Minna Säävälä, Elina Turjanmaa and Anne Alitolppa-Niitamo
School is an institution that provides an opportunity to improve children’s equity and wellbeing and to bridge the potential disadvantage related to ethnic- or language-minority…
Abstract
Purpose
School is an institution that provides an opportunity to improve children’s equity and wellbeing and to bridge the potential disadvantage related to ethnic- or language-minority backgrounds. Information sharing between immigrant homes and school can enhance school achievement, support positive identity formation and provide early support when needed. In this paper, the perspectives of immigrant parents, school welfare personnel and school-going adolescents are analysed in order to understand how they see their respective roles in information flows between home and school. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The data consist of qualitative group and individual interviews of 34 representatives of school personnel, 13 immigrant parents and 81 young people who have experienced immigration, in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland.
Findings
Despite general goodwill, school personnel may fail to secure the flow of information. Due to structural power imbalance, school personnel are often incapable of engaging the parents in dialogical discourse. Young people of immigrant background in turn try to manipulate the information flow in order to protect their family and ethnic group and to cope with pressures from parents. The patterns of information flows in school as a social field reproduce immigrant homes as subaltern. Adolescents act in a strategically important juncture of information flows between immigrant home and school, which indicates that home-school interaction is actually a triad.
Social implications
Awareness building among school personnel is vital for equity and wellbeing of children of immigrant families.
Originality/value
This triangulated analysis of patterned information flows in school as a social field provides a fresh perspective to those working with children of immigrant families.
Details
Keywords
Johanna Kujala, Anna-Maija Lämsä and Elina Riivari
Company stakeholder responsibility considers stakeholder engagement and management as key to long-term firm success. The purpose of this paper is to examine how top managers’…
Abstract
Purpose
Company stakeholder responsibility considers stakeholder engagement and management as key to long-term firm success. The purpose of this paper is to examine how top managers’ stakeholder responsibility attitudes change and how they balance stakeholder responsibilities and economic interests.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted empirical research using the company stakeholder responsibility framework by conducting a repeated cross-sectional survey in Finland in 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014.
Findings
The study shows how development in the business context influences managers’ attitudes towards stakeholder responsibility. Simultaneously with the expansion of free competition in 1990s Finland, managerial commitment to company stakeholder responsibility strengthened in Finnish industry.
Research limitations/implications
The target group consisting of industrial managers both in a single-country context and the social desirability bias present in survey research may limit the generalisability of the results.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the discussion of the role of situational factors in the development of corporate responsibility by showing that while economic changes have some influence on managerial attitudes, the expansion of free markets, together with increased regulation in certain areas, appears to influence managers’ stakeholder responsibility attitudes to an even greater degree.