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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon

Experimental Field Investigation of Leadership Practices Supportive of Work-Satisfaction, Engagement, Performance and Creativity

Alternative title: Experimental Field Investigation of Leadership Practices Supportive of Work-Satisfaction, Engagement, Performance and Creativity

Awarded: NOK 10.2 mill.

Current trends in the labor market raise the importance of research on measures that can help workers to adapt to changes and increase inclusion in work-life. New technology is making many jobs obsolete, and the jobs that technology creates are constantly changing, resulting in a need for workers who adapt easily to new challenges and have innovative ideas. This is stressful to many employees, which may lead to workplace disengagement and poor performance. As such, it is more important now than ever that leaders create a work environment that supports employees and encourages their development. Still, empirical research demonstrates great variation in the extent to which leaders create such a supportive work environment. Our primary objective is to break new ground in the empirical understanding of training that inspires and sustains supportive practices among leaders in the workplace. We will develop and test a KNOWLEDGE intervention that provides leaders with an understanding of supportive leadership practices; and an ENACT intervention that increases leaders’ awareness about the malleability of human potential and how leaders are responsible for scaffolding others’ development. We conduct a large-scale randomized field trial several hundred leaders and their employees to test both the combined and the individual effect of the KNOWLEDGE and ENACT treatments, measuring the impact on leadership practices and on employees’ work satisfaction, engagement, performance and creativity, using data from multiple surveys, administrative records and video recordings. Our extensive data collection will allow us to investigate if, why, how, when and for whom the treatments are effective. Provided that beneficial treatment effects are found, one key goal is to ensure that organizations all over Norway will be able to utilize the easily scalable leadership-training programs produced in this project, for free.

Current trends in the labor market raise the importance of research on measures that can help workers to adapt to changes and increase inclusion in work-life. New technology is making many jobs obsolete, and the jobs that technology creates are constantly changing, resulting in a need for workers who adapt easily to new challenges and have innovative ideas. This is stressful to many employees, which may lead to workplace disengagement and poor performance. As such, it is more important now than ever that leaders create a work environment that supports employees and encourages their development. Still, empirical research demonstrates great variation in the extent to which leaders create such a supportive work environment. Our primary objective is to break new ground in the empirical understanding of training that inspires and sustains supportive practices among leaders in the workplace. We will develop and test a KNOWLEDGE intervention that provides leaders with an understanding of supportive leadership practices; and an ENACT intervention that increases leaders’ awareness about the malleability of human potential and how leaders are responsible for scaffolding others’ development. We conduct a large-scale randomized field trial with several hundred leaders and their employees to test both the combined and the individual effect of the KNOWLEDGE and ENACT treatments, measuring the impact on leadership practices and on employees’ work satisfaction, engagement, performance and creativity, using data from multiple surveys, administrative records and video recordings. Our extensive data collection will allow us to investigate if, why, how, when and for whom the treatments are effective. Provided that beneficial treatment effects are found, one key goal is to ensure that organizations all over Norway will be able to utilize the easily scalable leadership-training programs produced in this project, for free.

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VAM-Velferd, arbeid og migrasjon