The Finnish Paper Workers' Union at a crossroads: Labor union representativeness in a changing environment, 1980-2008

This thesis consists of four articles and an introductory section. The main research questions in all the articles refer to the changes in the representativeness of the Finnish Paper Workers' Union. Representativeness stands for the entire entity of external, internal, legal and reputational factors that enable the labor union to represent its members and achieve its goals. This concept is based on an extensive reading of quantitative and qualitative industrial relations literature, which includes works based on Marxist labor-capital relations (such as Hyman's industrial relations studies), and more recent union density studies as well as gender- and ethnic diversity-based 'union revitalization' studies. Müller-Jentsch's German studies of industrial relations have been of particular importance as well as Streeck's industrial unionism and technology studies. The concept of representativeness is an attempt to combine the insights of these diverse strands of literature and bring the scientific discussion of labor unions back to the core of a union's function: representing its members. As such, it can be seen as a theoretical innovation. The concept helps to acknowledge both the heterogeneity of the membership and the totality of a labor union organization. The concept of representativeness aims to move beyond notions of 'power'. External representativeness can be expressed through the position of the labor union in the industrial relations system and the economy. Internal representativeness focuses on the aspects of labor unions that relate to the function of the union as an association with members, such as internal democracy. Legal representativeness lies in the formal legal position of the union – its rights and instruments. This includes collective bargaining legislation, co-decision rules and industrial conflict legislation. Reputational representativeness is related to how the union is seen by other actors and the general public, and can be approximated using data on strike activity. All these aspects of representativeness are path-dependent, and show the results of previous struggles over issues. The concept of representativeness goes beyond notions of labor union power and symbolizes an attempt to bring back the focus of industrial relations studies to the union's basic function of representing its members. The first article shows in detail the industrial conflict of the Finnish paper industry in 2005. The intended focus was the issue of gender in the negotiations over a new collective agreement, but the focal point of the industrial conflict was the issue of outsourcing and how this should be organized. Also, the issue of continuous shifts as an issue of working time was very important. The drawn-out conflict can be seen as a struggle over principles, and under pressure the labor union had to concede ground on the aforementioned issues. The article concludes that in this specific conflict, the union represented its' female members to a lesser extent, because the other issues took such priority. Furthermore, because of the substantive concessions. the union lost some of its internal representativeness, and the stubbornness of the union may have even harmed the reputation of the union. This article also includes an early version of the representativeness framework, through which this conflict is analyzed. The second article discusses wage developments, union density and collective bargaining within the context of representativeness. It is shown that the union has been able to secure substantial benefits for its members, regardless of declining employment. Collective agreements have often been based on centralized incomes policies, but the paper sector has not always joined these. Attention is furthermore paid to the changing competition of the General Assembly, with a surprisingly strong position of the Left Alliance still. In an attempt to replicate analysis of union density measures, an analysis of sectoral union density shows that similar factors as in aggregate data influence this measure, though – due to methodological issues – the results may not be robust. On this issue, it can be said that the method of analysis for aggregate union density is not suitable for sectoral union density analysis. The increasingly conflict-ridden industrial relations predicted have not actually materialized. The article concludes by asking whether the aim of ever-increasing wages is a sustainable one in the light of the pressures of globalization, though wage costs are a relatively small part of total costs. The third article discusses the history and use of outsourcing in the Finnish paper industry. It is shown using Hyman's framework of constituencies that over time, the perspective of the union changed from 'members of the Paper Workers' Union' to a more specific view of who is a core member of the union. Within the context of the industrial unionism that the union claims to practice, this is an important change. The article shows that the union more and more caters for a core group, while auxiliary personnel is less important to the union's identity and constituencies, which means that the union's internal representativeness has decreased. Maintenance workers are an exception; the union and employers have developed a rotating system that increases the efficient allocation of these employees. The core reason of the exceptional status of maintenance personnel is their high level of non-transferable skills. In the end it is debatable whether the compromise on outsourcing solves the challenges facing the industry. The fourth article shows diverging discourses within the union with regard to union-employer partnership for competitiveness improvements and instruments of local union representatives. In the collective agreement of 2008, the provision regulating wage effects of significant changes in the organization or content of work was thoroughly changed, though this mainly reflected decisions by the Labor Court on the pre-2008 version of the provision. This change laid bare the deep rift between the Social Democratic and Left Alliance (ex-Communist) factions of the union. The article argues that through the changed legal meaning of the provision, the union was able to transform concession bargaining into a basis for partnership. The internal discontent about this issue is nonetheless substantial and a threat to the unity of the union, both locally and at the union level. On the basis of the results of the articles, other factors influencing representativeness, such as technology and EU law and an overview of the main changes in the Finnish paper industry, it is concluded that, especially in recent years, the Finnish Paper Workers' Union has lost some of its representativeness. In particular, the loss of the efficiency of strikes is noted, the compromise on outsourcing which may have alienated a substantial part of the union's membership, and the change in the collective agreement of 2008 have caused this decline. In the latter case, the internal disunion on that issue shows the constraints of the union's internal democracy. Furthermore, the failure of the union to join the TEAM industrial union (by democratic means), the internal conflicts and a narrow focus on its own sector may also hurt the union in the future, as the paper industry in Finland is going through a structural change. None of these changes in representativeness would have been so drastic without the considerable pressure of globalization - in particular changing markets, changing technology and a loss of domestic investments to foreign investments, which in the end have benefited the corporations more than the Finnish employees of these corporations. Taken together, the union risks becoming socially irrelevant in time, though it will remain formally very strong on the basis of its institutional setting and financial situation.

