Organisaation uudistumiskyvyn kehittäminen, Case: Stora Enso

Tutkielman tavoitteena oli selvittää case-organisaatio Stora Enson Anjalan paperitehtaan uudistumiskyky, toiminnan strategianmukaisuus sekä vahvuudet ja kehitettävät osa-alueetuudistumiskyvyssä. Tutkielmassa käytettiin kvantitatiivista tutkimusotetta. Aineisto kerättiin kahdella eri mittarilla: KM-Factor¿ ¿ uudistumiskyvyn mittarilla ja organisaation muutoskyvyn mittarilla. KM-Factor¿ ¿mittarin avulla kerättiin tietoa organisaation suhteiden, tiedonkulun, osaamisen ja johtamisen nyky- ja tavoitetilasta erilaisissa tietoympäristöissä. Muutoskyvyn mittarin avulla kerättiin tietoa organisaation uudistumiskyvystä kuuden sitä kuvaavan ominaisuuden, strategisen kyvykkyyden, johtajuuden, ajan hyödyntämisen, verkostoituneisuuden, tiedon johtamisen ja oppimissuuntautuneisuuden perusteella. Mittaukset suoritettiin helmikuussa 2006 ja niiden kohteena oli Stora Enson Anjalan paperitehtaan koko henkilöstö. Kahden uudistumiskyvyn mittarin tulokset analysoitiin ja niitä vertailtiin keskenään. Tällä tavalla pyrittiinmyös lisäämään tutkimuksen validiteettia. Mittaustulokset purettiin sanalliseenmuotoon ja niistä raportoitiin case-organisaatiolle. Mittausten mukaan case-organisaation uudistumiskyky oli hieman keskitasoa heikompi. Toiminnan vahvuuksia olivat yksimielisyys muutostarpeista ja tilanneherkkyys. Merkittävimmät toiminnan heikkoudet löytyivät nykyisestä toimintatavasta, joka ei ollut strategian mukainen, ja innovaatiopotentiaalista, joka oli hyvin alhainen. Kehittämisen tarpeita löytyi sekä johdon että henkilöstön suhteiden ja yhteistyön osalta. Koko organisaation tulisi lisätä yhteistyötä ulkopuolisten tahojen ja sidosryhmien kanssa. Organisaatiossa tulisi miettiä, miten strategia saataisiin selkeästi viestittyä myös johtoa alemmille tasoille. Johto painotti liikaa autoritääristä johtamista, kun taas henkilöstöltä odotettaisiin enemmän vastuunottoa toiminnastaan. Organisaatiossa tulisi saada nykyistä avoimemmin ja itsenäisemmin ilmaista omia näkemyksiään, toimia aloitteellisesti ja luoda uusia ideoita toiminnan kehittämiseksi. Innovatiivisuudesta ja parannusehdotuksista tulisi myös palkita paremmin.

Perusopetuksen koulun uudistumiskyvyn edistäminen osaamisen johtamisen menetelmin

Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tavoitteena oli tarkastella miten perusopetuksen koulun uudistumiskyvyn eri osa-alueita edistetään osaamisen johtamisen menetelmillä Espoon suomenkielisen tulosyksikön kouluissa. Tutkimus toteutettiin laadullisena tapaustutkimuksena. Tutkimuksen teoriaosuus koostui osaamisen johtamisen ja organisaation uudistumiskyvyn teorioista. Teoriaosuuden perusteella laadittiin teemahaastattelun teemarunko ja tarkentavat yksityiskohtaisemmat apukysymykset. Haastatteluissa pyrittiin löytämään osaamisen johtamisen käytäntöjä ja välineitä, joiden avulla perusopetuksen koulujen uudistumiskykyä voitaisiin edistää. Otokseen kuului 11 koulua. Tutkimuksen tulosten perusteella havaittiin, että perusopetuksen kouluissa uudistumiskyvyn osa-alueiden vuorovaikutus, oppimismyönteisyys ja johtaminen edistämiseksi kouluilla oli käytössä monia erilaisia osaamisen johtamisen menetelmiä. Tutkimuksen tärkein tulos oli, että kouluissa panostettiin paljon luottamuksellisen ja avoimen ilmapiirin luomiseen sekä yhdessä tekemiseen.

