Vilja M.R. Levonius and Eveliina Saari
This paper aims to introduce the Empatia video reflection method, designed to enhance care workers’ awareness of empathic care. The method makes the quality of care visible, which…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to introduce the Empatia video reflection method, designed to enhance care workers’ awareness of empathic care. The method makes the quality of care visible, which is needed when digitalization efforts in elder care focus on the efficiency and adequacy of care work.
Design/methodology/approach
The Empatia method leans on previous studies of the interaction between care professionals and clients and elaborates further previous video reflection methods. In empathic care work, the care worker sees the client on their life continuum, rather than focusing on only medical treatments.
Findings
The empirical example demonstrates how a care worker gained awareness of their empathic interaction habits. Within the work community, the reflection process sparked discussions on values: the purpose of care work and how to conduct empathic care. Focusing on empathic relationships in care fosters both the client’s and the care worker’s well-being.
Practical implications
The strength of the Empatia method is that it makes empathy visible in interaction and something that is individually and collectively learnable. The Empatia includes an analytical tool for researchers to reveal empathy in client interaction. It can be developed further into a reflection tool for service work to learn how to be empathic in service encounters.
Originality/value
Compared to other video-stimulated recall methods, the Empatia involves contextual understanding of care work. Empowering positive interactions instead of detecting errors and solving problems is a novel concept and is scantily used in studies of organizational learning. The Empatia provides a detailed method description that allows for the replication of the method by anyone.
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Eveliina Saari, Inka Koskela and Marja Känsälä
In Nordic societies, the use of mobile phones for record-keeping during homecare visits has become an unquestioned routine. Care practitioners’ agency with these technologies has…
Abstract
Purpose
In Nordic societies, the use of mobile phones for record-keeping during homecare visits has become an unquestioned routine. Care practitioners’ agency with these technologies has been explored mainly as a situationally constrained activity, neglecting their long-term orientations. Our empirical contribution is to explore care practitioners’ agentic relations to technology in a more nuanced way by including both dimensions. The theoretical contribution is to show synergy between temporal conceptualizations in theories of human agency and technology-in-practice, which highlight human agency as deliberation between situational and long-term temporal orientations.
Design/methodology/approach
Seven Finnish care practitioners were interviewed, and their entire work shifts were observed, consisting altogether 48 video-recorded homecare visits. The analysis of the ethnographic material was focused on situational and long-term temporal orientations of the care practitioners related to technologizing care.
Findings
Care practitioners in old age care approached technology use with three different kinds of temporal orientations: adapting – preferring to remain in the present; opposing – longing for the past; and engaging – viewing the technologization of old age care as positive for the future.
Practical implications
The situational usability of technology is not the only problem to be solved when technology is adopted for human-centred care; longer-term visions of how care and care work will change should also be voiced in healthcare organizations.
Originality/value
Temporal orientations may explain how and why care practitioners either just adapt to technology-use in care or act as change agents transforming both technologies and care.
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Satu Pekkarinen, Mervi Hasu, Helinä Melkas and Eveliina Saari
The purpose of this paper is to examine and reinterpret information ecology in the context of the changing environment of services, which has been strongly affected by…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine and reinterpret information ecology in the context of the changing environment of services, which has been strongly affected by digitalisation and increasing citizen engagement. Here, information ecology refers to the interaction and co-evolution of technologies, human beings and the social environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The data consist of 25 thematic interviews conducted in a public Finnish organisation responsible for organising welfare services, and in its collaborating organisations. The interviews were analysed qualitatively. The analytical framework is based on Nardi and O'Day's five components of information ecology: system, diversity, co-evolution, keystone species and locality.
Findings
The analysis shows that these basic components still exist in the digitalisation era, but that they should be interpreted and highlighted differently, for example, stressing the openness of the information system instead of closed systems, as well as emphasising the increasing meaning of diversity amongst digitalisation, and the dynamic co-evolution between the elements of the system. New capabilities, such as the ability to combine various kinds of information and knowledge, are needed in this adaptation.
Research limitations/implications
The study illustrates a wider, updated information-ecology concept with the help of empirical research. Technology affects care organisations' information ecologies in numerous – often invisible – ways, which this study brings into light.
Originality/value
So far, information-ecology research has overlooked social and healthcare, but this study provides findings concerning this societally important sector.
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Management systems designed for the purposes of the industrial era are not sufficient to rise to the challenge of knowledge‐creating organizations. This paper seeks to analyse how…
Abstract
Purpose
Management systems designed for the purposes of the industrial era are not sufficient to rise to the challenge of knowledge‐creating organizations. This paper seeks to analyse how the motives and aims of top management and knowledge workers differ from each other. In order to avoid confrontation between managerialism and research work logic, the paper suggests building up a communication and learning‐based leadership model.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on findings from the previous research projects, the paper analyses the challenges arising from the gap between top‐down type management and the research built on a bottom‐up basis. The empirical observations are based on the studies of organizational changes and development of research groups in Finnish public research organizations.