Social tagging within task management

Social tagging evolved in response to a need to tag heterogeneous objects, the automated tagging of which is usually not feasible by current technological means. Social tagging can be used for more flexible competence management within organizations. The profiles of employees can be built in the form of groups of tags, as employees tag each other, based on their familiarity of each other’s expertise. This can serve as a replacement for the more traditional competence management approaches, which usually become outdated due to social and organizational hurdles, and obsolete data. These limitations can be overcome by people tagging, as the information revealed by such tags is usually based on most recent employee interaction and knowledge. Task management as part of personal information management aims at the support of users’ individual task handling. This can include collaborating with other individuals, sharing one’s knowledge, both functional and process-related, and distributing documents and web resources. In this context, Task patterns can be used as templates that collect information and experience around tasks associated to it during run time, facilitating agility. The effective collaboration among contributors necessitates the means to find the appropriate individuals to work with on the task, and this can be made possible by using social tagging to describe individual competencies. The goal of this study is to support finding and tagging people within task management, through the effective exploitation of the work/task context. This involves the utilization of knowledge of the workers’ expertise, nature of the task/task pattern and information available from the documents and web resources attached to the task. Vice versa, task management provides an excellent environment for social tagging due to the task context that already provides suitable tags. The study also aims at assisting users of the task management solution with the collaborative construction of light-weight ontology by inferring semantic relations between tags. The thesis project aims at an implementation of people finding & tagging within the java application for task management that consumes web services, which provide the required ontology for the organization.

Marketers’ perception of the implementation of social media marketing: Evidence from large Finnish companies’ marketing campaigns

Social media is a multidimensional marketing and communications channel which can support and enhance a business’ reputation, sales and even longevity. Social media as a business tool encourages an interaction between customers and companies which gives opportunities for a company to better understand their customers, to target them more effectively and to collaborate and create dialogues with them which is not possible through traditional media channels. The aim of a social media strategy is to increase brand awareness, image, loyalty and recognition. The peer networks that social media creates allows a company to disseminate information through loyal customers to new and prospective customers to ultimately increase reach. The purpose of the study is to understand the marketer’s perspective of social media marketing use and how it is currently utilized in marketing and communications activities in Finland. Three companies were interviewed covering fourteen different implementations of social media marketing campaigns. These were then analysed to ascertain the utilization methods and experience gained on recent campaigns in the Finnish market The utilization of social media marketing was analysed using the methods of thematic analysis and inductive and abductive reasoning. Elements and themes were drawn out of the separate interviews to create a framework with which to explore, evaluate and match theories that define social media usage by companies. It became clear from all of the interviews that social media as a tool is most effective when it captures the viewer’s interest through rich and entertaining content. This directed the theoretical research towards Engagement Theory and Content Marketing which look to emphasize the importance of communities, collaboration, interaction, and peer-sharing as the key drivers of a social media marketing campaign.

