Discursive (de)legitimation of a contested Finnish greenfield investment project in Latin America

Despite the central role of legitimacy in corporate social responsibility debate, little is known of subtle meaning-making processes through which social actors attempt to establish or de-establish legitimacy for socially contested corporate undertakings, and through which they, at the same time, struggle to define the proper social role and responsibility of corporations. We investigated these processes in the context of the intense socio-political conflict around the Finnish forest industry company Metsa¨-Botnia’s world-scale pulp mill in Uruguay. A critical discursive analysis of Finnish media texts highlights three types of struggle that characterized the media coverage: legalistic argumentation, truth fights, and political battles. Interestingly, this case illustrates how the corporate representatives — with the help of the national media — tend to frame the issue in legalistic terms, emphasize their expert knowledge in technical and environmental evaluations, and distance themselves from political disputes. We argue that similar tendencies are likely to characterize corporate social responsibility debates more generally.

Knowledge Transfer within Western Multinationals' Subsidiary Units in China and Finland - The Impact of Headquarter Control Mechanisms, Subsidiary Location and Social Capital (summary section only)

It is suggested that the ability and practices of how the multinational corporation (MNC) manages knowledge transfer among its geographically dispersed subsidiary units are crucial for the building and development of firm competitive advantage. However, cross-border transfer of valuable organizational knowledge is likely to be problematic and laborious, especially within diversified and differentiated MNCs. Using data collected from 164 western multinational companies’ subsidiary units located in China and Finland, this study aims to investigate cross-border knowledge transfer within the MNC. It explores a number of factors that influence the transfer of knowledge among units in the differentiated MNC. The study consists of five individual papers. Paper 1 investigates a range of organizational mechanisms that may positively influence a subsidiary’s propensity to undertake knowledge transfers to other parts of the corporation. Paper 2 explores the impact of subsidiary location on the motivational dispositions of knowledge receiving units to value and accept knowledge from subsidiaries located in economically less advanced countries. Paper 3 examines the influence of social capital variables on knowledge transfer in dyadic relationships between foreign-owned subsidiaries and their sister and patent units. Paper 4 provides some initial insights into potentially different effects of trust and shared vision in intra-organizational vs. inter-organizational relationships. Using a case study setting, Paper 5 explores means and mechanisms used in transferring human resource management practices to Western MNCs’ business units in China from a cultural perspective. The results of the study show that MNC management through choices regarding organizational controls can encourage and enhance corporate-internal knowledge transfer. It also finds evidence that more knowledge is transferred from subsidiaries located in an industrialized country (e.g., Finland) than subsidiaries located in a developing country (e.g., China). While the study has highlighted the importance of social capital in promoting knowledge transfer, it has also uncovered some new findings that the effect of trust and shared vision may be contingent upon different contexts. Finally, in Paper 5, a number of mechanisms used in transferring selected HRM practices and competences to the Chinese business units have been identified. The findings suggest that cultural differences should be taken into consideration in the choice and use of different transfer mechanisms.

Managers Talk about Gender: What Managers in Large Transnational Corporations Say about Gender Policies, Structures and Practices

Mainstream research on management generally continues to ignore gender relations. Even so, over recent years there has been a major growth of international research on gender relations in organizations. Yet, most of this has focused on gender relations in lower or middle levels rather than at the apex of the organization. This book draws on research on gender policies, structures and practices of management in large Finnish corporations. It builds on earlier survey work of gender policies in the 100 largest corporations in Finland, to examine, through qualitative interviews, more detailed gendered processes in seven selected corporations. These represent corporations that are ‘relatively active’, ‘moderately active’, and ‘not active’ in relation to gender equality. Key issues include contrasts between formal policies and organizational practices; different corporate contexts and individual managers’ views; definition and scope of gender policy; and the relation of gender policies and diversity policy. This focus on gender policies is understood and located within organizational structures, most obviously gendered corporate hierarchies. Important structures include national context in relation to transnationalization, relations of headquarters and subsidiaries, and interrelations of management, policy development and policy implementation. Gender relations in practice and gender practices are considered in more detail. These women and men managers operate at the intersections of gendered transnational managerial work, careers and family-type relations, including marriage and children, or lack thereof. Women and men managers may be part of the same management levels or management teams, but have totally different family-type situations and gendered experiences. Interconnections of management, domestic life and transnationalizations are intensely gendered matters. The debate on the public/private continues to be important for both gender relations and organizational relations, but complicated through transnationalizations. The modern transnational corporation is considered in terms of gender divisions and gender power, with particular reference to top management. The concluding discussion notes implications for research and policy.

