Professor Karina Nielsen
PhD
Management School
Chair in Work Psychology


+44 114 222 0983
Full contact details
Management School
Room B028
Sheffield University Management School
Conduit Road
Sheffield
S10 1FL
- Profile
-
Karina joined the Institute of Work Psychology at the Sheffield University Management School in October 2016. Prior to this, Karina was Professor of Work and Organisational Psychology at the University of East Anglia, UK.
Karina completed her PhD in Applied Psychology at the University of Nottingham, UK in 2003 and then returned to her native Denmark to work as a researcher, senior researcher and professor at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment in Copenhagen.
Since 2003, Karina has been Principal or Co-investigator on more than 20 externally funded research projects, and has published over 90 refereed journal articles.
- Research interests
-
Karina's research interests fall in the category of changing organisations. Her main strand of research is that of participatory, organisational interventions.
She has developed and tested models for how organisations can design, implement and evaluate organisational intervention that aim to promote employee well-being through changing the way work is organised, designed and managed.
Karina is particularly interested in evaluation design. She has developed evaluation methods that may help researchers and organisations understand what works for whom in which circumstances.
Karina's second strand of research involves understanding how restructuring influences employee well-being.
Restructuring often has a negative impact on employee well-being and she studies how restructuring can be implemented such that it achieves its objectives and at the same does not have detrimental effects on employee well-being.
Finally, Karina's third strand of research focuses on leadership and well-being.
She explores how the leadership of line managers can help create a good environment for their employees giving them the opportunity to develop and thrive in their jobs. She is particularly interested in exploring the conditions for "good" leadership.
In her research, Karina uses qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research designs.
- Publications
-
Books
Edited books
Journal articles
- Employees’ experience of supervisor behaviour – a support or a hindrance on their return-to- work journey with a CMD? A qualitative study. Work & Stress.
- Counting on U training to enhance trusting relationships and mental health literacy among business advisors : protocol for a randomised controlled trial. BMC Psychiatry, 22(1). View this article in WRRO
- The importance of training transfer of non-technical skills safety training of construction workers. International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics. View this article in WRRO
- Taming the flood of findings : what makes for a really useful literature review in occupational health psychology?. Work & Stress. View this article in WRRO
- Virtual Special Issue: Staying safe in the workplace: A special issue on understanding safety for migrant workers. Safety Science, 142, 105398-105398.
- The relational fit in organizational interventions—what can organizational research learn from research in psychotherapy?. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(15).
- An integrated realist evaluation model to evaluate organisational interventions. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2021(1), 10830-10830.
- Correction to: In the eye of the beholder: how self-other agreements influence leadership training outcomes as perceived by leaders and their followers (Journal of Business and Psychology, (2021), 10.1007/s10869-020-09730-3). Journal of Business and Psychology.
- Challenges influencing the safety of migrant workers in the construction industry: A qualitative study in Italy, Spain, and the UK. Safety Science, 142, 105388-105388.
- Promoting occupational health psychology through professional bodies: The role of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology. Work and Stress, 34(3), 215-218. View this article in WRRO
- Job crafting as a work adjustment strategy for workers returning after long-term sickness absence due to common mental disorders. International Journal of Rehabilitation Research, 43(2), 154-158. View this article in WRRO
- Improving working conditions and job satisfaction in healthcare. A study concept design on a participatory organizational level intervention in psychosocial risks management. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. View this article in WRRO
- The Impact of Group Efficacy Beliefs and Transformational Leadership on Followers’
Self-efficacy: A Multilevel-Longitudinal Study. Current Psychology, 1-38. View this article in WRRO
- No leader is an island : contextual antecedents to line managers’ constructive and destructive leadership during an organizational intervention. International Journal of Workplace Health Management. View this article in WRRO
- Safety training for migrant workers in the construction industry: A systematic review and future research agenda.. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. View this article in WRRO
- Ensuring organization-intervention fit for a participatory organizational intervention to improve food service workers’ health and wellbeing: Workplace organizational health study. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 62(2), e33-e45. View this article in WRRO
- Leader-team perceptual distance affects outcomes of leadership training: Examining safety leadership and follower safety self-efficacy. Safety Science, 120, 25-31. View this article in WRRO
