Andrea Eriksson

Development of health promoting leadership : Experiences of a training programme

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the experiences of an intervention programme for development of health promoting leadership in Gothenburg in Sweden. The more specific purpose is to identify critical aspects of such a programme as part of the development of a health promoting workplace.Design/methodology/approach – A programme supporting managers in health promoting leadership was studied. The study was performed as a holistic case study design. In total, 17 semi‐structured interviews were conducted, supplemented with data from a leadership survey. The material was coded according to the principles of content analysis, resulting in the three main categories: comprehensiveness, integration and participation.Findings – The results show the importance of regarding the development of health promoting leadership as a contribution to the building of organisational capacity for health promoting workplaces. This requires a comprehensive approach, including both individual and structu...

Health promoting leadership - different views of the concept

OBJECTIVE To describe and analyse different views of health promoting leadership among actors involved in workplace health promotion in eight Swedish municipalities. METHODS Twenty individuals were interviewed and their views were analysed according to the methodology of phenomenograpic research, exploring how health promoting leadership was described, what motives were expressed, and what critical conditions were perceived for developing such leadership. RESULTS The informants described health promoting leadership in three ways: organising health promoting activities, having a supportive leadership style, and developing a health promoting workplace. The motives mentioned for developing health promoting leadership were instrumental motives and improved health. The critical conditions for health promoting leadership were organisational conditions, characteristics of individual managers, and support to managers. CONCLUSIONS It seems that the concept of health promoting leadership was often used to link ideas about good leadership to the health of employees. Organisational goals and management trends may also have influenced the motives as well as the conditions for development of health promoting leadership.

Leadership, organization and health at work: a case study of a Swedish industrial company

The application of knowledge on organization and leadership is important for the promotion of health at workplace. The purpose of this article is to analyse the leadership and organization, including the organizational culture, of a Swedish industrial company in relation to the health of the employees. The leadership in this company has been oriented towards developing and actively promoting a culture and a structure of organization where the employees have a high degree of control over their work situation. According to the employees, this means extensive possibilities for personal development and responsibility, as well as good companionship, which makes them feel well at work. This is also supported by the low sickness rate of the company. The results indicate that the leadership and organization of this company may have been conducive to the health of the employees interviewed. However, the culture of personal responsibility and the structure of self-managed teams seemed to suit only those who were able to manage the demands of the company and adapt to that kind of organization. Therefore, the findings indicate that the specific context of the technology, the environment and the professional level of the employees need to be taken into consideration when analysing the relation between leadership, organization and health at work.

Lean implementation at different levels in Swedish hospitals: the importance for working conditions and stress

Healthcare organisations in Sweden are reorienting toward horizontal organisation around care processes. This papers aim was to investigate how implementation approaches for improvements of care processes in line with lean production (LP), at hospital strategic and operative levels, are associated with working conditions and stress-related health among the employees. Five hospitals working with improvements to care processes were studied using questionnaires to employees (n = 1,303) and interviews at strategic and operative levels at baseline and follow-up. The process redesign implementation strategies varied between the strategic and operative levels. There were associations between a higher degree of LP at operative level and increased work resources and decreased work demands. Physical, cognitive and mental stress-related symptoms were only weakly associated with strategic or operative LP initiatives. There was evidence of more beneficial or improved working conditions in relation to higher degree of LP at operative levels.

Collaboration in workplace health promotion – a case study

Purpose - The aim of this article is to describe and analyze a case of interorganizational and intersectoral collaboration on workplace health promotion involving nine municipalities in a Swedish r ...

Health care clinicians' engagement in organizational redesign of care processes: The importance of work and organizational conditions

The Swedish health care system is reorienting towards horizontal organization for care processes. A main challenge is to engage health care clinicians in the process. The aim of this study was to assess engagement (i.e. attitudes and beliefs, the cognitive state and clinical engagement behaviour) among health care clinicians, and to investigate how engagement was related to work resources and demands during organizational redesign. A cohort study was conducted, using a questionnaire distributed to clinicians at five hospitals working with care process improvement approaches, two of them having implemented Lean production. The results show that kinds of engagement are interlinked and contribute to clinical engagement behaviour in quality of care and patient safety. Increased work resources have importance for engagements in organizational improvements, especially in top-down implementations. An extended work engagement model during organizational improvements in health care was supported. The model contributes to knowledge about how and when clinicians are mobilized to engage in organizational changes.

Lean Tools Promoting Individual Innovation in Healthcare

Lean is a management concept that has been implemented in different sectors, including healthcare. In lean, employees continuously improve the work processes, which is closely associated with small ...