Management and Organisation

 

Recent Submissions

  • Hearn, Jeff; Lämsä, Anna-Maija; Biese, Ingrid; Heikkinen, Suvi; Louvrier, Jonna; Niemistö, Charlotta; Kangas, Emilia; Koskinen, Paula; Jyrkinen, Marjut; Gustavsson, Malin; Hirvonen, Petri (Hanken School of Economics, 2015)
    Research Report – 76
    This is the final report of the NaisUrat research and development project (1.2.2013–31.1.2015). The project’s main themes were to promote women’s careers, including increasing the number of women in top positions (recognizing the challenges and possibilities); further enhance gender equality in the workplace, with special attention to the challenges of combining work and family; and make gendered structures visible, as well as facilitating change. This report presents the development work the eight participating organizations conducted during the project, as well as the practices for furthering gender equality and women’s careers that they developed and implemented. The report also contains research results based on the research conducted during the project, along with a discussion of the challenges and possibilities of gender equality projects and initiatives in general.
  • Hearn, Jeff; Lämsä, Anna-Maija; Biese, Ingrid; Heikkinen, Suvi; Louvrier, Jonna; Niemistö, Charlotta; Kangas, Emilia; Koskinen, Paula; Jyrkinen, Marjut; Gustavsson, Malin; Hirvonen, Petri (Hanken School of Economics, 2015)
    Research Report – 75
    This is the final report of the NaisUrat research and development project (1.2.2013−31.1.2015). The project’s main themes were to promote women’s careers, including increasing the number of women in top positions (recognizing the challenges and possibilities); further enhance gender equality in the workplace, with special attention to the challenges of combining work and family; and make gendered structures visible, as well as facilitating change. This report presents the development work the eight participating organizations conducted during the project, as well as the practices for furthering gender equality and women’s careers that they developed and implemented. The report also contains research results based on the research conducted during the project, along with a discussion of the challenges and possibilities of gender equality projects and initiatives in general.
  • Niemistö, Charlotta; Hearn, Jeff; Tallberg, Teemu; Niemi, Hertta; Gripenberg, Pernilla; Jyrkinen, Marjut; McKie, Linda (Hanken School of Economics, 2012)
    560
    This working paper reports the ongoing research conducted in the research project, The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: A Collaborative Study in Finland and Scotland, under the auspices of Academy of Finland research programme, The Future of Work and Well-being. The research project examines the contradictory pressures for policies and practices towards both the inhibition and the enhancement of work-related well-being that are likely in growth industries. The overall aim is to evaluate the development, implementation and use of work-related well-being policies and practices in four selected growth industries. These – electronics, care, finance and accounting, and tourism – have been selected on the basis of EU and national forecasts, and demographic and socio-economic trends in standard and non-standard employment. Following an earlier survey of 127 employing organisations on questions of growth and well-being, in this working paper we present the initial results of the qualitative phase of the project. This phase comprised ‘portraits of practice’ in nine case companies, selected on the basis of some of the quantitative analysis of the survey, with interviews, ‘mini-ethnographies’, and other data and documents received from the organisations. The working paper concludes with discussion of methodological issues across the quantitative and qualitative phases of the project.
  • Husu, Liisa; Hearn, Jeff; Lämsä, Anna-Maija; Vanhala, Sinikka (Hanken School of Economics, Department of Management and Organisation, Management and Organisation, 2012)
    Research Report - 72
    Leadership without the full participation of women not only excludes women individually and collectively, but is also a huge waste of talent, knowledge and expertise. And crucially, given the current state of society and the world, this aspect of gender inequality is likely to become even more important in the future. NASTA - Women’s Leadership: A Research and Education Development Project was established in 2005 as a national multi-university project mainly and generously funded by Finnish Ministry of Education. The project aims at producing new knowledge and increasing understanding about women’s leadership, as well as promoting women’s leadership through research, development of teaching, and public outreach. NASTA is a joint effort of three Finnish universities – Hanken School of Economics, University of Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics, and the Helsinki School of Economics (now part of Aalto University) – and has been coordinated by Hanken. This report presents research and activities conducted within and around the project. NASTA activities have been many and various. They have examined the position and experiences of women in relation to leadership, management, organisation and work more generally. They have sought new knowledge about gender and leadership, on women leaders’ values, attitudes and behaviour, as well as about values, attitudes and behaviour in relation