Karoline Hofslett Kopperud is an Associate Professor of Organizational Psychology at BI Norwegian Business School. She earned her Ph.D. in Leadership and Organizational Behavior from the same institution in 2012. After completing her doctoral studies, she worked as a leadership development consultant before fully transitioning into academia.
Her research interests primarily focuses on positive organizational psychology, with an emphasis on occupational health and work-related well-being. Her work, published in international peer-reviewed journals, explores topics such as how leadership influences employee well-being, work-life balance, age diversity, and leader well-being.
Publications
Kopperud, Karoline & Kost, Dominique (2025)
You cannot start a fire without a spark: Strengths-based leadership and personal initiative
Psychological job control has typically been negatively related to work-to-family and family-to-work conflict. Based on the job demand-resource model and boundary theory, we argue that psychological job control may indirectly be positively related to family-to-work conflict by both increasing supplemental work, that is, the rate of engagement in work outside of formal working hours without receiving compensation aided by mobile technology, and work-to-family conflict. We hypothesize that this proposed positive indirect relationship will be lower among employees who perceive a high segmentation norm at their workplace. Based on a two-wave study of 4518 employees, we obtained support for a serial moderated mediation model that suggests a dual effect of psychological job control on family-to-work conflict, such that psychological job control was positively associated with family-to-work conflict through supplemental work and work-to-family conflict at low levels of segmentation norms. By examining the dual effects of psychological job control, this study aims to further understand the mechanisms involved in determining whether and when psychological job control, together with supplemental work, encourages employees to uphold or cross boundaries between work and nonwork domains. Our findings imply that psychological job control can both be a resource and a demand depending on the levels of segmentation norms.
Kopperud, Karoline; Nerstad, Christina G. L. & Buch, Robert (2022)
Engaging the age-diverse workforce: the interplay between personal and contextual resources
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to advance research on work-related well-being and age by using a life-span approach to investigate the relationship between mastery goal orientation and work engagement during various age periods. We further tested whether a perceived motivational climate moderated the proposed relationships, and whether the nature of the moderation differed between age groups. Design/methodology/approach: We utilized a two-wave, web-based questionnaire survey and collected data from 838 employees in the financial sector in Norway. Multiple regressions and PROCESS macro were used to test our hypotheses. Findings: We found that both work engagement and mastery goal orientation differed across age groups and that the relationship between mastery goal orientation and work engagement was stronger for older than for younger ages. Our results further support the moderating role of a motivational climate. Whereas a perceived mastery climate moderated the relationship between mastery goal orientation and work engagement for older workers, a perceived performance climate moderated the suggested relationship for younger workers. Originality: Our study extends research on work engagement in an age-diverse workforce by applying a life-span approach to the interplay between person and contextual elements in fostering work engagement. Furthermore, our study involved investigating factors that may inhibit or enhance the link between mastery orientation and work engagement for various age groups, which is important given work engagement’s link to central work outcomes.
Kopperud, Karoline; Buch, Robert & Skogen, Christina (2021)
Work overload and leader–member exchange: The moderating role of psychological flexibility
Due to the strong focus on dyadic relationships in leader–member exchange (LMX) theory, it is vital to investigate the predictors of the types of relationships that leaders and subordinates develop. This study explores the supervisor-level antecedents of LMX. Drawing from conservation of resources theory, this study tests whether leaders’ psychological flexibility moderates the relationship between leaders’ perceptions of work overload and LMX. A field study was conducted among 186 subordinates and 93 leaders from a Norwegian public service organization. Multisource field data demonstrated general support for the hypothesized relationships. The results of multilevel analyses showed a negative relation between the perceptions of work overload of leaders with lower levels of psychological flexibility and their subordinates’ perceptions of LMX. Thus, psychological flexibility seemed to mitigate the negative implications of leaders’ work overload. This study extends previous studies on managers’ perceptions of work overload by introducing an important contingency of the relationship between managers’ perceptions of work overload and the quality of their relationship with subordinates. As such, this study contributes to a more complete understanding of the factors that relate to the development of high-quality LMX.
Kopperud, Karoline; Nerstad, Christina & Dysvik, Anders (2020)
Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Role of Motivational Climate and Work–Home Spillover for Turnover Intentions
Emerging trends in the workforce point to the necessity of facilitating work lives that foster constructive and balanced relationships between professional and private spheres in order to retain employees. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we propose that motivational climate influences turnover intention through the facilitation of work–home spillover. Specifically, we argue that employees working in a perceived mastery climate are less likely to consider voluntarily leaving their employer because of increased positive–and reduced negative—work–home spillover experiences. We further argue that employees working in a perceived performance climate are more likely to consider voluntarily leaving their employer because of reduced positive—and increased negative—work–home spillover experiences. In a cross—lagged survey of 1074 employees in a Norwegian financial-sector organization, we found that work–home spillover partly mediates the relationship between a perceived motivational climate and turnover intention. Specifically, mastery climates seem to facilitate positive—and reduce negative—spillover between the professional and private spheres, which in turn decreases employees’ turnover intention. Contrary to our expectations, a perceived performance climate slightly increased both positive and negative work-home spillover, however increasing employees’ turnover intention. We discuss implications for practice and future research.
Kopperud, Karoline (2019)
Ledelse og selvinnsikt
Kopperud, Karoline & Martinsen, Øyvind L. (2016)
Motiverende ledelse
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Kopperud, Karoline; Martinsen, Øyvind L. & Humborstad, Sut I Wong (2014)
Engaging leaders in the eyes of the beholder: On the relationship between transformational leadership, work engagement, service climate, and self-other agreement