Findings
The paper presents four new constructions that the management and personnel of a research organization tend to interpret very differently: the tension between freedom and control, formation of research strategies, applicability of business management models to research organizations, and the meaning of structural changes.
Practical implications
The paper offers guidelines for constructing dialogue between managers and knowledge workers and highlights the importance of embedding communication and learning as an integral part of a knowledge organization's practice. Crossing of positions and building up accessible arenas and forms for continuous communication between managers and employees are encouraged.
Originality/value
The four constructions present a new framework for understanding the worldviews of top managers and employees in knowledge creating organizations when facing the challenges of globalization.
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Minna Halonen, Katri Kallio and Eveliina Saari
The purpose of this paper is to report a new kind of workshop process which aims at co‐creation across disciplines in a service research network. The case concerns Technical…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report a new kind of workshop process which aims at co‐creation across disciplines in a service research network. The case concerns Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) and took place from January to May, 2009.
Design/methodology/approach
Both foresight and organizational learning methods are combined in the process. During workshops, researchers and management are enabled to co‐create interdisciplinary service research proposals and a service research strategy for VTT. The workshops are designed to facilitate a dialogue between users of the research and potential collaborators (universities, funding agencies and societal actors). This initiative reflects the current global service science discourse based on a renewal of service management through service‐dominant logic and network thinking.
Findings
Although the need for co‐creation across disciplines and together with the customer has often been stated in service research, methods enabling such a way of acting have rarely been tested and achieved. This method worked as a concrete way for managing future‐oriented networking across organizational borders as a basis for continuous learning and innovation.
Research limitations/implications
The new approach to service science and the methods used in the VTT network are applicable in research practice.
Practical implications
The development process presented in this paper is an embryo for a new kind of research culture that fosters learning in networks as well as the shared and transparent planning of project proposals.
Originality/value
By creating the service science and business network and a process of learning by foresighting and evaluating our ideas on a concrete case are applied. This is believed to be the first time that methods of foresight and organizational learning have been combined. Furthermore, the process builds a research strategy both from below and above and together with customers and other collaborators thus establishing a network of co‐creation.
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Mervi Hasu, Laura Honkaniemi, Eveliina Saari, Tuuli Mattelmäki and Leena Koponen
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a workshop process to enhance the learning of employee-driven innovating (LEDI) and to evaluate in multiple ways the practical effects of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a workshop process to enhance the learning of employee-driven innovating (LEDI) and to evaluate in multiple ways the practical effects of the LEDI process, which aimed to enhance the employee-driven innovation practices at workplace level in a public organisation. Although front-line employees are increasingly encouraged to participate in innovation, organisations lack multi-level knowledge on the practices, outcomes and effects of participation.
Design/methodology/approach
A six-month development process (LEDI) was conducted to empower front-line hospital support service workers to learn to innovate and to apply this in the services they provide. The process consisted of different themes: future visions, current services, creating new services and evaluations of ideas and innovation embryos. The multi-method evaluation of the process included pre-evaluation of the generated innovation ideas, a developmental evaluation of the selected innovation embryos, a follow-up evaluation of the innovation ideas and an evaluation of the organisational level effect via a quantitative survey.
Findings
The intervention process had positive effects on employee participation and learning to innovate. The conclusion of the four evaluations is that the LEDI process developed a new kind of agency among employees and enabled significant improvements to services. The evaluation of the organisation-level effect revealed that the process had also improved the views regarding preconditions for development.
Originality/value
The intervention method is a practical application of employee-driven innovation conception that is validated as practical and effective at workplace level. The process is a viable method for enhancing workers’ innovation-related learning in service organisations. The novelty of the method is based on the multi-disciplinary combination of approaches that consist of theories of practice-based innovation, expansive learning and emphatic human-centred service design.
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This paper analyzes how public servants who work with young people discursively cope with competing demands on their agency, defined as their orientation toward and capabilities…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analyzes how public servants who work with young people discursively cope with competing demands on their agency, defined as their orientation toward and capabilities to influence their clients. Previous studies revealed how public servants treat their clients when facing competing demands but paid less attention to how public servants define their agency.
Design/methodology/approach
Micro-level discourse analysis is applied to analyze how public servants represent their agency in client relationships, drawing on interviews with nine individuals in a Finnish city who work with young people lacking jobs or school placements.
Findings
Instead of describing their agency coherently, the interviewees applied several discourses to represent their agency differently in relation to different demands. This ability to navigate contradictory discourses is discussed as reflexive discursive coping strategy, which enables public servants to maintain a positive image of their agency despite tensions at work.
Research limitations/implications
Although the method does not allow direct generalizations, it reveals discursive strategies likely to be found in many contemporary public organizations.
Practical implications
The study indicates a need to better acknowledge and nurture the multifaceted nature of agency to improve service quality.
Originality/value
The findings deepen the view on tensions in public servants' work and show that diverse discourses not only create anxiety but also help individuals dealing with contradictory work.