Järjestöjohtaminen: Omistajuuden tunteita ja kulttuuria

Tässä tutkimuksessa käsitellään psykologisen omistajuuden ja organisaatiokulttuurin yhteisvaikutuksia johtamiskäyttäytymiseen järjestöissä. Samalla käydään läpi järjestöjohtamisen haasteita ja vaikutuksia organisaation kulttuurin kehittymiseen. Psykologisen omistajuuden tunteita on esitetty voivan kehittyä mm. yrittäjillä omaa yritystä kohtaan. Nyt selvitettiin, esiintyykö vastaava ilmiö myös järjestöissä, joiden laillinen omistaminen on mahdotonta. Järjestöt ovat sosiaalisia organisaatioita, joihin liittyessään yksilöt haluavat toteuttaa yhteisöllisyyden tarpeitaan. Sosiaalisesta luonteestaan johtuen näissä organisaatioissa kulttuurilla on voimakas vaikutus jäsenten toimintaan ja toiminnanvapauteen mukaan lukien järjestön johtajan. Tutkimuksesta käy lisäksi ilmi, miten omistajuuden tunteet järjestöissä ilmenevät, minkälainen hallitustyöskentely johtajaa tukee parhaiten ja miten johtajat pyrkivät järjestönsä kulttuuria muokkaamaan.

Weathering crises on social media – Theory and practices from social media active organizations operating in Finland

Thesis compiles findings from previous research to produce guidelines on addressing crises on social media. These guidelines extracted from previous research are compared qualitatively with empirical evidence from 12 organizations by examining whether organizations apply practices recommended in previous research. Much of guidelines gain support from practitioners with few exceptions. Findings stemming from theory and practice combine to shed light on how controversies are born on social media, how crises can be prevented on social media and how organizations may manage crisis situations on social media. The majority of the resulting guidelines focus on how to address negative information and communicate during a crisis but other means of crisis management are also presented. Previous research had voiced that the field of public relations was very fractured, crisis management was lacking qualitative research and provided very little information on what organizations should do before a crisis. Thesis collects a comprehensive amount of previous research from various fields of PR in an effort to unite findings and guidelines, gathers and analyzes empirical data in a qualitative manner and includes a pre-crisis paradigm. One of the challenges in the field of crisis management still remains the absence of universally agreed definition of a crisis and the lack of means to quantify and compare the magnitude of crises.

Development of corporate social responsibility in Finnish forest industry

The main objective of this thesis was to map the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Finnish forest industry. The aim was to describe the development and find factors that explain the development. Another objective was to understand the influence of different stakeholders on the development as well as examine the development of CSR reporting. This qualitative case study used thematic interviews as the research method. The research data were collected by conducting 11 interviews among the case company representatives and stakeholders. Based on the research results, no single factor in the background of the phenomenon could be showed. Instead, CSR has developed in stages through its different dimensions. The main drivers of CSR turned out to be environmental organizations, customers and local communities. It can be concluded that the forest industry has taken CSR seriously for a long time, which has benefited the forest companies in many ways.

Animal Lovers, Bridge-Builders, and Supervising Watchdogs: Framing and Civil Society Construction by Japanese Pro-Animal Organizations in the Kansai and Tokyo Areas

Unlike their counterparts in Europe and America, the citizen organizations acting for the well-being of animals in Japan have not received scholarly attention. In this research, I explore the activities of twelve Japanese pro-animal organizations in Tokyo and Kansai area from the perspective of social movement and civil society studies. The concept of a ‘pro-animal organization’ is used to refer generally to the collectives promoting animal well-being. By using the collective action frame analysis and the three core framing tasks – diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational – as the primarily analytical tools, I explore the grievances, tactics, motivational means, constructions of agency and identity as well as framing of civil society articulated in the newsletters and the interviews of the twelve organizations I interviewed in Japan in 2010. As the frame construction is always done in relation to the social and political context, I study how the organizations construct their roles as civil society actors in relation to other actors, such as the state, and the idea of citizen activism. The deficiencies in the animal welfare law and lack of knowledge among the public are identified as the main grievances. The primary tactic to overcome these problems was to educate and inform the citizens and authorities, because most organizations lack the channels to influence politically. The audiences were mostly portrayed as either ignorant bystanders or potential adherents. In order to motivate people to join their cause and to enforce the motivation within the organization, the organizations emphasized their uniqueness, proved their efficiency, claimed credit and celebrated even small improvements. The organizations tended to create three different roles for citizen pro-organizations in civil society: reactive, apolitical and emphatic animal lovers concentrating on saving individual animals, proactive, educative bridge-builders seeking to establish equal collaborative relations with authorities, and corrective, supervising watchdogs demanding change in delinquencies offending animal rights. Based on the results of this research, I suggest that by studying how and why the different relations between civil society and the governing actors of the state are constructed, a more versatile approach to citizens’ activism in its context can be achieved.

