Tove Helland Hammer was born in Tønsberg, Norway, on November 8, 1945, the daughter of Kjell Monrad Helland and Ingrid Bang Helland. She grew up at her ancestral home, Bangsbø, on the shoreline of the Oslo Fjord. She passed away peacefully in Ithaca, NY, after a 3-year battle with cancer and the residual side effects of her treatment on September 12, 2026. Bangsbø was Tove’s favorite place in the summer and she was grateful to spend one last beautiful summer there this year surrounded by family and friends.

Tove left Norway for Ithaca, NY, to attend Cornell University on a four-year Teagle Foundation scholarship in September 1965. Three things that determined the course of Tove’s next 60 years occurred in short order after that: she met graduate student David Hammer, who became her constant companion very quickly and whom she married in August 1968; she discovered that Industrial and Organizational Psychology was the field she wanted to study in graduate school; and she determined that her goal was to be a professor in the United States, and preferably at Cornell. After earning her BA in Psychology from Cornell, Tove enrolled in the Industrial/Organizational Psychology Department at the University of Maryland and earned MS and PhD degrees. She was hired by Cornell in the Fall of 1973.

Tove spent 47 proud years, from 1973 until her retirement in 2022, at Cornell teaching undergraduates, mentoring graduate students and helping to lead the Organization Behavior Department in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR). She rose from Instructor (1973) to Assistant Professor (1974) to Associate Professor (1981) and, in 1990, to full Professor of Organizational Behavior (OB) — a rank she held until her retirement as Professor Emeritus. She chaired the OB department twice and served as the senior editor of the Industrial and Labor Relations Review from 1994-2011.

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

Tove’s research began with studies of leadership, supervision, and career mobility in the 1970s. She moved into studying the effect of stock ownership, worker buyouts, and labor representation on corporate boards of directors through the 1980s and 1990s largely based on the employee buyout of the Rath Meat-Packing Company in Iowa, where Tove served on the board of directors. From the late 1990s, her primary research involved large-scale field studies of the effects of the physical and psychosocial work environment on employees' mental and physical health. The special focus of these studies, much of it conducted collaboratively in Norway, was on how organizational level norms on 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.

Her scholarly contributions were recognized with election as a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (1988), a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (1988), and a Fellow of the American Psychological Society (1991). In 2017, she 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 elite, invitation-only group of organizational psychologists. She served on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Groups and Organization Studies.

Tove also contributed to the Ithaca community by playing a critical role in the founding of the Ithaca Community Childcare Center in 1988. In addition, she was an active member of the First Congregational Church of Ithaca for 35 years and was part of several major committees during those years.

Tove was predeceased by her parents and brother, Bernt Jørn Helland. She is survived by her husband, David, children Cailin B. Dore (Timothy) and Thomas A. Hammer, grandchildren Charles R. Dore and John A. Dore, niece Dyveke Helland and grandniece, Nathalia.

Tove was devoted to all family members, especially her grandchildren, and most delighted when they were jumping off the pier into the water at Bangsbø.

Calling hours will be held on Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 1-3pm in Bangs Funeral Home.