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Objectives: We investigated changes in weight, exercise frequency, and perceived health from the first to last health profile assessment (HPA) and between the number of tests within five years. We examined whether sociodemographic factors, or baseline values influenced these changes.

Methods: Data from 106 005 employees with ≥2 HPA (1990–2021) were included. Change between the first and last HPA within a five-year period was analyzed. Baseline age, sex, education, occupation, and baseline values of each outcome were included as predictors. XGBoost models assessed changes in the outcomes, and performance was evaluated via root mean squared error, mean absolute error, and R-squared. We employed Shapley Additive Explanations and forward marginal effects to interpret dose–response relationships and subgroup differences.

Results: Predictive performance was low, suggesting that the included variables only partially explained observed changes. Nonetheless, longer intervals between the first and last HPA correlated with greater weight gain, while a higher number of tests predicted slightly lower weight gain and modest improvements in perceived health and exercise frequency, compared to the average change. Younger participants had larger weight increases, whereas those with higher education showed smaller declines in exercise frequency.

Conclusions: Infrequent HPA alone did not appear to substantially influence the lifestyle-related factors studied. However, more frequent HPA, coupled with enhanced feedback and support, may yield small improvements in weight, perceived health, and exercise frequency compared to the average change.

Automation of work tasks presents both opportunities and challenges for social workers, whose roles are heavily reliant on human interaction and emotional engagement. In this study we investigated motivational implications of automation in the social services sector through the lens of self-determination theory. Using data from a large-scale survey of 6309 social workers in Sweden, we examined differences in work motivation, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions between those working with and without automation. Automation was associated with lower levels of self-determined motivation and job satisfaction, and higher turnover intentions. Mediation analyses revealed that automation negatively predicted job satisfaction and positively predicted turnover intentions through self-determined motivation. Although automation may enhance efficiency and alleviate administrative burdens, its current implementation seems to undermine social workers’ self-determined motivation. Our findings underscore the importance of designing automation that supports employees’ self-determined motivation, and we offer practical recommendations for implementing automation while supporting social workers’ motivation.

To be a young manager is to deviate from the norm, because youth and management are perceived as contradictory social positions. Thus, young managers are positioned as nonprototypical, which poses challenges to gaining acceptance and claiming the managerial identity. In this multicase interview study, we show how available social prototypes of management and self-to-prototype comparisons are important as young managers approach the identity work process. We conducted interviews (N = 38) and workshops (N = 6) in three businesssectors with young and senior managers, subordinates, and those performing support functions. Based on an analysis of these interviews and workshops, we developed a theoretical model illustrating how young managers use implicit theories of leadership (ILT) to reduce the incongruity between internal self-conceptions and external prototypes of management as a benchmark toward managerial identity, revealing three main approaches to identity work. Young managers approach age-based drawbacks by acting based on noncontextualized ILTs, making adjustments in relation to available prototypes, and by making self-to-prototype insights. Our findings augment the identity work theory by providing an age perspective on this process and highlight the importance of future research engaging in depth with age as a sociodemographic factor in relation to the managerial role.

Background: Patient safety climate (PSC) reflects healthcare professionals’ shared perceptions of how patient safety is prioritized, managed, and enacted within healthcare organizations. While PSC is known to be associated with favorable patient outcomes, empirical evidence on how specific work environment factors shape PSC over time remains limited. Drawing on the job demands–resources theory, this study examines how organizational and social work environment factors relate to PSC in a healthcare setting.

Methods: A two-wave panel study was conducted within a large healthcare organization in northern Sweden. Survey data were collected from employees across four departments at baseline (T1; n = 624) and six months later (T2; n = 454). Organizational factors included quantitative demands and role clarity, while social factors included teamwork and quality of leadership. PSC was measured at T2. Structural equation modeling was used to test longitudinal relationships between T1 predictors and PSC at T2.

Results: In the structural model, role clarity (β = 0.23, p < 0.001) and teamwork (β = 0.32, p < 0.001) at T1 were positively associated with PSC at T2. Quantitative demands and quality of leadership showed no significant unique associations with PSC when all predictors were included simultaneously. The final model explained 32% of the variance in PSC.

Conclusions: The findings indicate that clearly defined roles and effective teamwork are key antecedents of PSC over time, whereas workload and general leadership quality may be less influential when considered alongside other work environment factors.

Implications for Nursing Management: Efforts to strengthen PSC may benefit from interventions targeting multiple aspects of the work environment, with role clarity and collaborative team processes emerging as particularly promising targets for nursing management.

Background: Healthcare organizations in Europe, including Sweden, face ongoing challenges in ensuring a good work environment for their personnel, which is essential for high-quality care and job satisfaction. The Danish Psychosocial Work Environment Questionnaire (DPQ) has proven effective in various contexts but has not yet been validated in Swedish healthcare settings. This study aims to validate a Swedish translation of the DPQ in a healthcare context. We also aim to assess its validity against a broader range of outcomes than previously explored and to evaluate the feasibility of a single-item version for practical use.

Methods: The study was conducted within a public healthcare organization in northern Sweden and included 1,299 employees from four departments. The DPQ was translated into Swedish and subsequently administered, yielding a response rate of 48% at Time 1 (T1). Participants were randomly assigned to two groups: one group received the full DPQ at both time points, while the other received the full DPQ at T1 and a single-item version at Time 2 (T2). Reliability and validity were assessed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) whilst the evaluation of the single-item version of DPQ was done by a comparison of correlation coefficients.

