Research projects

dtec.bw-project: “Digital Leadership and Health”

Duration: November 2020 – October 2024

Scope: The current COVID-19 pandemic has lead to a rapid increase in digital and virtual work, as well as new leadership challenges (remote work, working from home, telework, video conferences, digital leadership etc.). It is to be expected that these “new ways of working” will continue their influence on our working lives.

Scope of the current project are empirical studies 1) investigating consequences of digital and virtual ways of working on performance, motivation & employee health, and 2) identifying facilitating and obstructing design options for an effective and sustainable use of digital ways of working and taking into consideration health promotion and leadership.

With the help of the insights gained, 3) practical approaches to solutions for effective and sustainable use of digital ways of working will be developed and tested (technical guidance, rules of conduct for managers and employees). As a central tool, a survey and feedback platform is to be developed with the help of which companies can quickly and easily evaluate implementation of remote work from home and digital forms of work and their associated consequences.

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Jörg Felfe

Project management: Dr. Annika Krick

Project staff: Dr. Laura KlebeStephanie Neidlinger, M.Sc., Dorothee Tautz, M.Sc., Katharina Schübbe, M.Sc., Yannick Frontzkowski, M.Sc., Philip Gubernator, M.A., & Andrea Milbrodt, M.A.

In cooperation with:

  • Prof. Dr. Sven Hauff, Professor of Labor, Human Resources and Organization, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg/ University of the Federal Armed Forces, www.hsu-hh.de/apo/
  • Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Renner, Professor of Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, www.unibw.de/hum-psychologie/ppd
  • Prof. Dr. Antje Ducki, Faculty 1, Work and Organizational Psychology, Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin, https://prof.beuth-hochschule.de/ducki/

See also: https://dtecbw.de/home

Care4Care-Project

Duration: May 2020 (36 months)

Scope: The aim of the project is to develop a hybrid health promotion service for nursing staff, which supports nursing staff and their managers in organizing their work in a way which promotes health and strengthens individual health resources. The Care4Care offering aims to address the needs of all three care subsectors (hospitals, inpatient care facilities, outpatient care facilities) in equal measure.

Both face-to-face (Care4Care on site) and digital offerings (Care4Care digital) are taking place. At the heart of Care4Care On Site is the HoL (Health oriented Leadership) concept, which aims to enable managers to adopt a health-promoting management style. For this purpose, team-focused interventions are used in face-to-face situations, consisting of qualitative and quantitative analysis modules, coaching sessions for managers, and team workshops. Care4Care Digital offers a comprehensive range of multimedia-based training courses to strengthen the health of caregivers and to shape working conditions. The spectrum here ranges from various behavioral prevention modules (e.g., promoting resilience) to different relationship prevention modules (e.g., corporate culture).

The final product will be a holistic, nursing-specific health promotion tool that integrates digital and analog behavioral and behavioral prevention elements.

Project staff: Sarah Pischel, M.Sc.

Strength test for career orientation

Duration: Original start date of 01.03.2020; delayed due to COVID-19 pandemic and therefore running until approx. June 2021

Scope: The third-party funded project commissioned by the BMVg is concerned with developing a career interest test for the German Federal Armed Forces. This is to serve as a marketing tool for the important target group of pupils, graduates and students.

Within the framework of an online test, the two most important strengths of the participants are identified by means of verbal and picture items. Strengths are a combination of interests and skills. These and the associated occupational fields are then reported back to the participants. In a third step, feedback on areas of deployment in the German Federal Armed Forces can also be viewed.

Project staff: Dr. Annabell ReinerDr. Alexander Klamar

Internal research promotion: „A person-oriented approach to mixed leadership and health“

Duration: July 2018 – June 2021

Scope: In the research project “A person-oriented approach to mixed leadership and health”, the interaction of leadership and health in the world of work will be examined in close detail.

The aim of the project is to identify different constellations (profiles) of health-promoting leadership and self-leadership between managers and employees and to investigate their preconditions and consequences for health – both of employees and their managers.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, as well as experimental methods, are used.

Project staff: Dr. Katharina Klug & Dr. Laura Klebe

Demand-oriented stress prevention and resource promotion in the BGM (Occupational Health Management) rollout of the German Armed Forces

Duration: January 2019 – October 2020

Scope: The project has three goals:

  1. The findings and feedback on the feasibility, acceptance and attractiveness of stress prevention measures from the BGM pilot project show that programs in this area must be adapted to the needs of the various Federal Armed Forces locations and target groups. For this reason, training courses on stress prevention and resource promotion developed in the pilot project are to be offered and carried out in an optimized manner in line with requirements.
  2. Multiplier training: In addition to the implementation and evaluation of the training programs in line with requirements, train-the-trainer courses are to be carried out and evaluated to enable the measures to be disseminated as widely as possible.
  3. Since the evaluation of the training programs to date has been based exclusively on self-report data, a feasibility study will be conducted to explore and test exemplarily how the effectiveness of the programs can also be demonstrated with biological parameters (e.g., cortisol, heart rate variability, alpha-amylase).