Cross-Border Competence Management in Emerging Markets: Voices from China and Russia

This book is on cross-border competence management in Russia and China. Corporations are facing a number of problems and challenges in their international operations, to which there typically are no simple solutions. For instance, they need to understand and respond to cultural and institutional diversity and ascertain that their foreign units are integrated with the rest of the corporation. Throughout this report we will discuss a range of challenges confronting firms as they seek to develop their capabilities to operate internationally. Some of the challenges are clearly case specific, and although this book aims to offer research-based advice to practicing managers there is a potential danger in applying lessons from other companies to the own firm. Our hope is that our analyses of the challenges facing Finnish corporations in China and Russia reported together with extensive quotes from our interviews and insights from other recent studies will help readers draw their own conclusions as to how to deal with issues related to competence management across borders. With this book we also aspire to contribute to the academic literature by providing new insights into cross-border competence management in general and the operations of Finnish corporations in Russia and China in particular.

Struggles Over Legitimacy in Global Organizational Restructuring: A Rhetorical Perspective on Legitimation Strategies and Dynamics in a Shutdown Case

Critical organization scholars have focused increasing attention on industrial and organizational restructurings such as shutdown decisions. However, little is known about the rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or resist plant closures in organizational negotiations. In this article, we draw from New Rhetoric to analyze rhetorical struggles, strategies and dynamics in unfolding organizational negotiations. We focus on the shutdown of the bus body unit of the Sweden-based Volvo Bus Corporation in Finland. We distinguish five types of rhetorical legitimation strategies and dynamics. These include the three classical dynamics of logos (rational arguments), pathos (emotional moral arguments), and ethos (authority-based arguments), but also autopoiesis (autopoietic narratives), and cosmos (cosmological constructions). Our analysis contributes to previous studies on organizational restructuring by providing a more nuanced understanding of how contemporary industrial closures are legitimated and resisted in organizational negotiations. This study also increases theoretical understanding of the role of rhetoric in legitimation more generally.

Alternative News Sources as 'Collaboratory' Journalism. A case study of Helsingin Sanomat and its relation with the Youth Voice Editorial Board

The new paradigm of connectedness and empowerment brought by the interactivity feature of the Web 2.0 has been challenging the traditional centralized performance of mainstream media. The corporation has been able to survive the strong winds by transforming itself into a global multimedia business network embedded in the network society. By establishing networks, e.g. networks of production and distribution, the global multimedia business network has been able to sight potential solutions by opening the doors to innovation in a decentralized and flexible manner. Under this emerging context of re-organization, traditional practices like sourcing need to be re- explained and that is precisely what this thesis attempts to tackle. Based on ICT and on the network society, the study seeks to explain within the Finnish context the particular case of Helsingin Sanomat (HS) and its relations with the youth news agency, Youth Voice Editorial Board (NÄT). In that sense, the study can be regarded as an explanatory embedded single case study, where HS is the principal unit of analysis and NÄT its embedded unit of analysis. The thesis was able to reach explanations through interrelated steps. First, it determined the role of ICT in HS’s sourcing practices. Then it mapped an overview of the HS’s sourcing relations and provided a context in which NÄT was located. And finally, it established conceptualized institutional relational data between HS and NÄT for their posterior measurement through social network analysis. The data set was collected via qualitative interviews addressed to online and offline editors of HS as well as interviews addressed to NÄT’s personnel. The study concluded that ICT’s interactivity and User Generated Content (UGC) are not sourcing tools as such but mechanism used by HS for getting ideas that could turn into potential news stories. However, when it comes to visual communication, some exemptions were found. The lack of official sources amidst the immediacy leads HS to rely on ICT’s interaction and UGC. More than meets the eye, ICT’s input into the sourcing practice may be more noticeable if the interaction and UGC is well organized and coordinated into proper and innovative networks of alternative content collaboration. Currently, HS performs this sourcing practice via two projects that differ, precisely, by the mode they are coordinated. The first project found, Omakaupunki, is coordinated internally by Sanoma Group’s owned media houses HS, Vartti and Metro. The second project found is coordinated externally. The external alternative sourcing network, as it was labeled, consists of three actors, namely HS, NÄT (professionals in charge) and the youth. This network is a balanced and complete triad in which the actors connect themselves in relations of feedback, recognition, creativity and filtering. However, as innovation is approached very reluctantly, this content collaboration is a laboratory of experiments; a ‘COLLABORATORY’.

