation to evaluate a coaching programme aimed at enhancing frontline quality improvement capability.
Equality and Discrimination The final IWP theme concerns a topic that is increasingly important in the workplace, and to which work psychology can contribute important insights. Angela Carter has been seeking to understand why many organisations choose not to employ young people. Although employer interviews indicate that some organisations are very aware of young people’s value to the achievement of their strategic objectives, around 75% of UK organisations restrict much of their recruitment through concerns that young people will require specialist training and development. Laura Dean is investigating how well employability interventions work for young people with autistic spectrum disorders, focusing on how the current
skills agenda in education fits with the abilities and talents of individuals with autism. Emanuela Girei’s main research is into management, organisations and societal change, with an overall aim to identify how management theory and practice can contribute to making organisations, institutions and societies more just, equitable and sustainable. She is carrying out research on a social movement opposing a mining project in South Asia.
Doctoral Research There is a strong tradition of doctoral research at IWP. A full list of current students can be found here. Examples of current topics include: Albert Attom - The understanding, enactment and elevation of employee voice and speaking out: a comparative case analysis of different adult social care organisational models; John Briggs - Strategic conduct in chief executive officers: a processpractice view; Leanne Ingram - Evaluating the work-specific benefits of mindfulness training in organisations; Evelyn Lanka - Processes contributing to the construction of leadership identities; Daniella Mokhtar - Workplace bullying: the role of perseverative cognition between the phenomena and its impact on health and wellbeing; Emma Parry - Transitions by young people (18-25 years old) from education to employment; Queyu Ren - The influence of attachment styles on the quality of leader-member guanxi; Tobias Stadler The role of uniqueness and belongingness seeking in predicting constructive and destructive workplace deviance; Ann-Marie Thomas - Factors that influence hiring managers when faced with older job candidates; Amanda Williamson - Entrepreneurial opportunity transformation: the role of sleep and mood in exploration-exploitation behaviour;
You can learn more about the research featured here and about individual members of staff by clicking here. In addition, you can also contact us directly using the following email address: iwp-researchupdate@sheffield.ac.uk. Finally, we look forward to welcoming you at the IWP 2018 International Conference.