The Relational Fit in Organizational Interventions—What Can Organizational Research Learn from Research in Psychotherapy?

Malene Friis Andersen, Karina Nielsen and Jeppe Zielinski Nguyen Ajslev
Additional contact information
Malene Friis Andersen: National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Department of Psychosocial Work Environment, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Karina Nielsen: Institute of Work Psychology, Management School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 1FL, UK
Jeppe Zielinski Nguyen Ajslev: National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Department of Psychosocial Work Environment, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 15, 1-12

Abstract: There is a growing interest in organizational interventions (OI) aiming to increase employees’ well-being. An OI involves changes in the way work is designed, organized, and managed. Studies have shown that an OI’s positive results are increased if there is a good fit between context and intervention and between participant and intervention. In this article, we propose that a third fit—the Relational Fit (R-Fit)—also plays an important role in determining an intervention’s outcome. The R-Fit consists of factors related to (1) the employees participating in the OI, (2) the intervention facilitator, and (3) the quality of the relation between participants and the intervention facilitator. The concept of the R-Fit is inspired by research in psychotherapy documenting that participant factors, therapist factors, and the quality of the relations explain 40% of the effect of an intervention. We call attention to the importance of systematically evaluating and improving the R-Fit in OIs. This is important to enhance the positive outcomes in OIs and thereby increase both the well-being and productivity of employees. We introduce concrete measures that can be used to study and evaluate the R-Fit. This article is the first to combine knowledge from research in psychotherapy with research on OIs.

Keywords: organizational interventions; evaluation; effect; psychotherapy; implementation; mental health; relational fit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/15/8104/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/15/8104/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:15:p:8104-:d:605500

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().