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In the last years, an acceleration of change processes is observable in the world of work. New types of work and changes in work organization appear in nearly all fields of work. Human service work is especially affected by these changes. Both, in public and private service organizations, are comprehensive changes processes carried out. Goals of these processes are typically the improvement of quality of services and cost reductions at the same time. Employees are often strongly affected by these changes.
The conference series Organizational Psychology and Health Care, patronized by the ENOP (European Network of Organizational Psychology), focuses on human service work from a Work- and Organizational Psychology perspective. The VIIIth conference took place in October 2003 in Vienna, Austria. The specific topic of this conference was Change and Quality in Human Service Work. This book presents selected papers from the Vienna conference.
The range of the book chapters reflects the actual trends of organizational changes in human service work and their expression in research in organizational psychology. A strong focus on organizational change in human service work, design concepts of change management and studies of the effects of change on employees is shown by the number of chapters dealing with these subjects. Another group of papers is dealing with actual questions of burnout research. An additional focus is represented by chapters dealing with the optimization of working conditions in the field. Three chapters dealing with the development of new research instruments complete the book.
The book is dedicated to the work of Andre Büssing (1950 2003).
