Listed below are my current research projects.
The Power of Diversity
How to transform a somewhat diverse organization to a highly diverse and inclusive organization? We aim to develop and test interventions at (middle) management level to facilitate such a culture change. My PhD student Janna Behnke carries out this exciting research, under the supervision of prof. dr. Evangelia Demerouti and myself.
On June 22 2022, Huatian Wang successfully defended his PhD thesis “Making the best of workplace diversity“. Dr. Wang is now an assistant professor at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
Human-Robot Collaboration
Smarthandle: An EU funded project, PhD student opportunity, with colleagues Anna Sophie Ulfert and Evangelia Demerouti (start in 2023).
Fluently: An EU funded project, with PhD student Raquel Salcedo Gil and colleagues Anna Sophie Ulfert and Pascale le Blanc (start sept 2022).
Working with or against the machine? Optimizing human-robot collaboration in logistic warehouses. NWO funded project (finished).
Facilitating Multidisciplinary Collaboration
Collaboration among people with different disciplinary backgrounds becomes more and more important to solve the current and future societal challenges. Although multidisciplinary collaboration can be very successful, there is abundant research that underlines the difficulties of working with people who are different from oneself. For example, conflicts will emerge, distribution of tasks and responsibilities can be challenging, and planning and coordination may fail. In this research project I focus on the role team leaders play in facilitating multidisciplinary collaboration.
Collaborative Capital
Digitization is one of the external factors that are changing the nature of work. Obviously, this also has consequences for how people and organizations are collaborating and places a spotlight on collaboration skills. In this project I aim to understand which skills are quintessential for succesful collaborations and how to facilitate their development.
Conflict Asymmetry
Traditionally, intragroup conflict research assumes all members perceive the conflict in a similar manner. We incorporated different perceptions regarding the level of conflict within a workgroup and demonstrated how this asymmetry of conflict perceptions hampered both group and individual level outcomes (Jehn, Rispens, & Thatcher, 2010). My current research in this area aims to measure conflict asymmetry directly, and to study its consequences for individuals and workgroups over time.
Dr. Sonja Rispens 