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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.