DEVELOPING SOCIAL CAPITAL WITHIN COMPANIES THROUGH ENTERPRISE 2.0

Whereas external social media has been studied, hyped and integrated into companies´ strategies, an insignificant concentration has been put on internal social solutions, which companies provide increasingly to their personnel. An enterprise focusing solely on the benefits of external social media might end up underestimating the true potential embedded in social business. The purpose of this thesis was to examine how social collaboration can be depicted as a structuration process in an Enterprise 2.0 environment. Furthermore, this thesis sought to reveal the benefits, challenges and possibilities of social business. This thesis focused on researching Enterprise 2.0 at the workplace. The studied Enterprise 2.0 solution was IBM Connections. The qualitative research methodology was an extensive case study. Three companies took part into this thesis and all in all 12 employees were interviewed. Additionally, seven IBM Social Business Experts were interviewed in order to receive a better understanding of the phenomenon. Three research questions were designed to fulfill the purpose of this thesis. The research questions were: 1. How are the dimensions of social capital structured through collaboration? 2. How does agency form in Enterprise 2.0? 3. How does social collaboration emerge as a result of the interplay between agency and dimensions of social capital in an Enterprise 2.0 environment and creates outcomes such as trust, identification and knowledge? The main research findings indicate that social collaboration increases trust, identification and knowledge by giving employees more capabilities to do their work. Consequently, social collaboration increases company performance by making individuals and groups more effective. The support of top management is crucial in making Enterprise 2.0 successful, because it is more a cultural than a technological change. Power agency, the lack of top management support and old established work ways such as email and databases work as barriers to social collaboration.

Situational awareness concept in a multinational collaboration environment : challenges in the information sharing framework

Technological capabilities are built to support different types of collaboration, and this gives the justification to widely observe, how activity environments are influenced by technology. Technology as an enabler can be addressed from different perspectives, other than merely technological. Dynamic, evolving environment is at the same time interesting but also challenging. As a multinational collaboration environment, the maritime surveillance is an good example of time critical and evolving environment, where technological solutions enable new ways of collaboration. Justification for the inspiration to use maritime environment as the baseline for understanding the challenges in creating and maintaining adequate level of situational awareness, derives from the complexity of the collaboration and information sharing environment elements, needed to be taken into account, when analyzing criticalities related to decision making. Situational awareness is an important element supporting decision making, and challenges related to it can also be observed in the maritime environment. This dissertation describes the structures and factors involved in this complex setting, found from the case studies that should be taken into account when trying to understand, how these elements affect the activities. This dissertation focuses on the gray area that is between a life threatening situation and normal everyday activities. From the multinational experimentation series case studies, MNE5 and MNE6 it was possible to observe situations that were not life threatening for the participants themselves, but not also basic every day activities. These case studies provided a unique possibility to see situations, where gaining of situational awareness and decision making are challenged with time critical crisis situations. Unfortunately organizations do not normally take the benefit from the everyday work to prepare themselves for possible emerging crisis situations. This dissertation focuses on creating a conceptual model and a concept that supports organizations – also outside the maritime community – to improve their ability to support gaining of situational awareness from the individual training level, all the way to changes in organizational structures in aiming for better support for decision making from the individual level to the highest decision making level. Quick changes and unpredictability are reality in organizations and organizations do not have the possibility to control all the factors that affect their functioning. Since we cannot be prepared for everything, and predict every crisis, individual activities inside teams and as a part of organizations, need to be supported with guidance, tools and training in order to support acting in challenging situations. In fact the ideology of the conceptual model created, lies especially in the aim of not controlling everything in beforehand, but supporting organizations with concrete procedures to help individuals to react in different, unpredictable situations, instead of focusing on traditional risk prevention and management. Technological capabilities are not automatically solutions for functional challenges; this is why it is justified to broaden the problem area observation from the technological perspective. This dissertation demonstrates that it is possible to support collaboration in a multinational environment with technological solutions, but it requires the recognition of technological limitations and accepting the possible restrictions related to technological innovations. Technology should not be considered value per se, the value of technology should be defined according to the support of activities, including strategic and operational environment evaluation, identification of organizational elements, and taking into account also the social factors and their challenges. Then we are one step closer to providing technological solutions that support the actual activities by taking into account the variables of the activity environment in question. The multidisciplinary view to approach the information sharing and collaboration framework, is derived especially from the complexity of decision making and building of situational awareness, since they are not build or created in vacuity, but in the organizational framework by the people doing it with the technological capabilities, enabled by the organizational structures. Introduced case studies were related to maritime environment, but according to the research results, it is valid to argue, that based on the lessons learned it is possible to create and further develop conceptual model and to create a general concept to support a wider range of organizations in their attempt to gain better level of situational awareness (SA) and to support decision making. To proof the versatile usage of the developed concept, I have introduced the case study findings to the health care environment and reflected the identified elements from the trauma center to the created concept. The main contribution to complete this adventure is the presented situational awareness concept created in the respect to NATO concept structure. This has been done to tackle the challenge of collaboration by focusing on situational awareness in the information sharing context by providing a theoretical ground and understanding, of how these issues should be approached, and how these elements can be generalized and used to support activities in other environments as well. This dissertation research has been a several year evolving process reflecting and affecting presented case studies and this learning experience from the case studies has also affected the goals and research questions of this dissertation. This venture has been written from a retro perspective according to ideology of process modeling and design rationale to present to the reader how this entire journey took place and what where the critical milestones that affected the end result, conceptual model. Support in a challenging information sharing framework can be provided with the right type of combination of tools, procedures and individual effort. This dissertation will provide insights to those with a new approach to war technology for the organizations to gain a better level of awareness and to improve the capabilities in decision making. This dissertation will present, from the war technology starting point, a new approach and possibility for the organizations to create a better level of awareness and support for decision making with the right combination of tools, procedures and individual effort.