Towards Multiculturalism in Turkish Public Service Broadcasting

The announcement of Turkey as a European Union (EU) candidate country in the Helsinki Summit (10, 11 December 1999) marked a distinct change of identity policy and attitudes towards its citizens. A result in the shift of mindset has been the launch of the first public service broadcasting TV channel for Kurdish people on the 1st of January 2009. TRT 6 (Şeş) broadcasting in unofficial Kurdish language is run by Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). The thesis attempts to elaborate on the discussions surrounding the launch of TRT 6, Turkey’s first public service broadcasting TV channel for its Kurdish citizens. The research aims at finding the discourses of multiculturalism and public service broadcasting through the mainstream Turkish newspapers, Cumhuriyet, Hurriyet, Sabah, Taraf and Zaman. The method used for the research is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the representative newspapers of the Turkish print media are under the question: How has the launch of TRT 6, as the first public service broadcasting channel of Turkey in Kurdish language, been discussed by Turkish daily newspapers in terms of multiculturalism and minority media? The most significant results of the research is that the concerning newspapers have mostly discussed the launch of TRT 6 in the same line with their political affiliation. Thus it is comprehensively concluded that the selected newspapers proved holding a high level of political parallelism, and low professionalism. However, it should be noted that Taraf differs itself from others while challenging the hegemonic discourses embedded in the articles of the other newspapers. Moreover, the study detected three types of discourses: Pro-multiculturalism discourse, Unification discourse, and Assimilation discourse. It can be concluded that in Turkey, media owners and even individual journalists have incentives to form ideological alliances with political parties, and media appears to be an instrument of power struggle. Today, Turkey seems to restore Kurdish identity in its identity policy and aims to proceed with the negotiation for membership of the European Union (EU). The country still strives to transform from the traditional nation-state to a multiethnic democratic state, with multiculturalism as a policy discussed throughout the two terms that the AKP government has been in power. However, this transformation is not an easy process because of the deep-rooted traditions of the nation-state structure that has also polarized the Turkish press.

Factors affecting perceptions of corporate social responsibility implementation: an emphasis on values

