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The impact of moderate and major workplace expansion and downsizing on the psychosocial and physical work environment and income in Sweden

Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, UK, j.ferrie{at}public-health.ucl.ac.uk

Hugo Westerlund

National Institute for Psychosocial Medicine, Stockholm, Sweden

Gabriel Oxenstierna

National Institute for Psychosocial Medicine, Stockholm, Sweden

Töres Theorell

National Institute for Psychosocial Medicine, Stockholm, Sweden, Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Aims: To describe the effect of organizational change (moderate and major expansion and downsizing) on psychosocial work characteristics, physical hazards, and income in a representative sample of larger workplaces in Sweden. Methods: Annual changes in workforce size for the years 1991—1996 were derived from tax registry data. Work environment characteristics were measured in a sub-set of participants from the biennial Swedish Work Environment Surveys for 1991, 1993, and 1995. Income data were derived from national registries. Results: Not all organizational change resulted in a poorer work environment. The number of beneficial outcomes associated with moderate downsizing and moderate expansion in the public sector outweighed the number of adverse outcomes. However, in the private sector the overall effect of moderate organizational change was a poorer work environment. Major downsizing was associated with a better psychosocial work environment for private-sector men and major expansion with a poorer environment for public-sector women and private-sector men. Otherwise, associations between major organizational change and the psychosocial work environment were mixed across sex and sector, although major organizational change was consistently associated with a greater risk of physical hazards. Low income was associated exclusively with organizational downsizing in the private sector. Conclusions: More research is needed to determine whether the work environment can explain observed associations between organizational change and health. Data limitations prevented the authors from examining this in the present study. Their findings indicate that future research on the work environment should pay more attention to physical hazards.

Key Words: Downsizing • expansion • income • organizational change • psychosocial work characteristics • physical hazards

Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, Vol. 35, No. 1, 62-69 (2007)
DOI: 10.1080/14034940600813073


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