- 'Same, but different' : a mixed methods realist evaluation of a cluster-randomized controlled participatory organizational intervention. Human Relations. View this article in WRRO
- Improving Working Conditions to Promote Worker Safety, Health and Wellbeing for Low-Wage Workers: The Workplace Organizational Health Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. View this article in WRRO
- Leading well: Challenges to researching leadership in occupational health psychology – and some ways forward. Work and Stress, 33(2), 107-118. View this article in WRRO
- Leadership in occupational health psychology. Work and Stress, 33(2), 105-106. View this article in WRRO
- Leading well is a matter of resources : leader vigour and peer support augments the relationship between transformational leadership and burnout. Work and Stress, 33(2), 156-172. View this article in WRRO
- Out of mind, out of sight? Leading distributed workers to ensure health and safety. Work and Stress, 33(2), 173-191. View this article in WRRO
- The Line Manager’s Role in Implementing Successful Organizational Interventions. The Spanish journal of psychology, 22. View this article in WRRO
- Employees' and line managers' active involvement in participatory organizational interventions: Examining direct, reversed, and reciprocal effects on well‐being. Stress and Health. View this article in WRRO
- Process Evaluation for Stressor Reduction Interventions in Sport. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology. View this article in WRRO
- The Interplay of Sensemaking and Material Artefacts during Interventions: A Case Study. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 8(3). View this article in WRRO
- Out of sight and out of mind? A literature review of occupational safety and health leadership and management of distributed workers. Work and Stress, 32(2), 124-146. View this article in WRRO
- Forms of participation: The development and application of a conceptual model of participation in work environment interventions. Economic and Industrial Democracy. View this article in WRRO
- Effectiveness of a participatory physical and psychosocial intervention to balance the demands and resources of industrial workers: A cluster-randomized controlled trial. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 44(1), 58-68. View this article in WRRO
- Can job insecurity be managed? Evaluating an organizational-level intervention addressing the negative effects of restructuring. Work and Stress. View this article in WRRO
- The Importance of Context in Screening in Occupational Health Interventions in Organizations: A Mixed Methods Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. View this article in WRRO
- Organizational occupational health interventions: what works for whom in which circumstances?. Occupational Medicine, 67(6), 410-412. View this article in WRRO
- Using kaizen to improve employee well-being: Results from two organizational intervention studies. Human Relations, 70(8), 966-993. View this article in WRRO
- Implementing Enhanced Recovery Pathways: a literature review with realist synthesis. Hospital practice (Office ed.). View this article in WRRO
- Workplace resources to improve both employee well-being and performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Work & Stress, 31(2), 101-120. View this article in WRRO
- Do Different Training Conditions Facilitate Team Implementation? A Quasi-Experimental Mixed Methods Study. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 11(2), 223-247.
- Validating the Job Crafting Questionnaire (JCRQ): A multi-method and multi-sample study. Work and Stress, 31(1), 82-99. View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- Does contingent pay encourage positive employee attitudes and intensify work?. Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), 94-112. View this article in WRRO
- What works for whom in which circumstances? On the need to move beyond the ‘what works?’ question in organizational intervention research. Human Relations, 70(1), 40-62. View this article in WRRO
- Are We All in the Same Boat? The Role of Perceptual Distance in Organizational Health Interventions. Stress and Health, 32(4), 294-303. View this article in WRRO
- How to Measure the Intervention Process? An Assessment of Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to Data Collection in the Process Evaluation of Organizational Interventions. Frontiers in Psychology: Organizational Psychology. View this article in WRRO
- The relationship between transformational leadership and follower sickness absence: the role of presenteeism. Work & Stress, 30(2), 193-208.
- The impact of restructuring on employee well-being: a systematic review of longitudinal studies. Work & Stress, 30(1), 91-114.
- A participatory physical and psychosocial intervention for balancing the demands and resources among industrial workers (PIPPI): study protocol of a cluster-randomized controlled trial. BMC Public Health, 15(1).
- Does Group-Level Commitment Predict Employee Well-Being?. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 57(11), 1141-1146.
- The thin line between work and home: The spillover and crossover of daily conflicts. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(1), 1-18.
- Putting context into organizational intervention design: Using tailored questionnaires to measure initiatives for worker well-being. Human Relations, 67(12), 1537-1560.
- How do Workers with Common Mental Disorders Experience a Multidisciplinary Return-to-Work Intervention? A Qualitative Study. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 24(4), 709-724.