Development of a social service in a multi-party network

Tämän pro gradu-tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli tutkia monen toimijan sosiaalipalvelukehittäjäverkoston toimivuutta ja sen toimivuuteen vaikuttavia tekijöitä. Aihetta lähestyttiin erilaisten teoreettisten kokonaisuuksien kautta, joiden avulla saatiin luotua tutkimukselle pohja. Viitekehys tutkimukselle luotiin yhdistäen erilaisia teoreettisia aihealueita verkostoista, verkostojen johtamisesta ja palveluista. Tutkimuksessa korostuu motivaation, yhteisen, tarpeeseen perustuvan tavoitteen, sitoutumisen ja orkestroinnin merkitys verkostotoiminnassa hyvän lopputuloksen aikaansaamiseksi. Tutkimuksen empiirisessä osuudessa tehty kvalitatiivinen case-tutkimus keskittyy tiettyyn verkostoon, joka on Socomin koordinoimana kehittänyt Kaakkois-Suomen alueelle uudenlaista sosiaalipalvelua liittyen henkilökohtaiseen apuun. Verkosto on monen toimijan verkosto, jonka jäsenet edustavat erilaisia tahoja ja organisaatioita. Tutkimuksen perusteella verkosto on toiminut hyvin ja tehokkaasti ja saanut luotua toimivan sosiaalipalvelun. Verkosto tukee kirjallisuuskatsauksessa löydettyjen tekijöiden, kuten verkosto-orkestroinnin, sitoutumisen ja yhteisen päämäärän, vaikutusta verkoston toimintaan ja lopputulokseen.

Corporate responsibility guaranteed by dialogue? Examining the relationship between nongovernmental organizations and business

The main objective of this doctoral dissertation is to examine the relationship between non-governmental organizations and business in the context of academic discourse, corporate responsibility discourse, and stakeholder dialogue. More specifically, motivated by the increasing emphasis on stakeholder dialogue as a tool for corporate responsibility and accountability, the aim is to critically assess the role of stakeholder dialogue as a self-regulatory mechanism, in particular from the perspective of foreign direct investments. The study comprises two parts; an introductory essay containing the research objectives, theoretical foundations and methodological choices, and four research articles that address one sub-objective: 1) to review the literature on NGO-business relations in business and society, management, and international business journals from 1998–2007; 2) to critically analyze the academic discourse on NGO-business relations; 3) to analyze the problematic aspects of sustainable foreign direct investments as a conceptual construct; and 4) to analyze the problematic aspects of stakeholder dialogue in connection with a foreign direct investment. The ontological and epistemological foundations of this dissertation build on the social constructionist view of reality. The dialogue in this study is viewed as a legitimacy bargaining process that is actively shaped by societal parties in discourse. Similarly, articulations of ‘partnership’ and ‘adversarial’ in NGO-business relations in academic business and society discourse are viewed as competing hegemonic interventions in the field. More specifically, the methods applied in the articles are literature review (Article 1), discourse theory (Article 2), conceptual analysis (Article 3), and case study with document analysis (Article 4). This dissertation has three main arguments and contributions. First, it is argued that the potential of stakeholder dialogue as a tool for corporate responsibility and accountability is inherently limited in both contexts. Second, the study shows the power implications of privileging partnership oriented NGO-business relations over adversarial ones, and of placing business at the centre of governance discourse. The third contribution is methodological: a new way to analyze academic discourse is presented by focusing on the problem setting of an article.