This dissertation is a broad study of factors affecting perceptions of CSR issues in multiple stakeholder realms, the main purpose being to determine the effects of the values of individuals on their perceptions regarding CSR. It examines perceptions of CSR both at the emic (observing individuals and stakeholders) and etic levels (conducting cross-cultural comparison) through a descriptive-empirical research strategy. The dissertation is based on quantitative interview data among Chinese, Finnish and US stakeholder groups of industry companies (with an emphasis on the forest industries) and consists of four published articles and two submitted manuscripts. Theoretically, this dissertation provides a valuable and unique philosophical and intellectual perspective on the contemporary study of CSR `The Harmony Approach to CSR'. Empirically, this dissertation does values assessment and CSR evaluation of a wide variety of business activities covering CSR reporting, business ethics, and three dimensions of CSR performance. From the multi-stakeholder perspective, this dissertation use survey methods to examine the perceptions and stakeholder salience in the context of CSR by describing, comparing the differences between demographic factors as well as hypothetical drivers behind perceptions. The results of study suggest that the CSR objective of a corporation's top management should be to manage the divergent and conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders, taking others than key stakeholders into account as well. The importance of values as a driver of ethical behaviour and decision-making has been generally recognized. This dissertation provides more empirical proof of this theory by highlighting the effects of values on CSR perceptions. It suggests that since the way to encourage responsible behaviour and develop CSR is to develop individual values and cultivate their virtues, it is time to invoke the critical role of moral (ethics) education. The specific studies of China and comparison between Finland and the US contribute to a common understanding of the emerging CSR issues, problems and opportunities for the future of sustainability. The similarities among these countries can enhance international cooperation, while the differences will open up opportunities and diversified solutions for CSR in local conditions.

Individuals' Responsibility in Corporations

I discuss role responsibly, individual responsibility and collective responsibility in corporate multinational setting. My case study is about minerals used in electronics that come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. What I try to show throughout the thesis is how many things need to be taken into consideration when we discuss the responsibility of individuals in corporations. No easy and simple answers are available. Instead, we must keep in mind the complexity of the situation at all times, judging cases on individual basis, emphasizing the importance of individual judgement and virtue, as well as the responsibility we all share as members of groups and the wider society. I begin by discussing the demands that are placed on us as employees. There is always a potential for a conflict between our different roles and also the wider demands placed on us. Role demands are usually much more specific than the wider question of how we should act as human beings. The terminology of roles can also be misleading as it can create illusions about our work selves being somehow radically separated from our everyday, true selves. The nature of collective decision-making and its implications for responsibility is important too. When discussing the moral responsibility of an employee in a corporate setting, one must take into account arguments from individual and collective responsibility, as well as role ethics. Individual responsibility is not a separate or competing notion from that of collective responsibility. Rather, the two are interlinked. Individuals' responsibilities in collective settings combine both individual responsibility and collective responsibility (which is different from aggregate individual responsibility). In the majority of cases, both will apply in various degrees. Some members might have individual responsibility in addition to the collective responsibility, while others just the collective responsibility. There are also times when no-one bears individual moral responsibility but the members are still responsible for the collective part. My intuition is that collective moral responsibility is strongly linked to the way the collective setting affects individual judgements and moulds the decisions, and how the individuals use the collective setting to further their own ends. Individuals remain the moral agents but responsibility is collective if the actions in question are collective in character. I also explore the impacts of bureaucratic ethic and its influence on the individual. Bureaucracies can compartmentalize work to such a degree that individual human action is reduced to mere behaviour. Responsibility is diffused and the people working in the bureaucracy can come to view their actions to be outside the normal human realm where they would be responsible for what they do. Language games and rules, anonymity, internal power struggles, and the fragmentation of information are just some of the reasons responsibility and morality can get blurry in big institutional settings. Throughout the thesis I defend the following theses: ● People act differently depending on their roles. This is necessary for our society to function, but the more specific role demands should always be kept in check by the wider requirements of being a good human being. ● Acts in corporations (and other large collectives) are not reducible to individual actions, and cannot be explained fully by the behaviour of individual employees. ● Individuals are responsible for the actions that they undertake in the collective as role occupiers and are very rarely off the hook. Hiding behind role demands is usually only an excuse and shows a lack of virtue. ● Individuals in roles can be responsible even when the collective is not. This depends on if the act they performed was corporate in nature or not. ● Bureaucratic structure affects individual thinking and is not always a healthy environment to work in. ● Individual members can share responsibility with the collective and our share of the collective responsibility is strongly linked to our relations. ● Corporations and other collectives can be responsible for harm even when no individual is at fault. The structure and the policies of the collective are crucial. ● Socialization plays an important role in our morality at both work and outside it. We are all responsible for the kind of moral context we create. ● When accepting a role or a position in a collective, we are attaching ourselves with the values of that collective. ● Ethical theories should put more emphasis on good judgement and decision-making instead of vague generalisations. My conclusion is that the individual person is always in the centre when it comes to responsibility, and not so easily off the hook as we sometimes think. What we do, and especially who we choose to associate ourselves with, does matter and we should be more careful when we choose who we work for. Individuals within corporations are responsible for choosing that the corporation they associate with is one that they can ascribe to morally, if not fully, then at least for the most part. Individuals are also inclusively responsible to a varying degree for the collective activities they contribute to, even in overdetermined contexts. We all are responsible for the kind of corporations we choose to support through our actions as consumers, investors and citizens.