- How to Engage Occupational Physicians in Recruitment of Research Participants: A Mixed-Methods Study of Challenges and Opportunities. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 24(1), 68-78.
- Process evaluation of a problem solving intervention to prevent recurrent sickness absence in workers with common mental disorders. Social Science & Medicine, 100, 123-132.
- Importance of Change Appraisal for Employee Well-being during Organizational Restructuring: Findings from the Finnish Paper Industry’s Extensive Transition. Industrial Health, 52(5), 445-455.
- Opening the black box: Presenting a model for evaluating organizational-level interventions. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 22(5), 601-617.
- Review Article: How can we make organizational interventions work? Employees and line managers as actively crafting interventions. Human Relations, 66(8), 1029-1050.
- Organizational interventions: A research-based framework for the evaluation of both process and effects. Work & Stress, 27(3), 278-297.
- Dismissals - A Major Concern, but Only One among Others?. Industrial Health, 51(1), 134-141.
- The development and validation of a job crafting measure for use with blue-collar workers. Work & Stress, 26(4), 365-384.
- Enhancing team leaders’ well-being states and challenge experiences during organizational change: A randomized, controlled study. Human Relations, 65(9), 1207-1231.
- Does shared and differentiated transformational leadership predict followers' working conditions and well-being?. The Leadership Quarterly, 23(3), 383-397.
- The importance of employee participation and perceptions of changes in procedures in a teamworking intervention. Work & Stress, 26(2), 91-111. View this article in WRRO
- Meta-synthesis of qualitative research on return to work among employees with common mental disorders. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 38(2), 93-104.
- The Danish national return-to-work program – aims, content, and design of the process and effect evaluation. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 38(2), 120-133.
- Job demands, job resources and long-term sickness absence in the Danish eldercare services: a prospective analysis of register-based outcomes. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(1), 127-136.
- Mediating the effects of work-life conflict between transformational leadership and health-care workers’ job satisfaction and psychological wellbeing. Journal of Nursing Management, 20(4), 512-521.
- Under which conditions do middle managers exhibit transformational leadership behaviors? — An experience sampling method study on the predictors of transformational leadership behaviors. The Leadership Quarterly, 22(2), 344-352.
- Do positive psychosocial work factors protect against 2-year incidence of long-term sickness absence among employees with and those without depressive symptoms? A prospective study. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 70(1), 3-9.
- Organizational interventions: Issues and challenges. Work & Stress, 24(3), 217-218.
- Does training managers enhance the effects of implementing team-working? A longitudinal, mixed methods field study. Human Relations, 63(11), 1719-1741.
- Are leaders' well-being, behaviours and style associated with the affective well-being of their employees? A systematic review of three decades of research. Work & Stress, 24(2), 107-139.
- Conducting organizational-level occupational health interventions: What works?. Work & Stress, 24(3), 234-259.
- The future of organizational interventions: Addressing the challenges of today's organizations. Work & Stress, 24(3), 219-233.
- Transformational leadership and depressive symptoms: A prospective study☆. Journal of Affective Disorders, 120(1-3), 235-239.
- The Influence of Employer Support on Employee Management of Chronic Health Conditions at Work. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 19(4), 333-344.
- Comparing working conditions and physical and psychological health complaints in four occupational groups working in female-dominated workplaces. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 82(10), 1229-1239.
- How do transformational leaders influence followers' affective well-being? Exploring the mediating role of self-efficacy. Work & Stress, 23(4), 313-329.
- Does self-efficacy mediate the relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and healthcare workers’ sleep quality? A longitudinal study. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(9), 1833-1843.
- The mediating effects of team and self-efficacy on the relationship between transformational leadership, and job satisfaction and psychological well-being in healthcare professionals: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 46(9), 1236-1244.
- Managers' Active Support when Implementing Teams: The Impact on Employee Well-Being. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 1(3), 374-390.
- The development of five scales to measure employees’ appraisals of organizational-level stress management interventions. Work & Stress, 23(1), 1-23.
- Generating support from supervisors to their subordinates in organizations under external pressure: a multilevel, multisource study of support and reciprocation in Danish elder care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(12), 2649-2657.
- The importance of transformational leadership style for the well-being of employees working with older people. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 63(5), 465-475.
- The effects of transformational leadership on followers’ perceived work characteristics and psychological well-being: A longitudinal study. Work & Stress, 22(1), 16-32.