Results: The Swedish DPQ demonstrated good reliability and validity, with omega values > 0.70 for all subscales. CFA confirmed the multifactor structure of the instrument. High intercorrelations between some subscales indicated potential overlap. The single-item version showed significant differences in correlation coefficients compared to the full version, suggesting it may not be a suitable alternative.

Conclusions: The Swedish translation of the DPQ is a reliable and valid tool for assessing the psychosocial work environment in healthcare. However, the single-item version may not provide an accurate representation of complex constructs. The study highlights the importance of comprehensive measures for improving working conditions and suggests further research in broader contexts.

While the role of the organizational context in enabling leadership behaviours has attracted increasing research attention, the role of leaders’ age in this dynamic has been overlooked. Using transformational leadership theory (Bass, 1985) and Oc’s framework of context (2018), we examine how aspects of the task, social, physical, and temporal context shape leadership behaviour from a lifespan perspective. A random sample of young leaders and their older colleagues was surveyed (n = 847). Multiple group structural equation modelling was used to test the study hypotheses. Results indicated that the task context, in terms of role clarity, was a stronger predictor of transformational leadership among young leaders than it was among their older colleagues. Social, physical, and temporal contexts did not differ in their effect on the leaders’ ability to exhibit transformational leadership. Our findings suggest that organizations can facilitate young leaders’ role clarity to support their development of constructive (i.e. transformational) leadership behaviours. In addition, our study demonstrates that leadership research benefits from a lifespan perspective to facilitate a better understanding of how leaders’ age influences the emergence of leadership behaviour.

This qualitative study protocol outlines a co-creation project between researchers and the Swedish police to improve cross-functional collaboration in online child sexual abuse (CSA) investigations. Online CSA cases are complex and require extensive collaboration between prosecutors, IT forensic expertise, and investigators with expertise in child sexual offenses. Despite the recognized need for cross-functional teamwork, research evaluating methods for such collaboration in crime investigations, especially in online CSA, is scarce. This project, funded by the Swedish research agency FORTE (2023-00085), addresses this gap by employing the ‘double diamond’ co-creation framework (discovery, define, develop, deliver) to co-create, implement, and evaluate a team-based intervention within three online CSA units in northern Sweden. Data collection will involve semi-structured interviews (n ≈ 35), participant observations of workshops, workshop appraisals, document analysis, and analysis of organizational metrics. The project aims to: (1) identify challenges and potentials for cross-functional teamwork in online CSA investigations; (2) co-design a team-based intervention to address identified needs; and (3) evaluate the intervention’s impact on efficiency and organizational outcomes. By working collaboratively with police practitioners throughout the research process, this project aims to generate practical and sustainable solutions to enhance the effectiveness of online CSA investigations.

Background: Destructive leadership has been linked to negative consequences for both organizations and followers. Research has also shown that leader gender affects follower perceptions of leadership behavior and follower outcomes [1,2,3]. However, knowledge is limited as to whether this also applies to destructive leadership [4]. This study aims to combine gendered organization theory with destructive leadership research to investigate the role that gender plays in the relation between destructive leadership behavior and follower outcomes.

Methods: The data were collected in collaboration with Statistic Sweden. It is a representative sample from the working population in Sweden. We used a two-wave survey design and included 1,121 participants in the analysis.

Results: The results from structural equation models indicated that destructive leadership has negative consequences for follower burnout, job satisfaction, and turnover intention 6 months later. The results also showed that followers reported a greater intention to leave the organization if the leader was the same gender and used destructive leadership.

Conclusions: Our study contributes to destructive leadership research by showing that the gender of both the leader and follower matters for the relation between destructive leadership behavior and follower outcomes. Additionally, our study makes a theoretical contribution by integrating a gender research perspective into destructive leadership research.

Although the organizational context has been identified as an important factor contributing to the success or failure of leadership training initiatives, exploration of the interaction between differing contextual perceptions in relation to the transfer of leadership training is lacking. Building on Oc’s framework on context and leadership, we examine how the degree of perceptual alignment of leader and teams on two contextual factors, formalization and employee orientation, were related to followers’ ratings of transformational leadership after a leadership training in the forest industry (n = 37 leaders). Polynomial regression with response surface analysis revealed that agreement between leaders and their teams on formalization and employee orientation predicted improvements in transformational leadership but only up to a certain point. At high levels of formalization agreement negatively impacted leaders’ development of transformational leadership, and at high levels of employee orientation the positive impact of agreement flattened out. Leaders who rated formalization and employee orientation higher than their teams increased their transformational leadership to a lesser extent as rated by their followers. Our findings extend the framework developed by Oc and offer a new perspective on the complex interplay between leader, follower, and contextual factors that all matter for successful leadership training transfer.

Destructive leadership does not occur in a vacuum; rather, these behaviors are part of a social process in which leader and follower interact and influence each other. Still, knowledge regarding followers’ behaviors as antecedents to destructive leadership behavior is limited, even more so from a gender perspective. In this study, we investigate the relationship between perceived lack of team motivation and destructive leadership behavior, with the leader’s gender as a moderator. Together with Statistic Sweden, we collected data using a two-wave survey design. We included 784 participants in the analysis, using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that perceived lack of team motivation was associated with active and passive destructive leadership behaviors. Beyond that, the leader’s gender moderated the relationship between leaders’ perception of team amotivation and active destructive leadership. The results show that male leaders are more prone to act destructively when they perceive a lack of team motivation. These results suggest that male leaders may be more susceptible to engaging in destructive leadership behaviors due to identity threat than female leaders. Therefore, we examine how the construction of gender and identity and the close association between masculinity and leader identity contribute to the risk of engaging in destructive leadership behavior.