N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuus normaalimaidossa sekä utaretulehdusta sairastavien lypsylehmien maidossa.

N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidaasi (NAGaasi) on glykosidaaseihin kuuluva, solujen lysosomeissa esiintyvä entsyymi, jota vapautuu maitoon utaretulehduksen aikana vaurioituneista utareen epiteelisoluista, neutrofiileistä ja makrofageista. NAGaasientsyymiaktiivisuuden on useissa tutkimuksissa havaittu korreloivan utareen tulehdustilan ja maidon soluluvun (SCC) kanssa ja sitä on ehdotettu käytettäväksi utareen epiteelisolutuhon mittaamiseen yksinään tai yhdistettynä SCC:n määritykseen. Koska saostuminen ei häiritse NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden mittausta maidosta, entsyymiaktiivisuus ei muutu maitoa säilytettäessä ja entsyymin mittaaminen on melko yksinkertaista ja nopeaa, menetelmä vaikuttaisi sopivan hyvin seulontatestiksi piileville utaretulehduksille. NAGaasin käyttö on toistaiseksi rajoittunut tutkimuskäyttöön. Sen hyödyntämistä vaikeuttaa se, että terveille lehmille eri tutkimuksissa määritetyissä NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden viitearvoissa on suurta vaihtelua. NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuus maidossa on useiden tutkimusten mukaan korkeampi silloin, kun tulehduksen on aiheuttanut jokin merkittävä patogeeni kuin silloin, kun tulehduksen taustalla on vähäpätöinen patogeeni. Lypsykauden vaiheen on havaittu vaikuttavan maidon NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuteen siten, että aktiivisuudet ovat korkeampia heti poikimisen jälkeen ja lypsykauden lopulla. On myös havaittu, että normaalimaidossa NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuus on hieman korkeampi loppumaidossa kuin alkumaidossa. Poikimakerran vaikutuksista NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuteen on ristiriitaisia tutkimustuloksia. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli määrittää NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden viitearvot terveen sekä utaretulehdusta sairastavan lypsylehmän maidossa, sekä selvittää tulehduksen voimakkuuden, aiheuttajapatogeenin, poikimakerran ja lypsykauden vaiheen vaikutusta kyseisen entsyymin aktiivisuuteen maidossa. Tutkimusaineistossa oli mukana kaikkiaan 838 vuosina 2000–2010 otettua maitonäytettä 62 eri lypsykarjatilalta Suomesta ja Virosta. Normaalimaidon NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden viitearvot määritettiin yhdeksältä suomalaiselta lypsykarjatilalta kerätyistä 196 maitonäytteestä, jotka täyttivät asettamamme normaalimaidon kriteerit. Normaalimaidon kriteerit olivat seuraavat: SCC < 100 000, lehmällä ei ole utaretulehduksen oireita, poikimisesta on kulunut aikaa yli 30 vuorokautta ja edellisestä lypsystä yli 6 tuntia. NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuus mitattiin modifioidulla Mattilan menetelmällä (Mattila 1985) vakioiduissa olosuhteissa. Aineisto analysoitiin käyttäen Stata Intercooler tilasto-ohjelman versiota 11.0 (Stata Corporation, Texas, USA). Maidon NAGaasientsyymiaktiivisuuteen terveessä neljänneksessä vaikuttavia tekijöitä tutkittiin lineaarisella sekamallilla, jossa sekoittavana tekijänä oli tila. SCC:n ja NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden korrelaatiota arvioitiin terveillä lehmillä, piilevää utaretulehdusta sairastaneilla lehmillä ja koko aineistossa. Korrelaatiot laskettiin Pearsonin korrelaatiokertoimella. Tilastollisesti merkitsevänä raja-arvona kaikissa analyyseissä pidettiin p < 0.05. Normaalimaidon NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden viitearvoiksi lehmillä, joilla poikimisesta oli kulunut yli 30 vrk, saatiin 0,09–1,04 pmol/min/μl maitoa. Verrattuna normaalimaidon NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuksien keskiarvoon (0,56) ja piilevää utaretulehdusta sairastaneiden lehmien NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuksien keskiarvoon (2,49), kliinistä utaretulehdusta sairastavien lehmien maidon NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuus oli keskimäärin selvästi korkeampi (16,65). Keskiarvoissa oli selvä ero paikallisoireisten (12,24) ja yleisoireisten (17,74) lehmien välillä. Terveiden neljännesten maitonäytteistä määritetyn NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden ja SCC:n välillä ei havaittu korrelaatiota. Piilevässä utaretulehduksessa havaittiin positiivinen korrelaatio (0,74) maidon NAGaasientsyymiaktiivisuuden ja SCC:n välillä. NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuteen vaikuttivat tilastollisesti merkitsevästi SCC, poikimisesta kulunut aika ja poikimakerta. Eri patogeeniryhmien osalta havaitsimme, että neljänneksissä, joista eristettiin vähäpätöinen patogeeni, NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuus oli selvästi matalampi kuin neljänneksissä, joista eristettiin merkittävä patogeeni. NAGaasi-entsyymiaktiivisuuden keskiarvoksi vähäpätöisille patogeeneille (KNS, koryneformi) saatiin 2,82 ja merkittäville patogeeneille (S. aureus, Str. uberis, Str, agalactiae, Str. dysgalactiae, E.coli) 16,87.

