The Nordic countries?Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden?are societies that share
many features among themselves that also distinguish them from other industrialized countries.
The paper poses the question whether the distinct character of the Nordic societies has generated
working life research that is clearly distinguishable from similar research in other countries in
terms of distinctness in topics, methods, empirical findings, or theoretical concepts. The aim of this
paper is to answer this question by identifying, analyzing, and discussing selected key contributions
from Nordic working life research to understand how they research and construe the conditions
of humans at work with a special focus on the psychosocial well-being of industrial workers. The
paper concludes that the key contributions to Nordic working life research have a distinctive emphasis
on collective employee voice and autonomy and an extensive use of empirical and actionoriented
research methods. Employees are construed not only as workers resisting exploitations
from management or as workers pursuing individual careers, but also as members of collectives
who share ideas and aspirations and who legitimately influence the management (and research)
using cooperation and pressure.
Author Biography
Peter Hasle, Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University
