Kaija Marjukka Collin, Sara Keronen, Soila Lemmetty, Tommi Auvinen and Elina Riivari
The purpose of this study is to identify the challenges of low hierarchy and self-organised structures for employees’ learning and competency development at work. In the past…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to identify the challenges of low hierarchy and self-organised structures for employees’ learning and competency development at work. In the past decade, interest in employees’ and organisations’ self-directedness has increased. Self-organised structures are perceived as better able to answer to the quickly changing requirements of clients and business environments. Within these structures, employees are expected to take on more responsibility and maintain more control over their workplace learning, which means they must be self-directed and autonomous. An important question for this approach is how can workplace learning and employee competence development be enhanced.
Design/methodology/approach
Two self-organised Finnish information and communication technology-companies participated in the study. With the help of data-driven content analysis, 36 interviews were analysed.
Findings
Unclear roles, structures and areas of responsibility caused challenges during the guidance and support of learning, for long-term and sustainable professional development possibilities and in organising and prioritizing work tasks related to learning.
Practical implications
In self-organised structures, there should be a means of the better supporting individual- and team-based learning. This will allow learning to have as much value as possible in the future and, therefore, be more sustainable. The findings are also important to be taken into account in managers’ and HR professionals’ education and training.
Originality/value
The findings of this study can offer insights into employees’ well-being emerging from the possibility to learn and be supported in that learning especially in self-organised structures, which so far has been scarcely studied.
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Soila Lemmetty and Kaija Collin
The purpose of this study is to describe the construction of leadership through authentic dialogues at work and leaders’ actions as contributors to dialogic leadership.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to describe the construction of leadership through authentic dialogues at work and leaders’ actions as contributors to dialogic leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected the data by recording the organisation’s meetings and discussions and used content analysis of dialogic leadership and typifying of critical moments as analytical methods.
Findings
On the basis of the findings, this paper suggests that dialogic leadership begins with a startup critical moment and progresses through the different positions by manager and employees through democratic interaction. Individual and collective level learning of participants and the formation of new knowledge were used in decision- or conclusion-making. The manager promoted the construction of dialogic leadership in conversation by creating important critical moments, which enabled a dialogue to start or contributed to already ongoing dialogue.
Originality/value
The study proposes concrete actions that can be applied in working life. This study provides a new understanding of the leader’s activities in promoting dialogue.
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Sara Keronen, Soila Lemmetty and Kaija Marjukka Collin
The purpose of this study is to explore the construction of collective self-determination in development-oriented group discussions. This paper provides empirical understanding of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the construction of collective self-determination in development-oriented group discussions. This paper provides empirical understanding of how collective self-determination is constructed in social interaction using certain communication styles.
Design/methodology/approach
The qualitative data were based on four development-oriented group discussions (totaling 180 min) of supervisors from Finnish central hospital and information and communication technology organization. Participants from hospitals worked as head nurses, while those from information technology organizations worked as leaders and project managers. The data were analysed through interaction and content analyses.
Findings
Based on the findings, collective self-determination is constructed in social interaction through speech sections in which individuals’ different speech acts facilitate basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. In collective self-determination, the individual and the collective are emphasized at the same time, meaning that collective self-determination cannot occur without individual-level self-determination.
Practical implications
Organizations and teams should focus on finding suitable ways to implement collective self-determination and consider the importance of social interaction and certain communication styles. Moreover, employees should be offered enough resources and support to be able to work in collectively self-determined manner.
Originality/value
The study offered an approach to understand self-determination and its construction in group discussions aiming at collective learning. Collective self-determination emphasizes the group and its ability to be autonomous, responsible and capable to learn and to orient toward common goals and tasks. As such, it extends the previous understanding of self-determination as collective-level phenomenon. More research is needed in the context of working life.
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Marianne Jaakkola, Soila Lemmetty, Kaija Collin, Minna Ylönen and Teuvo Antikainen
This study aims to increase the understanding of the starting points and presuppositions of organizational learning (OL) processes in a hospital’s surgical department based on the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to increase the understanding of the starting points and presuppositions of organizational learning (OL) processes in a hospital’s surgical department based on the existing theory of OL and to make visible the practical possibilities of the theory in this context.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was conducted as a case study. The data were collected from personnel of the hospital’s surgical department and consisted of 26 thematic interviews. The data were analyzed using qualitative theory-driven content analysis.
Findings
This study found different starting points for both employee-oriented and organization-oriented learning processes that could potentially progress to different levels of the organization: from individuals to a wider group or from a large group to an individual. The starting point of employee-oriented learning processes was depicted as everyday life problems or situations or was based on the person’s interest. The starting points of organization-oriented learning processes were described as achieving or maintaining the organization’s expected skill levels, pursuing continuous development or pursuing the organization’s specific development needs. Different kinds of presuppositions were also located within the OL processes.