Työntekijän näkökulmat ja oppiminen ulkoistusprojektissa : "Aluks pelkää muutosta ja sit pelkää, ettei mikään muutukaan."

The aim of this master s thesis was to clarify employees views on outsourcing. The main questions of the study were 1) How the employees dealt with the change created by outsourcing and what things they felt important when implementing the change? 2) What kind of organizational questions the employees paid attention to when moving from one organization to another? 3) What kind of management issues the employees brought up in the outsourcing process? and 4) How the employees reflected change while experienced outsourcing? The theoretical foundations of the study were Jack Mezirow s theory of transformational learning and Yrjö Engeström s theory of expansive learning. The management of outsourcing was viewed by John P. Kotter s change management model. Research casted light on transformation and learning on four levels of analysis: on individual, organizational and management levels and on the level of reflection. The target of the study were the outsourced employees, who were moved from a Finnish public corporation to a private ITC organization along with the services they produce. The study material was eleven interviews from the outsourced employees. The study was implemented by fenomenographical theme analysis. The analysis revealed results in all four levels. On the individual level the main results were the importance of systematic and open information, meaning of social and technical integration and the feeling of employee s own control. On the organizational level the move from the public sector to private and all the changes in organizational culture and in fringe benefitswere fundamental. Organizational learning was analyzed with expansive learning theory. Expanding was perceived in four dimensions: temporal dimension, spatial dimension, responsibility-moral dimension and developmental dimension. On the management level the actions of one s closest manager was vital, as was the upper management s clear engagement and a shared view of the necessity of a change. In the data was found employees reflective talking, which was indicating the meaning of the change and which was interpreted from the learning point of view. According to this study, it is possible to identify and analyze reflective talk and that way have information about employees learning in an organizational change. It was prominent to notice how reflection in the process of outsourcing is extremely versatile and extensive.