Storytelling as a branding tool in social media

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on kuvailla tarinankerrontaa brändin rakennuksen välineenä, ja selvittää mitkä ovat tarinankerronnan erityispiirteet sosiaalisessa mediassa. Aikaisempien teorioiden ja julkaisujen avulla kootaan viitekehys joka osoittaa käsitteiden vaikutukset toisiinsa. Tutkimus osoittaa tarinankerronnan vaikuttavan vahvistavasti kaikkiin brändipääoman ulottuvuuksiin, lähinnä tunteita herättävien ja muistettavuutta lisäävien ominaisuuksiensa ansiosta. Empiirisessä osiossa selvitetään laadullisen sisällönanalyysin keinoin kuinka yleistä brändien tarinankerronta tällä hetkellä on, ja kuvaillaan millaisia tarinoita yritykset kertovat. Aineisto koostuu sadan suosituimman brändin Facebookissa jakamista videomuotoisista tarinoista. Tutkimus osoitti, että brändien tarinankerronta sosiaalisessa mediassa on toistaiseksi melko vähäistä. Tarinat voidaan luokitella kirjallisuudesta tuttujen tarinatyyppien mukaisesti. Suurin osa brändien esittämistä tarinoista pyrkii synnyttämään yleisössä ihailun ja nostalgian tunteita, mutta useat tarinat myös sisältävät humoristisia piirteitä.

Social networks and networking facilitating internationalization: Experiences of two Finnish fashion companies

Background: Fashion is a dynamic and creative industry where larger retailers are enjoying international success. Small businesses however are struggling in the face of international expansion, as they lack the necessary resources and managerial know-how. The Finnish fashion industry has neither been able to develop the industry environment to support small and micro firms nor has Finland relevant finance or public domains, such as, seen in other Nordic countries. Networking has been recognized to facilitate organizational growth and international expansion in industries such as manufacturing and high technology. It has enabled smaller companies to gain resources, knowledge and experiences otherwise unattainable. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore how networking has been utilized in the Finnish fashion industry. Particularly social relationships and networks are examined, as they emphasize the importance of individuals. Exploration on the past actions should also provide insight how networks and networking could be utilized and developed in the future. Main findings: It was discovered that the Finnish fashion industry (social) network is rather dense. This was mainly due to the small size of the Finnish market. In the early years of the establishment of the company, close contacts seemed to be utilized. As a company expands and extends its business, the relationships tended to move towards more utilitarian in nature. However, in some cases, the long term relationships had also affectionate features, such as trust and commitment. International networking was found to have positive impact on business opportunities. Participation to events, such as trade shows, was perceived as one of the best ways to meet new international contacts and to develop ones network. Active networking in the Finnish market, however, created both domestic and international opportunities. Furthermore, cooperation and open communication were discovered to facilitate innovation and projects. The public sector seemed to lack the interest in supporting the fashion industry according to the interviewees. The major issues for the fashion industry still concerned, among others, funding, administrative guidance and public support for developing the industry as a whole.