Social ventures : the development of the theory of sustainable contributive advantage and initial empirical tests

This thesis attempts to fill gaps in both a theoretical basis and an operational and strategic understanding in the areas of social ventures, social entrepreneurship and nonprofit business models. This study also attempts to bridge the gap in strategic and economic theory between social and commercial ventures. More specifically, this thesis explores sustainable competitive advantage from a resource-based theory perspective and explores how it may be applied to the nonmarket situation of nonprofit organizations and social ventures. It is proposed that a social value-orientation of sustainable competitive advantage, called sustainable contributive advantage, provides a more realistic depiction of what is necessary in order for a social venture to perform better than its competitors over time. In addition to providing this realistic depiction, this research provides a substantial theoretical contribution in the area of economics, social ventures, and strategy research, specifically in regards to resource-based theory. The proposed model for sustainable contributive advantage uses resource-based theory and competitive advantage in order to be applicable to social ventures. This model proposes an explanation of a social venture’s ability to demonstrate consistently superior performance. In order to determine whether sustainable competitive advantage is in fact, appropriate to apply to both social and economic environments, quantitative analyses are conducted on a large sample of nonprofit organizations in a single industry and then compared to similar quantitative analyses conducted on commercial ventures. In comparing the trends and strategies between the two types of entities from a quantitative perspective, propositions are developed regarding a social venture’s resource utilization strategies and their possible impact on performance. Evidence is found to support the necessity of adjusting existing models in resource-based theory in order to apply them to social ventures. Additionally supported is the proposed theory of sustainable contributive advantage. The thesis concludes with recommendations for practitioners, researchers and policy makers as well as suggestions for future research paths.

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.

The accumulation of financial and social capital as a means to achieve a sustained competitive advantage for consumer co-operatives

By so far, scholars have discussed how the characteristics of consumer co-operatives (cooperative principles, values and the dual role of members as the users and owners) can potentially give them a competitive advantage over investor-owned firms (IOFs). In addition, concern for the community (as partly derived from locality and regionality) has been seen as a potential source of success for consumer co-operatives. On the other hand, the geographicbound purpose of consumer co-operation causes that consumer co-operative can be regarded as a challenging company form to manage. This is because, according to the purpose of consumer co-operation, co-operatives are obligated to 1) provide the owners with services and goods that are needed and do so at more affordable prices than their competitors do and/or 2) to operate in areas in which competitors do not want to operate (for example, because of the low profitability in certain area of business or region). Thus, consumer co-operatives have to operate very efficiently in order to execute this geographic-bound corporate purpose (e.g. they cannot withdraw from the competition during the declining stages of business). However, this efficiency cannot be achieved by any means; as the acceptance from the important regional stakeholders is the basic operational precondition and lifeline in the long run. Thereby, the central question for the survival and success of consumer co-operatives is; how should the consumer co-operatives execute its corporate purpose so it can be the best alternative to its members in the long run? This question has remained unanswered and lack empirical evidence in the previous studies on the strategic management of consumer cooperation. In more detail, scholars have not yet empirically investigated the question: How can consumer co-operatives use financial and social capital to achieve a sustained competitive advantage? It is this research gap that this doctoral dissertation aims to fulfil. This doctoral dissertation aims to answer the above questions by combining and utilizing interview data from S Group co-operatives and the central organizations in S Group´s network (overall, 33 interviews were gathered), archival material and 56 published media articles/reports. The study is based on a qualitative case study approach that is aimed at theory development, not theory verification (as the theory is considered as nascent in this field of study). Firstly, the findings of this study indicate that consumer co-operatives accumulate financial capital; 1) by making profit (to invest and grow) and 2) by utilizing a network-based organizational structure (local supply chain economies). As a result of financial capital accumulation, consumer co-operatives are able to achieve efficiency gains but also remain local. In addition, a strong financial capital base increases consumer co-operatives´ independence, competitiveness and their ability to participate in regional development (which is in accordance with their geographically bound corporate purpose). Secondly, consumer cooperatives accumulate social capital through informal networking (with important regional stakeholders), corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviour and CSR reporting, pursuing common good, and interacting and identity sharing. As a result of social capital accumulation, consumer co-operatives are able to obtain the resources for managing; 1) institutional dependencies and 2) customer relations. By accumulating both social and financial capital through the above presented actions, consumer co-operatives are able to achieve sustained competitive advantage. Finally, this thesis provides useful ideas and new knowledge for cooperative managers concerning why and how consumer co-operatives should accumulate financial and social capital (to achieve sustained competitive advantage), while aligning with their corporate purpose.