The role of knowledge management and renewal in building innovation performance

Tämän työn tavoitteena oli selvittää tietojohtamisen eri käytäntöjen vaikutusta oppimiseen, uudistumiseen sekä yrityksen innovaatiokyvykkyyteen. Työssä on keskitytty erityisesti sellaisiin tietojohtamisen käytäntöihin, jotka edistävät oppimista ja uusiutumista yrityksissä. Työssä on käytetty tilastollisia menetelmiä, muun muassa faktorianalyysia, korrelaatioanalyysia sekä regressiota, analysoitaessa 259 suomalaisesta yrityksestä kerättyä kyselydataa niiden tietojohtamisen käytöntöihin ja aineettomaan pääomaan liittyen. Analyysi osoittaa, että useat tietojohtamisen käytännöt vaikuttavat positiivisesti yrityksen uudistumiseen ja sitä kautta innovaatiokyvykkyyteen. Henkilöstön kouluttaminen sekä parhaiden käytäntöjen kerääminen ja soveltaminen yrityksessä ovat positiivisesti yhteydessä innovaatiokyvykkyyteen. Henkilöstön kouluttamisella on merkittävin suora vaikutus innovaatiokyvykkyyteen ja tässä työssä on esitetty, että koulutuksen tarjoamisen suurin vaikutus on oppimismyönteisen kulttuurin kehittyminen yrityksiin sen sijaan, että koulutuksella pyrittäisiin vain parantamaan tehtäväkenttään liittyviä taitoja ja tietoja. Henkilöstön kouluttaminen, parhaat käytännöt sekä sosialisaatiossa tapahtuva tiedon vaihto ja suhteiden solmiminen vaikuttavat positiivisesti uudistumispääomaan. Työn tulosten perusteella uudistumispääomalla on merkittävä rooli innovaatioiden syntymisessä yrityksissä. Uudistumispääoma medioi koulutuksen, parhaiden käytäntöjen ja mahdollisesti myös sosialisaation vaikutusta innovaatiokyvykkyyteen ja on näin merkittävä osa innovaatioiden syntyä yrityksissä. Innovaatiokyvykkyyden osatekijöiden ymmärtäminen voi auttaa johtajia ja esimiehiä keskittämään huomionsa tiettyihin tietojohtamisen käytäntöihin edistääkseen innovaatioiden syntymistä yrityksessä sen sijaan, että he pyrkisivät vain vaikuttamaan innovaatioprosessiin.

Organizational learning from customer interaction

In the fierce competition of today‟s business world an organization‟s capacity to learn maybe its only competitive advantage. This research aims at increasing the understanding on how organizational learning from the customer happens in technology companies. In doing so it provides a synthesized definition of organizational learning and investigates processes of organizational learning within technology companies. A qualitative research method and in-depth interviews with different sized high technology companies, as applied here, enables in-depth study of the learning processes. Research contributes to the understanding of what type of knowledge firms acquire, how new knowledge is transferred and used in a learning firm‟s routines and processes. Research findings show that SMEs and large size companies also, depending on their position in the software value chain, consider different knowledge types as most important and that they use different learning methods to acquire knowledge from their customers.

Emancipating and developing learning activity: Systemic intervention and re-instrumentation in higher education.

The central theme of this thesis is the emancipation and further development of learning activity in higher education in the context of the ongoing digital transformation of our societies. It was developed in response to the highly problematic mainstream approach to digital re-instrumentation of teaching and studying practises in contemporary higher education. The mainstream approach is largely based on centralisation, standardisation, commoditisation, and commercialisation, while re-producing the general patterns of control, responsibility, and dependence that are characteristic for activity systems of schooling. Whereas much of educational research and development focuses on the optimisation and fine-tuning of schooling, the overall inquiry that is underlying this thesis has been carried out from an explicitly critical position and within a framework of action science. It thus conceptualises learning activity in higher education not only as an object of inquiry but also as an object to engage with and to intervene into from a perspective of intentional change. The knowledge-constituting interest of this type of inquiry can be tentatively described as a combination of heuristic-instrumental (guidelines for contextualised action and intervention), practical-phronetic (deliberation of value-rational aspects of means and ends), and developmental-emancipatory (deliberation of issues of power, self-determination, and growth) aspects. Its goal is the production of orientation knowledge for educational practise. The thesis provides an analysis, argumentation, and normative claim on why the development of learning activity should be turned into an object of individual|collective inquiry and intentional change in higher education, and why the current state of affairs in higher education actually impedes such a development. It argues for a decisive shift of attention to the intentional emancipation and further development of learning activity as an important cultural instrument for human (self-)production within the digital transformation. The thesis also attempts an in-depth exploration of what type of methodological rationale can actually be applied to an object of inquiry (developing learning activity) that is at the same time conceptualised as an object of intentional change within the ongoing digital transformation. The result of this retrospective reflection is the formulation of “optimally incomplete” guidelines for educational R&D practise that shares the practicalphronetic (value related) and developmental-emancipatory (power related) orientations that had been driving the overall inquiry. In addition, the thesis formulates the instrumental-heuristic knowledge claim that the conceptual instruments that were adapted and validated in the context of a series of intervention studies provide means to effectively intervene into existing practise in higher education to support the necessary development of (increasingly emancipated) networked learning activity. It suggests that digital networked instruments (tools and services) generally should be considered and treated as transient elements within critical systemic intervention research in higher education. It further argues for the predominant use of loosely-coupled, digital networked instruments that allow for individual|collective ownership, control, (co-)production, and re-use in other contexts and for other purposes. Since the range of digital instrumentation options is continuously expanding and currently shows no signs of an imminent slow-down or consolidation, individual and collective exploration and experimentation of this realm needs to be systematically incorporated into higher education practise.