Consumer online communication of corporate social responsibility in the sin industry context: Cases in the global online gambling industry.

So-called sin industries are often related to harmfulness, unethical business, and unproductiveness. Nowadays, the alcohol, gambling, and tobacco industries are most often considered to be part of sin industries, which is also the context of this study. However, the definition of a sin industry is always related to time and culture. Despite the controversies of sin industries, there are studies that have shown that corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement is even more important for sin industries than for normal industries and that CSR has a positive effect on firm value in sin industries. With CSR this study refers to an ideology where company takes mostly voluntary actions towards various groups of stakeholders and the environment. In other words, the company goes beyond the legal norms and regulations. In particular, the purpose of this thesis is to find out how companies, operating in the online gambling industry, communicate about their CSR actions to consumers at their web pages. The online environment is essential for this study as online gambling environment is a source of many controversies in comparison to the traditional gambling halls and casinos. These include, for example, greater accessibility, anonymity, and availability of the service. This study uses qualitative textual analysis as its approach, more precisely the discourse analysis. In addition, as this study focuses on large international companies and their actions, also case study approach will be presented. The cases studied are Mybet, Unibet, and Bwin.Party. In order to study the subject, elements from discourse analysis are combined with insights of essential CSR theories, and the specific characteristics of the online gambling industry. As a background for the framework, this study uses the framework of Du & Vieira (2012). After analyzing the discourses of CSR communication and CSR practices, it seems that all of the case companies still do not use all the potential that the online environment provides in terms of CSR or stakeholder communication. There are large differences between different communication tools used at different web pages (gambling pages vs. corporation pages) and between the firms’ CSR profiles. Moreover, there are large differences in the CSR practices used in the web pages of the case companies. The findings of this study are partially alarming as the case companies represent the largest companies in the industry. There are major varieties between the companies’ CSR communication and clear shortcomings in some parts of the online communication. Moreover, the trust of the consumer was broken in some places. If this is the standard that the biggest players in the industry have set with regards to CSR communication, it is probable that the smaller players are performing even worse. Moreover, the regulators are most likely concentrating on the larger companies, so the smaller companies might have fewer incentives and pressure to perform according to the regulations or exceeding the legislation. The conclusions of this thesis provide insights to managers, regulators, and scholars. Suggestions for future studies are provided as well.

Measurement of social value creation with non-financial measures

This research examines the concept of social entrepreneurship which is a fairly new business model. In the field of business it has become increasingly popular in recent years. The growing awareness of the environment and concrete examples of impact created by social entrepreneurship have encouraged entrepreneurs to address social problems. Society’s failures are tried to redress as a result of business activities. The purpose of doing business is necessarily no longer generating just profits but business is run in order to make a social change with the profit gained from the operations. Successful social entrepreneurship requires a specific nature, constant creativity and strong desire to make a social change. It requires constant balancing between two major objectives: both financial and non-financial issues need to be considered, but not at the expense of another. While aiming at the social purpose, the business needs to be run in highly competitive markets. Therefore, both factors need equally be integrated into an organization as they are complementary, not exclusionary. Business does not exist without society and society cannot go forward without business. Social entrepreneurship, its value creation, measurement tools and reporting practices are under discussion in this research. An extensive theoretical basis is covered and used to support the findings coming out of the researched case enterprises. The most attention is focused on the concept of Social Return on Investment. The case enterprises are analyzed through the SROI process. Social enterprises are mostly small or medium sized. Naturally this sets some limitations in implementing measurement tools. The question of resources requires the most attention and therefore sets the biggest constraints. However, the size of the company does not determine all – the nature of business and the type of social purpose need to be considered always. The mission may be so concrete and transparent that in all cases any kind of measurement would be useless. Implementing measurement tools may be of great benefit – or a huge financial burden. Thus, the very first thing to carefully consider is the possible need of measuring value creation.

