What we do
We teach and conduct research about leadership and organization in healthcare and academia. Our focus areas include groups and teams, shared leadership, work and work environments, professional roles, learning, leadership and climate work, and mechanisms for successful healthcare.
In our research group, we challenge conventional views of leadership that concentrate on specific individuals. We explore how leadership is distributed among different formal roles within an organization and how it can be perceived as a process involving both people and various material elements. From this perspective, leading others transforms into ‘leading leadership’.
Our interdisciplinary research group combines behavioral sciences, humanities, engineering, social sciences, and nursing expertise. Our projects are conducted in close collaboration with key stakeholders.
Research areas
In the area of leadership and climate work in healthcare (site in Swedish), research is conducted on how hospitals work to reduce their emissions. The focus is on leadership and organization, and to make it easier for managers and employees to drive climate efforts in a workplace where climate work is not the main task.
Project managers and contact persons: Linda Sturesson Stabel and Pamela Mazzocato
Funder: The Kamprad Family Foundation
To understand the nature and role of leadership in successful healthcare, we examine the ‘doing’ of leadership in daily work. We go beyond the conventional heroic view of leadership and use distributed leadership theory to contribute knowledge about how collective and distributed leadership is manifested and channeled (i.e. led) in healthcare organizations.
Project leader and contact person: Mia von Knorring
Funders: Vinnova, Kamprad Family Foundation, Strategic Research Area Health Care (SFO-V)
The research group conducts research on shared leadership in health care, both the informal between employees and the formal between leaders such as managers or medical directors. On the theme of leading together, we also tailor educational programs for managers and leaders who lead an organization together.
Project manager and contact person: Mia von Knorring
Several ongoing projects exploring health professions learning during undergraduate education and professional clinicians' (workplace) learning.
Ongoing PhD project: To nurse the learning of leadership education - an exploratory study of nursing students and registered nurses' perception of leadership education and ability to lead in professional practice.
Doctoral student and contact person for undergraduate learning: Ulrika Shüldt Håård
Contact person for workplace learning: Linda Sturesson Stabel
The research group explores work performance and work environment in different contexts. Working at the intersection of health care and retail is one area of research, which is investigated based on outpatient pharmacies and the work of pharmacists there. Context in this study is defined through theories of institutional logics. We have particular expertise on co-workership, work performance, conflicts of interest at work, the impact of digitization on work and work environment, and teleworking.
Ongoing PhD project: The work as healthcare providers and retail employees in community pharmacies in Sweden.
Contact person employeeship in pharmacies: Kenneth Hagsten
Contact person for work performance and work environment: Kristina Palm
Contact person for work environment and patient care outcomes: Lisa Smeds Alenius
The research group conducts research on professions in organizations such as health care, but also in other industries such as pharmacy and construction. There is a particular interest in identity formation and on potential conflicts between profession and organization.
The project “There are too many administrators and they don't understand anything” is a study of tensions and contradictions between the ‘administration’ (those working with administrative tasks, leadership and organizational development) and healthcare professionals.
The research aims to clarify how the two groups create tensions and what consequences these tensions have. In the long term, the research will help to ensure that care can be organized in an appropriate way, where different competencies are utilized.
Project leader and contact person: Ingrid Svensson
To better understand the modern healthcare environment as a workplace, we are exploring organizational development as a tool to create an attractive workplace where skills are strategically deployed to provide safe and high-quality care to patients.
In a recently completed EU-funded project, Magnet4Europe, we followed the implementation of the Magnet Hospital model in 65 acute hospitals in six countries, aiming to improve the work environment for healthcare professionals to increase retention and reduce work-related ill health.
In new projects, we build on the knowledge from Magnet4Europe and use a socio-technical systems perspective to follow how Swedish hospitals work for sustainable staffing, including using the principles of the Magnet model to increase retention, recruitment and improve staffing among healthcare professionals.
Project leader and contact person: Lisa Smeds Alenius
Digitization is an essential part of today's working life. Digital tools and systems are often introduced to streamline work, which affects, for example, the work environment and how work is managed and organized. The research group has expertise in particular on how digitization affects the boundary between work and other life, teleworking, the social work environment and meetings in healthcare (patient/physician).
Contact person: Kristina Palm
The research group has a long history of intervention research in the area of group, team and leadership development. Backstage groups are a development model for strengthening leadership teams, but have also been used to strengthen doctors in their profession. In addition, the group has experience in evaluating various leadership development programs.
Contact person: Mia von Knorring
Methods and theories
To increase our understanding of how organizations are organized, managed and perceived, we use both qualitative methods with ethnographic elements, such as observations, interviews and focus groups, as well as quantitative strategies through surveys and the use of register data. Mixing methods from different data sources facilitates multiple perspectives can be considered and deeper knowledge obtained.
Our theories also vary depending on the research question. The groups has expertise in theories of organizational practices, discourse, conflict of interest, quality improvement and socio-technical systems theory to name a few.
Teaching activities
Our courses are closely linked to research and we teach students, researchers and practitioners in leadership and organizational development. Both at undergraduate and graduate level and as contract education. We have extensive experience of different pedagogical methods and forms. We also customize contract education in collaboration with the health care sector.
Courses for which the research group has the main responsibility:
- Programme courses
- Leadership, 4.5 credits (Nursing programme, T4)
- Learning and leadership, 4.5 credits (Supplementary education for nurses with foreign degrees from countries outside the EU/EEA and Switzerland)
- Contract education
- Leadership and organizational development (LOU) 1, 30 credits
- Leadership and organizational development (LOU) 2, 30 credits - 1 year Master's degree in Medical Management