Adult education policy in the European Union during the Lisbon decade : the shift to vocational adult learning and work skills matching

This doctoral dissertation investigates the adult education policy of the European Union (EU) in the framework of the Lisbon agenda 2000–2010, with a particular focus on the changes of policy orientation that occurred during this reference decade. The year 2006 can be considered, in fact, a turning point for the EU policy-making in the adult learning sector: a radical shift from a wide--ranging and comprehensive conception of educating adults towards a vocationally oriented understanding of this field and policy area has been observed, in particular in the second half of the so--called ‘Lisbon decade’. In this light, one of the principal objectives of the mainstream policy set by the Lisbon Strategy, that of fostering all forms of participation of adults in lifelong learning paths, appears to have muted its political background and vision in a very short period of time, reflecting an underlying polarisation and progressive transformation of European policy orientations. Hence, by means of content analysis and process tracing, it is shown that the new target of the EU adult education policy, in this framework, has shifted from citizens to workers, and the competence development model, borrowed from the corporate sector, has been established as the reference for the new policy road maps. This study draws on the theory of governance architectures and applies a post-ontological perspective to discuss whether the above trends are intrinsically due to the nature of the Lisbon Strategy, which encompasses education policies, and to what extent supranational actors and phenomena such as globalisation influence the European governance and decision--making. Moreover, it is shown that the way in which the EU is shaping the upgrading of skills and competences of adult learners is modeled around the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’, thus according a great deal of importance to the ‘new skills for new jobs’ and perhaps not enough to life skills in its broader sense which include, for example, social and civic competences: these are actually often promoted but rarely implemented in depth in the EU policy documents. In this framework, it is conveyed how different EU policy areas are intertwined and interrelated with global phenomena, and it is emphasised how far the building of the EU education systems should play a crucial role in the formation of critical thinking, civic competences and skills for a sustainable democratic citizenship, from which a truly cohesive and inclusive society fundamentally depend, and a model of environmental and cosmopolitan adult education is proposed in order to address the challenges of the new millennium. In conclusion, an appraisal of the EU’s public policy, along with some personal thoughts on how progress might be pursued and actualised, is outlined.

A multimethod examination of contributors to successful on-the-job learning for vocational students