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Renner, Professor of Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, www.unibw.de/hum-psychologie/ppd

In cooperation with: Prof. Dr. Jörg Felfe

Project staff: Dr. Annika Krick & Lena Riedl, M.Sc.

Assistance in the field (BiE): Care communication in action: quality management

Duration: September 2017 – August 2019

Scope: The study serves as a comprehensive assessment of the situation with regard to the quality and importance of care in the field, in order to enable an improved estimation and legitimation of the need and to be able to optimize in terms of quality management (QM).

To do this, the following questions were addressed:

  • How are the offers and measures used and currently evaluated?
  • What effect do they have on commitment, motivation, job satisfaction, attractiveness, physical and mental well-being, and commitment?
  • What offers and measures are expected in the future?
  • What are the causes/backgrounds for the evaluation?
  • How are offers and measures or their evaluation to be assessed with regard to their opportunities/potentials , but also risks?
  • To what extent do contingents differ and what role do contingent-specific framework conditions play?
    To what extent do different grade groups differ?

Project staff: Dr. Annabell Reiner & Ines Wunderlich, M.A.

Non-participation (non-response) in occupational health management (BGM): causes and countermeasures

Duration: January 2017 – December 2019

Scope: Within the framework of the project “Investigation of non-participation (non-response) in occupational health management – causes and countermeasures”, the following central questions are to be investigated:

  1. Qualitative interviews will be used to analyze possible causes for participation or non-participation in health promotion measures at different levels: organizational (e.g., time problems, lack of information), managerial (e.g., support of measures by superiors, StaffCare, role model function (SelfCare of managers)), social (e.g., reactions of colleagues to the health promotion measures), and individual (e.g., lack of motivation, fear of stigmatization, health awareness and behavior (SelfCare)).
  2. Furthermore, a longitudinal design will be used to investigate which hindering and facilitating conditions are effective on participation in BGF measures, and which conditions predict long-term participation in measures.
  3. In addition, it will be examined who particularly benefits from BGM and who does not.

On the basis of identified obstacles and conducive factors for a BGM participation, recommendations for action especially for executives are to be derived as well as starting points for the increase of the benefit and the sustainability of BGM are to be identified.

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Jörg Felfe

In cooperation with: Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Renner, Professor of Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, www.unibw.de/hum-psychologie/ppd

Project staff: Dr. Annika Krick und Ines Wunderlich, M.A.

Analysis of the importance of BGF (Company Health Promotion) measures for the individual health experience as well as the commitment, employer attractiveness and satisfaction of the employees within the framework of the overall evaluation of the BGF pilot project of the German Armed Forces.

Duration: January 2015 – March 2016

Scope: The project investigated how:

  • BGF offers 1a) have an effect on the key figures organizational commitment, employer attractiveness, and employee satisfaction,
  • 1b) the BGF offers have an effect on the individual health experience and behavior as relevant key figures,
    commitment, employer attractiveness, and satisfaction affect the acceptance of the measures,
  • 2b) individual health experience and behavior affect the acceptance of the measures,
    overarching facilitating and hindering conditions affect the participation or acceptance of the BGF offers.

Recommendations for action for the roll-out were derived on this basis.

Project lead: Prof. Dr. Jörg Felfe

In cooperation with: Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Renner, Professor of Personality Psychology and Psychological Diagnostics, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, www.unibw.de/hum-psychologie/ppd

Project staff: Dr. Gwen Elprana, Dr. Annika KrickDr. Alexander Klamar

Effects of affective subunit and organizational commitment on the management of intergroup conflict within the organization

Duration: 2010 – 2015

Scope: Organizations strive to foster commitment among their employees because it is related to group performance and group-oriented behaviour. It is an open question, however, if the positive effect turns negative when it comes to cooperatoin between groups to which members are highly committed. In this dissertation project we examine how conflicts between subunits in organizations are managed based on subunit members’ commitment to both their subunit and the organization at large. It is hypothesized that specific patterns of multiple commitment will affect individuals’ behavioral orientation toward four distinct more or less appropriate conflict management styles.

Leadership development

Duration: 2007 – 2014

Scope: Evaluation of a leadership training programme. The project aims at identifying antecendences of success

Exploring Leadership Motivation

Duration: 2009 – 2012

Scope: After development and validation of an instrument to assess motivation to lead, several research questions are addressed in ongoing dissertation projects:

  1. the mediating effect of motivation to lead between personality and leadership emerge
  2. gender differences in motivation to lead and means for reduction
  3. consequences of specific leadership motive patterns and personality (psychopathy) for positive (transformational) and negative (abusive, destructive) leadership behavior and outcomes in terms of OCB and strain
  4. the meaning of implicit leadership theories (Romance of leadership) for motivation to lead
  5. development and validation of a career coaching
  6. examination of prognostic validity
HSU

Letzte Änderung: 25. August 2022