Tove Helland Hammer ’69, professor emerita of organizational behavior in the ILR School and the first female editor of the ILR Review, died on Sept. 12 in Ithaca. She was 80.

Hammer taught in the ILR School’s Department of Organizational Behavior for 47 years, beginning in 1973 as an instructor. She was named an assistant professor the following year, an associate professor in 1981 and a full professor in 1990 – a rank she held until her retirement in 2022.

She chaired the organizational behavior department twice during her tenure and became the first female senior editor of the Industrial and Labor Relations Review in 1994. She served as the journal’s longest-tenured senior editor, holding the post for 17 years, until 2011.

“As editor of the ILR Review at the time, she was particularly helpful in guiding my first journal publication through the difficult review process – and many thereafter,” said Rosemary Batt, the Alice Hanson Cook Professor of Women and Work Emerita (ILR). “I learned tremendously from her wisdom and experience. In 2011, she passed the editorial torch of the ILR Review to me. I worked hard to live up to her legacy. I will remember her for her superb scholarship, tough and constructive editing, and generous spirit.”

Tove Helland Hammer was born in Tønsberg, Norway, on Nov. 8, 1945, and grew up at her ancestral home, Bangsbø, on the shoreline of the Oslo Fjord. She left Norway to attend Cornell on a four-year Teagle Foundation scholarship in September 1965. 

While at Cornell, she met graduate student David Hammer, Ph.D. ’69, and the couple married in August 1968. Her husband of 58 years is the J. Carlton Ward, Jr. Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering in the Cornell Duffield College of Engineering.

After earning her B.A. in psychology in 1969, Hammer enrolled at the University of Maryland and earned an M.A. in psychology in 1972 and a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology the following year.

Early in her career, Hammer studied leadership, supervision and career mobility before moving on to examine employee stock ownership, worker buyouts and labor representation on corporate boards of directors. Beginning in the 1990s, her primary research examined the effects of the physical and psychosocial work environment on employees’ mental and physical health. She conducted field studies with a special focus on how organizational-level norms about work performance, social support and reward systems influence the degree of work-family conflict, workplace bullying and harassment, job stress and psychological and physical health.

Hammer’s scholarly contributions were recognized by her election as a fellow of the American Psychological Association (1988), the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1988) and the American Psychological Society (1991).

“Tove was department chair when I was hired,” said Vanessa Bohns, Braunstein Family Professor in the ILR School. “Now that I am department chair myself, I model so much of my communication style and department engagement on her. She cared so much about mentoring junior faculty, and loved opening her home to host faculty, students and their families. She will be deeply missed.”

Hammer served on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Groups and Organization Studies.

She held long-standing visiting professor appointments in the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway, and the School of Hotel Management at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She also held sabbatical-year appointments at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London (1983–84, 1991) and at ESCP Europe in Paris (2011).

In 2017, Hammer was named a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, a multidisciplinary Norwegian science academy affiliated with NTNU. She was also a longtime member of the Society for Organizational Behavior, an invitation-only group of organizational psychologists.

Hammer was devoted to her students, keeping in touch with them as they went on to academic positions all over the world, said Pam Tolbert, the Lois S. Gray Professor of ILR and Social Sciences (ILR).

“I remember Tove telling me that as she got older, she realized that, ultimately, students represented the most important legacy that she and most other academics would leave.”