- Participants' appraisals of process issues and the effects of stress management interventions. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28(6), 793-810.
- Success or failure? Interpreting and understanding the impact of interventions in four similar worksites. Work & Stress, 20(3), 272-287.
- Evaluation of an open-rota system in a Danish psychiatric hospital: a mechanism for improving job satisfaction and work-life balance. Journal of Nursing Management, 14(4), 282-288.
- A study protocol outlining the development and evaluation of a training program for frontline managers on leading well-being and the psychosocial work environment in Danish hospital settings – a cluster randomized waitlist controlled trial. BMC Public Health, 23(1).
- Organisational citizenship behaviour as a protective factor against the occurrence of adverse nursing‐sensitive outcomes: A multi‐level investigation. Journal of Nursing Management.
- Predicting flow at work: Investigating the activities and job characteristics that predict flow states at work.. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 15(2), 180-190.
- View this article in WRRO
- What about me? The impact of employee change agents’ person-role fit on their job satisfaction during organizational change. Work and Stress. View this article in WRRO
- IGLOO: An integrated framework for sustainable return to work in workers with common mental disorders. Work and Stress. View this article in WRRO
- Virtual issue: Psychological interventions in the field of work and organizational psychology. Applied Psychology.
Chapters
- Managing well-being at work: multi-level interventions to promote productive and health workplaces In Thakre N & Uday Kumar Reddy B (Ed.), Stress, Wellness, and Performance Optimization Promoting Sustainable Performance in the Workplace (pp. 21-52). Apple Academic Press, Inc, CRC Press View this article in WRRO
- IGLOO: A Framework for Return to Work Among Workers with Mental Health Problems View this article in WRRO
- Participatory Interventions in Call Centres In Nielsen K & Noblet A (Ed.), Organizational Interventions for Health and Well-being: A Handbook for Evidence-Based Practice Routledge View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
- Perspectives on Randomization and Readiness for Change in a Workplace Intervention Study, Derailed Organizational Interventions for Stress and Well-Being (pp. 201-208). Springer Netherlands
- Assessing and Addressing the Fit of Planned Interventions to the Organizational Context, Derailed Organizational Interventions for Stress and Well-Being (pp. 107-113). Springer Netherlands
- Introduction, The Aftermath of Suffrage (pp. 1-18). Palgrave Macmillan UK
- Participatory Intervention from an Organizational Perspective: Employees as Active Agents in Creating a Healthy Work Environment, Salutogenic organizations and change (pp. 327-350). Springer Netherlands
- Participatory intervention from an organizational perspective: Employees as active agents in creating a healthy work environment. In Bauer G & Jenny G (Ed.), Salutongenic organizations and change: The concepts behind organizational intervention research. (pp. 327-350). Dordrecht: Springer Publications.
- Does the intervention fit?: An explanatory model of intervention success and failure in complex organizational environments, Improving Organizational Interventions For Stress and Well-Being: Addressing Process and Context (pp. 120-134).
- Developing a framework for the "why" in change outcomes: The importance of employees' appraisal of changes, Prerequisites for Healthy Organizational Change (pp. 76-86).
- Organizational Change Routledge
- Developing New Ways of Evaluating Organizational-Level Interventions, Contemporary Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 21-45). Wiley-Blackwell
- A Sound Change, Contemporary Occupational Health Psychology (pp. 165-180). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
- Improving Organizational Interventions For Stress and Well-Being Routledge
- View this article in WRRO
- View this article in WRRO
Reports
- View this article in WRRO
- Healthy workers, thriving companies - a practical guide to wellbeing at work Tackling psychosocial risks and musculoskeletal disorders in small businesses View this article in WRRO
- TemaNord
Dictionary/encyclopaedia entries
Preprints
- Research group
- Grants
-
Title: New challenges to the management of psychosocial risks at work in times of rapid economic and technological changes in Italy and Europe. A comparative multilevel approach.
