Social Relations at the Collective Level: The Meaning and Measurement of Collective Control in Research on the Psychosocial Work Environment
Authors
Per ?ystein Saksvik
Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Tove Helland Hammer
School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, USA and Prof II, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
In this article, we suggest that organizational-level social relations should be defined and measured
as workplace norms. We base this argument on new research on the components of the psychosocial
work environment and on the availability of new techniques for measuring and analyzing
workplace norms as organizational properties. Workplace norms emerge from interactions and
negotiations among organizational actors, through which patterns of behavior, attitudes, and perspectives
become defined as legitimate. This is an underestimated dimension of the psychosocial
work environment that should be assessed with two types of data: self-reports by employees of
their experiences in the workplace (task-level control) and self-reports by employees and employers
of collective or group-level norms. Hierarchical linear modeling is an especially useful tool
for analyzing the relationships between workplace norms and different organizational outcomes
because it allows researchers to separate the effects of individual-level variables from group or
organizational-level factors. Our approach is anchored in the Nordic perspective of the work environment
developed over the past 50 years.
Author Biographies
Per ?ystein Saksvik, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Professor
Tove Helland Hammer, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, USA and Prof II, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
