Eberhard Ulich

Eberhard Ulich

Eberhard Ulich (born November 29, 1929 in Greifswald ) is a German industrial psychologist .

Ulich is one of the most prominent representatives of German-speaking industrial psychology, who is dedicated to the humane, health-preserving design of work , puts the working person at the center of his activities and brings psychology to business, schools, hospitals and economic and social politicians.

"Ulich's work helps to make the unity of our subject (industrial psychology, CoR) clearer, to understand that teaching as well as healing is work and obeys the laws of this area and that work can make or heal mentally ill."

For 25 years (1972 to 1997) he taught and researched as a full professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the ETH Zurich and was director of the Institute for Industrial Psychology (ifap). Since 1997 he has been a senior partner of the Institute for Labor Research and Organizational Consulting (iafob), since 2000 scientific director of the European business network 'Enterprise for Health' and since 2003 President of the Labor Research Foundation.

Life and professional history

• Study of psychology with diploma in 1954 and doctorate in 1955 at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich
• 1955 to 1957 assistant to Otto Graf at the Max Planck Institute for Occupational Physiology in Dortmund
• 1957 to 1966 research assistant at the Psychological Institute of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, since 1958 teaching position for experimental psychology and industrial psychology
• 1965 Habilitation and Venia Legendi for applied psychology at the Faculty of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich
• 1967 to 1969 university lecturer as well as scientific advisor and professor at the Technical University of Berlin
• 1967/68 parallel establishment of the first chair for psychology at the University of Regensburg
• 1969 to 1972 full professor of psychology at the German Sport University Cologne and honorary professor at the University of Heidelberg
• 1972 to 1997 full professor for work and organizational psychology at the ETH Zurich , director of the institute for work psychology, from 1991 to 1998 also head of the center for integrated production systems at the ETH
• 1973 to 1986 parallel part-time associate professor at the University of Bern
• since October 1997 senior partner of the Institute for Labor Research and Organizational Consulting
• 2000 to 2004 member of the expert commission "Future of a contemporary company health policy" ( Hans-Böckler-Foundation and Bertelsmann Foundation )
• 2000 to 2008 scientific director of the European business network Enterprise for Health
• since 2003 President of the Labor Research Foundation

Ulich lives in Zurich.

Research and work

The main concern of Eberhard Ulich's research and work is to contribute to the humane design of work . To this end, he theoretically explored the interplay between people, technologies, organizational and social conditions with regard to the fulfillment of work tasks, empirically investigated and implemented them creatively by developing methods and instruments.

During his time at ETH Zurich, for example, a model for the development of job satisfaction was developed which, through a differentiated consideration of the dynamics of individual demands and operational reality, had a lasting influence on theory and practice. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Institute for Industrial Psychology at ETH Zurich, which he headed, was best known for its human-technology-organization approach, which supported the federal government's CIM action program, various research initiatives nationwide and research on work-oriented at ETH Zurich Has shaped the design of automated production systems.

The specific research questions that Eberhard Ulich dealt with included research projects on alternative forms of work in industry and administration, computer-aided office work and computer-aided production, job satisfaction, personal work design, time structures and shift work, employment-effective working time models, team-oriented remuneration concepts, working conditions in the health and education sector or Health management in companies.

Since his retirement in 1997 and as a senior partner of the Institute for Work Research and Organizational Consulting, which he co-founded, Ulich's main work has been the implementation of psychology in business and in health and education. This implementation is accompanied by theoretical reviews in several books, e.g. B. in "Assessing companies in terms of occupational psychology" (with Oliver Strohm, 1997), in "Industrial Psychology in Hospitals" (2003) or in "Health Management in Companies" (with Marc Wülser, 7th edition, 2018). His standard textbook “Industrial Psychology” was published in 2011 in a revised and expanded 7th edition. A selected balance sheet of the work of the Institute for Work Research and Organizational Consulting is contained in the book “Corporate Design in the Field of Tension between Stability and Change” (2008) published in the context of the 10th anniversary.

Ulich's core concern is "to further develop psychology (...) as an effective, scientifically sound profession that enables professional representatives to follow ethical principles of shaping decent living and working as the better economic option". Eberhard Ulich develops a scientifically founded psychology of the design of everyday life, which includes work. For him, it is not primarily about providing new knowledge for the scientific user of the subject. Ulich goes further, he is looking for knowledge, procedures and concepts in order to interfere, in order to contribute to the humane design of living and working conditions.

Honors

• Dr. rer. nat. hc Technical University of Dresden (1995)
• Honorary professor at the University of Potsdam
• Advisory Professor Tongji University , Shanghai
• Honorary President of the Swiss Society for Work and Organizational Psychology
• Medal of Honor and Honorary Member of the Society for Ergonomics
• Hugo Münsterberg Medal from the Association of German Psychologists

Fonts

• Main work: Industrial Psychology (7th revised edition 2011), Zurich: vdf Hochschulverlag / Stuttgart: Schäffer Poeschel, ISBN 978-3-7910-3049-4 , ISBN 978-3-7281-3370-0

Editorships

• Writings on work psychology (Bern: Huber)
• Series of publications "Mensch - Technik - Organization" (Zurich: vdf Hochschulverlag) with works such as assessing companies in terms of occupational psychology (vol. 10, 1997) and employment-effective working time models (vol. 29, 2001)

• Associate Editor: Psychosocial

Editorial boards

• The European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology
• International Journal of Human Factors in Manufacturing
• Journal of Ergonomics
• Journal of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Web links

• Literature by and about Eberhard Ulich in the catalog of the German National Library
• Further information on the person and career of Eberhard Ulich - The iafob team - www.iafob.ch
• Literature by Eberhard Ulich - iafob publications - www.iafob.ch

Individual evidence

1. ^ People - Technology - Organization - vdf Verlag
2. ↑ Excerpt from the greeting by Hannelore Weber on the occasion of the award of the Hugo Münsterberg Medal by the Professional Association of German Psychologists, 2005
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Excerpt from the laudation given by Winfried Hacker on the occasion of the award of the Hugo-Münsterberg-Medal of the professional association of German psychologists, 2005
4. ↑ Eberhard Ulich - Psychology Chronicle ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ The iafob team at www.iafob.ch ( Memento of the original from November 7th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ based on ETHistory of the Institute for Work Psychology
7. ↑ Anniversary book on www.iafob.ch ( Memento of the original from November 7th, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Honorary doctorates of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of the TU Dresden  
9. ↑ Eberhard Ulich - Psychology Chronicle ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.