Rapid changes in working life and competence requirements of different professions have increased interest in workplace learning. It is considered an effective way to learn and update professional skills by performing daily tasks in an authentic environment. Especially, ensuring a supply of skilled future workers is a crucial issue for firms facing tight competition and a shortage of competent employees due to the retirement of current professionals. In order to develop and make the most of workplace learning, it is important to focus on workplace learning environments and the individual characteristics of those participating in workplace learning. The literature has suggested various factors that influence adults' and professionals’ workplace learning of profession-related skills, but lacks empirical studies on contextual and individual-related factors that positively affect students' workplace learning. Workers with vocational education form a large group in modern firms. Therefore, elements of vocational students’ successful workplace learning during their studies, before starting their career paths, need to be examined. To fill this gap in the literature, this dissertation examines contributors to vocational students’ workplace learning in Finland, where students’ workplace learning is included in the vocational education and training system. The study is divided into two parts: the introduction, comprised of the overview of the relevant literature and the conclusion of the entire study, and five separate articles. Three of the articles utilize quantitative methods and two use qualitative methods to examine factors that contribute to vocational students’ workplace learning. The results show that, from the students’ perspective, attitudinal, motivational, and organizationrelated factors enhance the student’s development of professionalism during the on-the-job learning period. Specifically, the organization-related factors such as innovative climate, guidance, and interactions with seniors have a strong positive impact on the students’ perceived development of professional skills because, for example, the seniors’ guidance and provision of new viewpoints for the tasks helps the vocational students to gain autonomy at work performance. A multilevel analysis shows that of those factors enhancing workplace learning from the student perspective, innovative climate, knowledge transfer accuracy, and the students’ performance orientation were significantly related to the workplace instructors’ assessment regarding the students’ professional performance. Furthermore, support from senior colleagues and the students’ self-efficacy were both significantly associated with the formal grades measuring how well the students managed to learn necessary professional skills. In addition, the results suggest that the students’ on-the-job learning can be divided into three main phases, of which two require efforts from both the student and the on-the-job learning organization. The first phase includes the student’s application of basic professional skills, demonstration of potential in performing daily tasks, and orientation provided by the organization at the beginning of the on-the-job learning period. In the second phase, the student actively develops profession-related skills by performing daily tasks, thus learning a fluent working style while observing the seniors’ performance. The organization offers relevant tasks and follows the student’s development. The third level indicates a student who has reached the professional level described as a full occupation. The results suggest that constructing the vocational students’ successful on-the-job learning period requires feedback from seniors, opportunities to learn to manage entire work processes, self-efficacy on the part of the students, proactive behavior, and initiative in learning. The study contributes to research on workplace learning in three ways: firstly, it identifies the key individual- and organization-based factors that influence the vocational students’ successful on-the-job learning from their perspective and examines mutual relationships between these factors. Second, the study provides knowledge of how the factors related to the students’ view of successful workplace learning are associated with the workplace instructors’ perspective and the formal grades. Third, the present study finds elements needed to construct a successful on-the-job learning for the students.

University students’ regulation of learning and text processing – examples from medical and teacher education

The general aim of the thesis was to study university students’ learning from the perspective of regulation of learning and text processing. The data were collected from the two academic disciplines of medical and teacher education, which share the features of highly scheduled study, a multidisciplinary character, a complex relationship between theory and practice and a professional nature. Contemporary information society poses new challenges for learning, as it is not possible to learn all the information needed in a profession during a study programme. Therefore, it is increasingly important to learn how to think and learn independently, how to recognise gaps in and update one’s knowledge and how to deal with the huge amount of constantly changing information. In other words, it is critical to regulate one’s learning and to process text effectively. The thesis comprises five sub-studies that employed cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental designs and multiple methods, from surveys to eye tracking. Study I examined the connections between students’ study orientations and the ways they regulate their learning. In total, 410 second-, fourth- and sixth-year medical students from two Finnish medical schools participated in the study by completing a questionnaire measuring both general study orientations and regulation strategies. The students were generally deeply oriented towards their studies. However, they regulated their studying externally. Several interesting and theoretically reasonable connections between the variables were found. For instance, self-regulation was positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation and was negatively correlated with non-commitment. However, external regulation was likewise positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation but also with surface orientation and systematic orientation. It is argued that external regulation might function as an effective coping strategy in the cognitively loaded medical curriculum. Study II focused on medical students’ regulation of learning and their conceptions of the learning environment in an innovative medical course where traditional lectures were combined wth problem-based learning (PBL) group work. First-year medical and dental students (N = 153) completed a questionnaire assessing their regulation strategies of learning and views about the PBL group work. The results indicated that external regulation and self-regulation of the learning content were the most typical regulation strategies among the participants. In line with previous studies, self-regulation wasconnected with study success. Strictly organised PBL sessions were not considered as useful as lectures, although the students’ views of the teacher/tutor and the group were mainly positive. Therefore, developers of teaching methods are challenged to think of new solutions that facilitate reflection of one’s learning and that improve the development of self-regulation. In Study III, a person-centred approach to studying regulation strategies was employed, in contrast to the traditional variable-centred approach used in Study I and Study II. The aim of Study III was to identify different regulation strategy profiles among medical students (N = 162) across time and to examine to what extent these profiles predict study success in preclinical studies. Four regulation strategy profiles were identified, and connections with study success were found. Students with the lowest self-regulation and with an increasing lack of regulation performed worse than the other groups. As the person-centred approach enables us to individualise students with diverse regulation patterns, it could be used in supporting student learning and in facilitating the early diagnosis of learning difficulties. In Study IV, 91 student teachers participated in a pre-test/post-test design where they answered open-ended questions about a complex science concept both before and after reading either a traditional, expository science text or a refutational text that prompted the reader to change his/her beliefs according to scientific beliefs about the phenomenon. The student teachers completed a questionnaire concerning their regulation and processing strategies. The results showed that the students’ understanding improved after text reading intervention and that refutational text promoted understanding better than the traditional text. Additionally, regulation and processing strategies were found to be connected with understanding the science phenomenon. A weak trend showed that weaker learners would benefit more from the refutational text. It seems that learners with effective learning strategies are able to pick out the relevant content regardless of the text type, whereas weaker learners might benefit from refutational parts that contrast the most typical misconceptions with scientific views. The purpose of Study V was to use eye tracking to determine how third-year medical studets (n = 39) and internal medicine residents (n = 13) read and solve patient case texts. The results revealed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts; compared to the students, the residents were more accurate in their diagnoses and processed the texts significantly faster and with a lower number of fixations. Different reading patterns were also found. The observed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts could be used in medical education to model expert reasoning and to teach how a good medical text should be constructed. The main findings of the thesis indicate that even among very selected student populations, such as high-achieving medical students or student teachers, there seems to be a lot of variation in regulation strategies of learning and text processing. As these learning strategies are related to successful studying, students enter educational programmes with rather different chances of managing and achieving success. Further, the ways of engaging in learning seldom centre on a single strategy or approach; rather, students seem to combine several strategies to a certain degree. Sometimes, it can be a matter of perspective of which way of learning can be considered best; therefore, the reality of studying in higher education is often more complicated than the simplistic view of self-regulation as a good quality and external regulation as a harmful quality. The beginning of university studies may be stressful for many, as the gap between high school and university studies is huge and those strategies that were adequate during high school might not work as well in higher education. Therefore, it is important to map students’ learning strategies and to encourage them to engage in using high-quality learning strategies from the beginning. Instead of separate courses on learning skills, the integration of these skills into course contents should be considered. Furthermore, learning complex scientific phenomena could be facilitated by paying attention to high-quality learning materials and texts and other support from the learning environment also in the university. Eye tracking seems to have great potential in evaluating performance and growing diagnostic expertise in text processing, although more research using texts as stimulus is needed. Both medical and teacher education programmes and the professions themselves are challenging in terms of their multidisciplinary nature and increasing amounts of information and therefore require good lifelong learning skills during the study period and later in work life.