Modularity in Health and Social Services: Perspectives on Organization and Management

Organizations that provide health and social services operate in a complex and constantly changing environment. Changes occur, for example, in ageing, technology and biotechnology, and customers’ expectations, as well as the global economic situation. Organizations typically aim to adapt the changes by introducing new organizational structures and managerial practices, such as process and lean management. Only recently has there been an interest in evaluating whether organizations providing health and social services could apply modularity in order to respond to some of the changes. The concept of modularity originates from manufacturing, but is applied in many other disciplines, such as information technology and logistics. However, thus far, the literature concerning modularity in health and social services is scarce. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to increase understanding concerning modularity and the possibilities to apply modularity in the health and social services context. In addition, the purpose is to shed light on the viewpoints that are worth taking into account when considering the application of modularity in the health and social services context. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the way in which the modular structures are applied in the health and social services context and to analyze what advantages and possible barriers, as well as managerial concerns, might occur if modularity is applied in the health and social services context. The thesis is conducted by using multiple methods in order to provide a broad aspect to the topic. A systematic literature review provided solid ground for pre-understanding the topic and supported the formulation of the research questions. Theoretical reasoning provided a general overview of the special characteristics of the health and social services context and their effect on application of modularity. Empirical studies concentrated on managerial concerns of modularity particularly from the perspective of health and social services for the elderly. Results of the thesis reveal that structures in products, services, processes, and organizations are rather modular in health and social services. They can be decomposed in small independent units, while the challenges seem to occur especially in the compatibility of the services. It seems that health and social services managers have recognized this problem and they are increasingly paying attention to this challenge in order to enhance the flexible compatibility of services. Advantages and possible barriers of modularity are explored in this thesis, and from the theoretical perspective it could be argued that modularity seems to be beneficial in the context of health and social services. In fact, it has the potential to alleviate several of the challenges that the health and social services context is confronting. For example, modular structures could support organizations in their challenging task to respond to customers’ increasing demand for heterogeneous services. However, special characteristics of the health and social services context create barriers and provide significant challenges in application of modularity. For example, asymmetry of information, negative externalities, uncertainty of demand, and rigid regulation prevent managers from extensively drawing benefits from modularity. Results also reveal that modularity has managerial implications in health and social service. Modularity has the potential to promote and support new service development and outsourcing. Results also provide insights into network management and increases managerial understanding of different network management strategies. Standardization in health and social services is extensive due to legislation and recommendations. Modularity provides alternative paths to take an advantage of standardization while still ensuring the quality of the services. Based on this thesis, it can be concluded, both from a theoretical perspective and from empirical results concerning modularity in health and social services, that modularity might fit well and be beneficial. However, the special characteristics of the health and social services context prevent some of the benefits of modularity and complicate its application. This thesis contributes to the academic literature on the organization and management of health and social services by describing modularity as an alternative way for organizing and managing health and social services. In addition, it contributes to the literature of modularity by exploring the applicability of modularity in the context of health and social services. It also provides practical contribution to health and social services managers by evaluating the pros and cons of modularity when applied to health and social services.

Corporate green image communication through public disclosures and social media

Today, companies need to mind the environment in all their actions. Policies, regulations and growing pressure from environmentally conscious public are driving corporations to invest increasingly in their green images. Communication plays a key role in forming and maintaining that image. This thesis explores how six selected companies communicate about their environmental efforts and activities, and its linkage to their green images, in annual and sustainability reports and in Facebook. The companies come from the U.S. and Europe and operate in three different industries: ICT, oil and gas, and aerospace & defense. Qualitative and quantitative content analyses are conducted to examine 36 reports and 121 Facebook messages, collected from the period of 2010-2014, and from 2005 for comparison. The results show that although the quality and quantity of environmental disclosure is increasing, there is still room for improvement. Overall, disclosure in the ICT sector is on the highest level. The European companies disclose more and on average have stronger green images than the American ones. Emissions and ways to reduce them is by far the most covered topic in both continents and in all three industry sectors. The messages in Facebook are closer to advertising, and overall the platform is utilized surprisingly little.