- Awarding body: BRIC
- Amount: €501,601
- Role: Co-investigator and Work package leader
- Date: 2020-2022
Title: H-WORK – multilevel intervention to promote mental health in SMEs and public workplaces
- Awarding body: H-2020
- Amount: €3,987,000
- Role: Co-investigator and Work package leader
- Date: 2020-2023
Title: Materials Made Smarter Centre
- Awarding body: EPSRC
- Amount: £2,661,138
- Role: Co-investigator
- Date: 2021-2024
Title: The Improvements in Organizations Network:Understanding the demands for designing, implementing and evaluating changes in organisations from a multi-disciplinary perspective
- Awarding body:FORTE
- Amount: SEK 448,200
- Role: Co-investigator
- Date: 2019-2021
Title: Solving the productivity puzzle: Ensuring sustainable return to work for workers with common mental disorders
- Awarding body: ESRC Productivity Insight Network
- Amount: £49,356
- Role: Principal Investigator
- Date: 2018-2019
Title: ESTEEM - European Safety Training and Evaluation supporting European Mobility
- Awarding body: ERASMUS+
- Amount: €442.000
- Role: Principal investigator
- Date: 2017-2020
Title: Psychosocial work environment during organisational changes - an intervention project
- Awarding body: National Research Fund for the Working Environment
- Amount: DKK 3.800.000.
- Role: Co-investigator
- Date: 2017-2019
Title: Are we in the same boat? Leader and employee perceptions in connection with health promoting
- Awarding body: AFA Insurance
- Amount: SEK 3.448.000.
- Role: Co-investigator
- Date: 2017-2019
Title: New developments in organizational interventions, new evaluation models – a Nordic multi-disciplinary approach.
- Awarding body: NOH-HS (Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
- Amount: SEK: 437.000
- Role: Senior expert
- Date: 2017-2018
Title: Qualitative research study on organisational-level interventions reducing the negative effects of restructuring on employees in large company establishments
- Awarding body: Eurofound
- Amount: €79,000
- Role: Senior expert
- Date: 2017-2018
Previous Key Principal Investigator Grants:
- Out of mind, out of sight? OSH leadership for distributed workers. Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. £103,293.
- Resource: Good management, employee participation, work environment, well-being, and productivity/readiness for change in Nordic companies. Nordic council of ministers, 900.000 DKK.
- Participatory interventions from an organisational perspective (PIOP). National Work Environment Research Fund. 3.852.677 DKK.
- Managing teams. National Work Environment Research Fund, 3.095.616 DKK.
- Professional activities and memberships
-
Awards
- Work & Stress Top Paper Award 2008. Awarded to Karina Nielsen et al for their paper entitled 'Success or failure? Interpreting and understanding the impact of interventions in four similar worksites' published in Work & Stress, Volume 20, 2006.
- Best Practices Intervention Competition Awards 2009: Honorable Mention. Awarded to Karina Nielsen & Raymond Randall for their paper: Does participation mediate the effects of team implementation on employee well-being and job satisfaction? A longitudinal field study. Awarded by: American Psychological Association.
- Early Career Achievement Award 2009. Awarded to Karina Nielsen. Awarded by American Psychological Association.
- Eusebio Rial-González Innovation & Practice Award in Occupational Health Psychology from the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology (EAOHP) and European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA).Editorial work
Editorial work
- Associate Editor: Work & Stress.
- Editorial board member: Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, The Leadership Quarterly, Human Relations, Journal of Business and Psychology, Occupational Health Science.
Visiting Professorships
- Deakin University, 2018
- ISA fellowship University of Bologna, 2019
- Griffith University, 2019
Current chairs/boards
- Chair of the Research Forum and member of Executive Committee. European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology
- Associate member Society of Organizational and Industrial Psychology
- Member of the programme on Mental health in the workplace. AFA Insurance
- Research affiliate Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
- Member of ENOP – the European Network for Work and Organizational Psychology Professors in Europe. Member of the CoCo – coordinating committee of ENOP.
- PhD Supervision
Karina is interested in supervising students in topics related job design and well-being.
She supervises in topics related to bottom-up job redesign, e.g. job crafting and top-down job redesign, i.e. the changes we can make to the way work is organised, designed and managed to improve employee health and well-being.
Karina has widespread expertise in supervising PhDs in evaluation.
This includes the evaluation of individual-level interventions such as leader and employee training and how such training can successfully be transferred to daily working life and the evaluation of organisational interventions to understand what works for whom in which circumstances.
Karina also supervises on leadership and well-being and she invites students who are interested in exploring the dark side of leadership.
She is interested in supervising students who want to explore how leaders can ensure high performance at the same time as ensuring employees' well-being.
Many of Karina's PhD students have published their work in high impact journals.