Originality/value
This study produced new practice-based knowledge about the starting points of OL processes and their presuppositions. In health-care organizations, learning is especially important due to intensive and complex changes, and this study provides empirical evidence on how to enhance learning.
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Kaija Collin and Päivi Tynjälä
The integration of theory and practice has been recognised as one of the key questions in the development of professional expertise and vocational competence. In this study the…
Abstract
The integration of theory and practice has been recognised as one of the key questions in the development of professional expertise and vocational competence. In this study the question of how theory and practice meet each other during professional development was approached from the point of view of two different groups of learners: employees with varying length of work experience and university students taking a working life project course. Altogether 18 employees and 51 students were interviewed, after which transcribed interviews were qualitatively categorised. The opinions expressed by the informants indicate that work‐based learning is not a unified phenomenon but varies in different contexts and between actors. The findings suggest, however, that the transformation of students’ explicit “book knowledge” into implicit or tacit knowledge may begin already while the student is still in education, provided that formal knowledge is used for authentic problem solving.
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The aim of this study is to investigate how workers' work‐related identity is related to various forms of workplace learning. The study also aims to show how changes in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to investigate how workers' work‐related identity is related to various forms of workplace learning. The study also aims to show how changes in the organization affect both learning and the work‐related identity construction of employees.
Design/methodology/approach
In‐depth interviews with four design engineers were conducted in 2000 and 2007 in Finland. Narrative analysis was used to construct four stories that were compared at two different points in time to find out what changes and development took place in relation to experiences of learning and work‐related identity.
Findings
The findings suggest that learning and work‐related identity are related to one another in many ways. Usually this relationship is individually constituted, but many of its elements are socially shared. Work‐related identity is constructed strategically as one of many identities constituted in the other areas of life.
Practical implications
The findings of this study show that employers should bear in mind the importance of this interrelationship in order to promote employees' commitment and so facilitate their continuous learning and construction of their work‐related identity.
Originality/value
This paper provides useful information on how changes in the organization affect both learning and the work‐related identity construction of employees.
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The paper seeks to investigate design engineers' and product developers' learning through their work. The aim was to approach designers' work practice and their learning in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper seeks to investigate design engineers' and product developers' learning through their work. The aim was to approach designers' work practice and their learning in the course of it as perceived by the designers themselves. The aim is also to examine their learning through the various individual and social processes, which take place in the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
The ethnographic approach in this paper, with its use of combined and qualitative data gathering and analytical methods, was selected to approach the aim described above. Observations in two Finnish high‐tech companies and interviews with 18 designers were conducted. The observations and interviews were analysed with help of combined methods of analysis, such as phenomenographic, narrative and ethnographic analysis.
Findings
The findings in this paper suggest that in redefining designers' work and learning, four central themes are important: design practice is learning in itself; there is a close relationship between formal and practical knowledge in designers' learning at work; previous work experience plays an essential role in learning; and design practices and learning should be seen as shared, situated and contextualized.
Practical implications
In the paper general suggestions concerning the guidance of workplace learning are given, and the challenges of guiding and assessing workplace learning in the vocational education context are examined. There is a clear need for more effective integration between education and working life.
Originality/value
The paper illustrates that individual and social practice and learning in the workplace should be analysed as interdependent and intertwined.
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Kaija Collin, Sanna Herranen, Ulla Maija Valleala and Susanna Paloniemi
The purpose of this paper is to explore interprofessional collaboration during ward rounds on a Finnish emergency and infection ward from the viewpoint of three central…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore interprofessional collaboration during ward rounds on a Finnish emergency and infection ward from the viewpoint of three central professional groups: physicians, nurses and secretaries.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors utilise an ethnographically informed approach, with observations and interviews as the data collection devices. The data comprise ten interviews with staff members and ten hours of observations. The data were analysed using qualitative thematic analysis.
Findings
The ward rounds were found to be rather physician- and medicine-centred, and mostly not interprofessional. Nurses and secretaries in particular expressed dissatisfaction with many of the current ward rounds work practices. Ward rounds are an essential part of collaboration in implementing the emergency-natured operational aim of the ward, yet we found that the ward rounds are complicated by diverging professional views and expectations, variable work practices and interactional inequality.
Originality/value
This study makes a contribution to the research of collaboration in emergency care and ward rounds, both of which are little-studied fields. Further, context-specific studies of collaboration have been called for in order to eventually create a model of shared expertise. The findings of this study can be utilised in studying and developing emergency care contexts.