Clinical Learning Environment and Supervision. Development and Validation of the CLES Evaluation Scale

The purpose of the study is: (1) to describe how nursing students' experienced their clinical learning environment and the supervision given by staff nurses working in hospital settings; and (2) to develop and test an evaluation scale of Clinical Learning Environment and Supervision (CLES). The study has been carried out in different phases. The pilot study (n=163) explored the association between the characteristics of a ward and its evaluation as a learning environment by students. The second version of research instrument (which was developed by the results of this pilot study) were tested by an expert panel (n=9 nurse teachers) and test-retest group formed by student nurses (n=38). After this evaluative phase, the CLES was formed as the basic research instrument for this study and it was tested with the Finnish main sample (n=416). In this phase, a concurrent validity instrument (Dunn & Burnett 1995) was used to confirm the validation process of CLES. The international comparative study was made by comparing the Finnish main sample with a British sample (n=142). The international comparative study was necessary for two reasons. In the instrument developing process, there is a need to test the new instrument in some other nursing culture. Other reason for comparative international study is the reflecting the impact of open employment markets in the European Union (EU) on the need to evaluate and to integrate EU health care educational systems. The results showed that the individualised supervision system is the most used supervision model and the supervisory relationship with personal mentor is the most meaningful single element of supervision evaluated by nursing students. The ward atmosphere and the management style of ward manager are the most important environmental factors of the clinical ward. The study integrates two theoretical elements - learning environment and supervision - in developing a preliminary theoretical model. The comparative international study showed that, Finnish students were more satisfied and evaluated their clinical placements and supervision with higher scores than students in the United Kingdom (UK). The difference between groups was statistical highly significant (p= 0.000). In the UK, clinical placements were longer but students met their nurse teachers less frequently than students in Finland. Arrangements for supervision were similar. This research process has produced the evaluation scale (CLES), which can be used in research and quality assessments of clinical learning environment and supervision in Finland and in the UK. CLES consists of 27 items and it is sub-divided into five sub-dimensions. Cronbach's alpha coefficient varied from high 0.94 to marginal 0.73. CLES is a compact evaluation scale and user-friendliness makes it suitable for continuing evaluation.