Floor Rink Rosalind Franklin Fellow at Faculty of Management and Organization

On 1 March 2007, Dr Floor Rink (31) will be appointed a Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Faculty of Management and Organization. The talented researcher graduated in organizational psychology from the University of Groningen and was awarded her PhD with distinction in the same field by the University of Leiden. In Groningen, Rink will mainly concentrate on research into the innovativeness of culturally diverse and multifunctional teams. The fellowship is a temporary appointment, which can eventually be converted into a professorship if the researcher lives up to expectations.

The aim of the RUG Rosalind Franklin (RF) project is to recruit women worldwide and select them purely based on quality. Rink will have the second of three RF Fellowships at the Faculties of Economics and Management & Organization. The Faculty Boards consider it important that the percentage of women on the academic staff is increased.

Floor Rink
Rink is currently working at the University of Leiden. In her research, Rink concentrates mainly on the human factor in innovation. She studies the sociopsychological mechanisms that lie at the root of group decisions and group behaviour and is particularly interested in the influence of diversity, identity processes and newcomers on how teams function. Within this framework, Floor Rink is working on the project ‘The influence of Team Mobility on Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Processes within Teams’.

‘Diversity has become an important topic in sociopsychological research, and also in actual practice’ says Rink, ‘because the teams people are working in are becoming ever more varied in nature, both ethnically and multifunctionally. The ways the team members work can also vary widely, including differences in knowledge and skills, in decision-making and in work goals. It is thus important to know under which circumstances team members when performing tasks will or will not be inclined to make use of the unique knowledge and information that is available to them. Although it is often thought that diversity can undermine team performance, my research has shown that the unity of a team can actually be based on diversity – the identity of a team is then based on the fact that the team members agree that they differ and will continue to differ from each other.’ 

‘Passionate researcher’
‘Floor Rink is a passionate researcher’, according to Professor Janka Stoker of the Faculty. ‘She came to our notice through her excellent PhD thesis. We were also impressed by her work and research plans. She has already gained international visibility, as is proved by her referee work for a number of prominent scientific journals, foreign contacts and stays and frequent congress visits. Rink’s research fits extremely well into the Faculty of Management & Organization. She will strengthen the already strong group in the field of Human Resource Management. Finally, she also has a number of years teaching experience in Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes, and in the supervision of final papers.’