Anneli Matsson

About Anneli Matsson

In September 2022, I defended my dissertation, The Handshake: To organize silence: A case study on pragmatic differential treatment in working life. The dissertation is a monograph based on an organizational ethnographic case study at a major hospital in Sweden. The thesis brings together three research fields: ostracism, organizational policy, and social policy. I argue that workplace abuse is a phenomenon in working life that needs to be studied within social work, as it is partly a problem that leads to exclusion and possibly being outmaneuvered from work, which can then lead to difficulties in making a living depending on stigmatization and difficulties in getting references. Currently, research and practice often characterize it as a personal issue, posing challenges in adapting to changes in the work environment and organizational structural issues. The dissertation lands on a definition of pragmatic mistreatment, which means that when uncertainty in the organization is activated, eviction processes are triggered to get rid of employees who do not match the organization's policy.

Based on the thesis, I conducted a study examining SKR's recommendations for decision-makers on policy and the management of differential treatment. The Employee Responsibility and Rights journal has published one article on this study thus far. (See publications). In an ongoing study, I am further investigating what policy and guidelines look like in the public sector regarding differential treatment.

The dynamics of social policy and its impact on exclusion, equality, safety climate, and risk management within organizations are my primary research interests.

I am particularly interested in interdisciplinary studies that delve into the social issues that arise in the workplace, including but not limited to workplace abuse, sexual harassment, instrumental and psychological violence, buyouts and exclusion from the workmarket, rehabilitation policies, inequality norms, and workplace crime and corruption. The development of models for a sustainable working life necessitates understanding the practice and contextualization of these obstacles to develop a sustainable working life in agreement with UN:s climate goals.

Theoretically, I am primarily interested in ostracism theory, which explains phenomena such as rejecting, ignoring, making invisible, a culture of silence, and outmaneuvering. Ostracism research links to a number of relevant social problems, such as marginalization and exclusion from work, asymmetric conflicts, work-life crime, inequality, expulsion, and violence. Organizational politics provides another theoretical perspective on these problems by explaining decision-making processes, governing organizational interests and alliances, and their impact on norms, issues, and decisions within organizations. Moreover, I draw inspiration from social philosophy, emphasizing the impact of social currents on labor market policy and their replication in the governance and management systems of organizations. For instance, I offer a critical analysis of the logic behind NPM.

Theoretical influences are based on thinkers in organizational sociology, such as Acker, Boje, Bornemark, Clegg, Costas, Grey, Garfinkel, Pfeiffer, and Simmel.

Social psychological researchers on ostracism such as Hogg, O´Reilly, Schabram, Sia, Täuber, and Williams are also inspiring to me.

Before I started research, I worked as a practitioner, mainly in occupational health care, for nearly 20 years. In my basic education, I have a master's in psychology, conflict management, social work, and a stage 1 education in cognitive psychotherapy.

As a practitioner, I specialized in differential treatment and developed a model for investigating differential treatment based on AFS 2015:4. I have extensive practical experience of working with work environment work, rehabilitation, psychosocial treatment and supervision of both professions and managers.

I have also written two popular non-fiction books on the subject: Conflicts' Life and Death (2007; 2017) and Offended or abused? (2017).

I also hold a master's degree in creative writing and have a keen interest in narrative, stories, essayistics, metaphors, and the ways in which other literary genres can enhance academic writing.