Managing Project Business Development: an Inter-Organizational and Intra-Organizational Perspective (summary section only)

The driving force behind this study is the gap between the reality of the firms engaged in project business and the available studies covering project management and business process development. Previous studies show that project-based organizations were ‘immature’ in terms of the project-management ‘maturity model’, as few firms were found to be optimizing processes. Even within those, very little attention was paid to combine inter-organizational and intra-organizational perspectives. In this study an effort is made to elaborate some thoughts and views on project management, which interrelate firms’ external and internal activities. In line with the integration, the dissertation uses an approach to the management of project-business interdependencies in the networks of actors, activities and resources. Firstly, the study develops an understanding for inter-organizational perspectives by exploring the complementarities of process activities in the basic development of project business. It presents a framework that is elaborated on the basis of the reciprocal interactions of activities within and outside the organization—thus providing a coherent basis for continuous business-process improvement. In addition, the study presents new tools that can be used to develop project-business processes in each of its functional areas. The research demonstrates how project-business activities can be optimized using the right resources at the right time with the right actors and the right actions. The selected five articles included in this dissertation explain the basic framework for the development of project business. Each paper covers various aspects of inter-organizational and intra-organizational perspectives for project management. The study develops a valuable and procedural model for business-process improvement using the Delphi method that can be used not only in academia but also as a guide for practitioners that takes them through a series of well-defined steps when making informed, consistent and efficient changes to their business processes.

Moral Professionalism in Interaction : Educators' Relational Moral Voices in Urban Schools

The aim of this study was to investigate educators relational moral voices in urban schools and to listen to what they told about moral professionalism and moral practices in challenging urban schools. Their relational moral voices were investigated through the following three questions: 1. What are the educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people? 2. What are the educators moral voices in relation to their work and society? 3. What kind of interaction process lies between the educators moral voices and the urban school context? The research data of this study were gathered in four urban schools in Jyväskylä and Helsinki. The research schools were chosen for this study according to the criteria of the international Socrates Comenius project called Leading Schools Successfully in Challenging Urban Context: Strategies for Improvement. This study formed part of this project, which investigated successful urban schools as challenging learning environments in nine European countries and explored the principals success in leadership in particular. The data, which included 37 narratively constructed interviews with four principals and key informants selected by the principals, were gathered in interviews conducted in 2006. In other words, the data comprised three interviews with each of four principals, and interviews with two teachers, two parents, and two pupils from each school. In addition, the school deacon from one school was also interviewed. Furthermore, part of the data from one of the research schools included a medium report of the school deacon s work. This study combined the case study method, the narrative approach and the critical incident technique as the methodological framework. In addition, all of these methods served as practical tools for both analyzing and reporting the data. The educators' narrations and the results of the study appear in the original articles (Hanhimäki & Tirri 2008; Hanhimäki 2008b; Hanhimäki & Tirri 2009; Hanhimäki 2008a). The educators moral voices in relation to themselves and other people emerged through the main themes of moral leadership, the development and evaluation process, moral sensitivity, gender, values, and student well-being. The educators moral voices in relation to their work and society emerged through the main themes of multiprofessional cooperation, families and parental involvement, and moral school culture. The idea of moral interaction connected moral professionalism and the methodological combination of this study, which together emphasized social interaction and the creation of understanding and meaning in this interaction. The main point of this study was to state that the educators moral voices emerged in the interaction between the educators themselves and the urban school context. In this interaction, the educators moral professionalism was constructed and shaped in relation to themselves, other people, their work and society. The loudest relational moral voices heard through the main themes were those of caring, cooperation, respect, commitment, and professionalism. When the results were compared to the codes of ethics which guided these educators moral professional work, the ethical principles and values of the codes were clearly visible in their moral practices. The loudest message from the educators narration could be summarized in the words caring, respect and cooperation: at its best, there is just a human being and a human being with caring, respect and cooperation between them. The results of this study emphasize the need for practical approaches such as case studies and the narrative approach in teacher education to encourage educators to become moral professionals capable of meeting the needs of people of varied backgrounds. In addition, opportunities for moral, religious and spiritual education should be noticed and utilized in the plural interaction of urban schools when nurturing pupils and creating a moral school culture. Furthermore, multiprofessional cooperation and parents as the school s primary cooperation partner are needed to carry out the shared duty of moral education in urban schools. Keywords: moral professionalism, educator, relational moral voice, interaction, urban school