Management and Leadership Approaches to Health Promotion and Sustainable Workplaces: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Whole-system approaches linking workplace health promotion to the development of a sustainable working life have been advocated. The aim of this scoping review was to map out if and how whole-system approaches to workplace health promotion with a focus on management, leadership, and economic efficiency have been used in Nordic health promotion research. In addition, we wanted to investigate, in depth, if and how management and/or leadership approaches related to sustainable workplaces are addressed. Eighty-three articles were included in an analysis of the studies’ aims and content, research design, and country. For a further in-depth qualitative content analysis we excluded 63 articles in which management and/or leadership were only one of several factors studied. In the in-depth analysis of the 20 remaining studies, four main categories connected to sustainable workplaces emerged: studies including a whole system understanding; studies examining success factors for the implementation of workplace health promotion; studies using sustainability for framing the study; and studies highlighting health risks with an explicit economic focus. Aspects of sustainability were, in most articles, only included for framing the importance of the studies, and only few studies addressed aspects of sustainable workplaces from the perspective of a whole-system approach. Implications from this scoping review are that future Nordic workplace health promotion research needs to integrate health promotion and economic efficiency to a greater extent, in order to contribute to societal effectiveness and sustainability.