Two research projects at the Karlstad Business School were awarded 2,7 and 5 million by Forte, The Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare. It is the subjects Business administration and Working life science that start up new projects starting next year.
Forte, The Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare announced the other day regarding the decision of the distribution of research funding. When it came to Karlstad Business School, it meant decisions on two multi-year projects.
The customer is always right – to what limit and on the cost of whom?
Project “Customers with “benefits” - #MeToo, power and gender in customer interactive service work” is about creating more knowledge on the working environment in service organizations through focusing on the sexual harassment of the customers, which is much more extensive and frequent within service and merchandise compared to other businesses. The researchers in the project, Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk and Markus Fellesson, both at CTF, Service Research Center, will investigate on how ideals on customer orientation cooperates with wider power- and gender structures in the community and what consequences that has on the working environment.
- We want to investigate on how the ideal for customer treatment can contribute to legitimizing and subsidize sexual harassment, but also how it can limit the employers options on acting. We will be interviewing employees within the service sector that are characterized with a close interaction with clients, for example fashion stores and restaurants. We will also be taking part of the published stories within the #MeToo-rally, says Anna Fyrberg Yngfalk, project manager, associate professor in Business Administration at Karlstad Business School and researcher at CTF, Karlstad University.
To lose your job when the industry is restructured – what are the long-term consequences?
The other project that Forte is giving funds to is in the Working Life Science and is about the long-term consequences of restructures within the industry. Industrial restructures with layoffs as a consequence, is both a social and political challenge. In connection to layoffs, companies and community have support programs and active working life measurement’s, that are known to be successful. But what is less known is what these long-term consequences does for the individual and families, as well as how efficient the support measurements are on long-term. The project focuses on long-term experiences of restructures within the steel factory and is an independent part of a big study together with researchers in Australia and Great Britain.
- The aim is also to find out what measurements that can be successful seen in the longer perspective, says project leader Robert MacKenzie, professor in Working Life Science at Karlstad Business School.
Researchers from Malmö Univeristy and Swedish Defence University are also part of the project.