Social entrepreneurship – Believe in it or not!

The practice of social entrepreneurship already exists for a long time but the concept is quite new and has more recently raised a growing interest among academics. However, the majority of researches and considerations about the subject have taken a strong positive concern by omitting some sort of a critical reflection. The idea of this study is to consider the gap between the very optimistic and the more precautious concerns about social entrepreneurship. It means presenting the advantages and downsides connected to the topic in the business, public and third sector. The aim is to help the reader building his/her own belief on social entrepreneurship by considering the positive and negative sides of social entrepreneurship. Hence, the research is intended to take a critical step and aims to answer to the following research questions:  Shall we believe in social entrepreneurship?  What are the reasons for believing or not in social entrepreneurship taking into account the advantages and possible risks of it in the business, public, and third sector? The theoretical framework consists of the comparison between the promising and precautious sides about social entrepreneurship for private, public and non-governmental organizations including the actors or participants inside these sectors. The empirical part is conducted using a qualitative method. Personal interviews of experts in the fields of business, public and third sectors were handled. The purpose of this approach is to compare the critics in theory with the experience of persons dealing with social entrepreneurship. The results from the interviews revealed that in general, reasons for believing in social entrepreneurship prevail over critics about the subject. Social entrepreneurship may not yet represent a full performing business. Concerns for weakening the public power and putting aside the interests of communities in need may exist too. Furthermore, naïve and extra liberal ways of thinking or doing can lead to practices going in opposition with initial social objectives. Nevertheless, problems about social entrepreneurship would be mainly due to the young age of the movement. Time and experience would give better foundations and results to social entrepreneurs. Critics about social entrepreneurship could also easily be done to any sorts of business. Overall, the positive considerations of social entrepreneurship with skillful, motivated and responsible actors could represent some useful tools for enterprises, governments and charities. Some tools among many other possibilities to help people in need.

Forecasting with social media – Using Facebook likes to predict the results of the 2015 Finnish Parliamentary elections

Already one-third of the human population uses social media on a daily basis. The biggest social networking site Facebook has over billion monthly users. As a result, social media services are now recording unprecedented amount of data on human behavior. The phenomenon has certainly caught the attention of scholars, businesses and governments alike. Organizations around the globe are trying to explore new ways to benefit from the massive databases. One emerging field of research is the use of social media in forecasting. The goal is to use data gathered from online services to predict offline phenomena. Predicting the results of elections is a prominent example of forecasting with social media, but regardless of the numerous attempts, no reliable technique has been established. The objective of the research is to analyze how accurately the results of parliament elections can be forecasted using social media. The research examines whether Facebook “likes” can be effectively used for predicting the outcome of the Finnish parliament elections that took place in April 2015. First a tool for gathering data from Facebook was created. Then the data was used to create an electoral forecast. Finally, the forecast was compared with the official results of the elections. The data used in the research was gathered from the Facebook walls of all the candidates that were running for the parliament elections and had a valid Facebook page. The final sample represents 1131 candidates and over 750000 Facebook “likes”. The results indicate that creating a forecast solely based on Facebook “likes” is not accurate. The forecast model predicted very dramatic changes to the Finnish political landscape while the official results of the elections were rather moderate. However, a clear statistical relationship between “likes” and votes was discovered. In conclusion, it is apparent that citizens and other key actors of the society are using social media in an increasing rate. However, the volume of the data does not directly increase the quality of the forecast. In addition, the study faced several other limitations that should be addressed in future research. Nonetheless, discovering the positive correlation between “likes” and votes is valuable information that can be used in future studies. Finally, it is evident that Facebook “likes” are not accurate enough and a meaningful forecast would require additional parameters.

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.