to women’s leadership. NASTA activities have included teaching, student supervision, research theses, research projects, publishing, networking, seminars, meetings, an international conference, and knowledge transfer into other sectors of society. The first section of the book introduces NASTA joint projects, including web-based teaching material, a survey of gender staffing and teaching on gender in business schools, critical review of previous research literature, and new empirical research. The next section includes research articles on different aspects of gender, leadership and manage¬¬ment from more individual projects conducted by participating researchers and research groups linked to NASTA across the three universities. The final section includes short presentations of other research in progress. The appendix lists publications by NASTA members – journal articles, research reports, books, chapters, journal special issues, popular journal articles, magazine articles - and masters, licentiate and doctoral theses that have been produced. These matters of women, leadership and management are not simply academic concerns but urgent matters for practice, organisations, management, policy, and society more generally.
  • Tallberg, Teemu; Hearn, Jeff; Niemistö, Charlotta; Gripenberg, Pernilla; Jyrkinen, Marjut; McKie, Linda (Hanken School of Economics, 2011)
    Working Paper - 558
    This working paper reports the ongoing research conducted in the research project, The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: A Collaborative Study in Finland and Scotland, under the auspices of Academy of Finland research programme, The Future of Work and Well-being. The research project examines the contradictory pressures for policies and practices towards both the inhibition and the enhancement of work-related well-being that are likely in growth industries. The overall aim is to evaluate the development, implementation and use of work-related well-being policies in four selected growth industries. These – electronics, care, finance and accounting, and tourism – have been selected on the basis of EU and national forecasts, and demographic and socio-economic trends in standard and non-standard employment. In this paper we aim to review the survey that constitutes the second main phase of this research.
  • Hearn, Jeff; Tallberg, Teemu; McKie, Linda; Gripenberg, Pernilla; Jyrkinen, Marjut; Niemistö, Charlotta (Hanken School of Economics, 2009)
    Working Papers
    This Working Paper reports the background to the first stage of the ongoing research project, The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: A Collaborative Study in Finland and Scotland, conducted under the auspices of the Academy of Finland research programme The Future of Work and Well-being (2008-2011). This collaborative project provides national and transnational data, analysis and outputs. The study is being conducted in the Department of Management and Organisation, Hanken School of Economics, Finland, in collaboration with Glasgow Caledonian University, University of East London, Heriot-Watt University and Reading University, UK. The project examines policies and practices towards the enhancement of work-related well-being in growth industries, and contradictory pressures and tensions posed in this situation. The overall aim is to evaluate the development, implementation and use of work-related well-being policies in four selected growth industries. These sectors – electronics, care, finance and accounting, and tourism – have been selected on the basis of European Union and national forecasts, and demographic and socio-economic trends in employment. In this working paper we outline the background to the research study, the initial research plan, and how the survey of employers has been constructed. The working paper concludes with a brief discussion of general ongoing research issues arising in the project.
  • Tallberg, Teemu (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2003)
    Working Papers
    Research on men’s networks and homosociality in and around organisations can produce knowledge on organisational power relations, and contribute to the efforts to promote equality in working life. The search for a conceptual framework to study these issues arises in this paper from my ongoing work on men's social networks and gendered power in and around organisations. Men give each other social support through networks in which formal and informal relationships intermingle, but networks are also contexts of competition and oppression, and of construction of masculinities that are in hierarchical relations with each other and with femininities. For studying the networks men have with each other in work organisations I suggest a broader starting point that contextualises these homosocial networks with men’s other personal relations, and integrates different perspectives deriving from social network analysis, critical studies on men and organisational studies.
  • Salin, Denise (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2006)
    Working Papers
    Although workplace bullying and other inappropriate treatment in the workplace have received growing attention, especially in Northern Europe, in the past few decades, little research has so far been conducted about the prevention of and intervention in such phenomena. This paper provides a review of different organizational measures typically recommended for preventing and intervening in workplace bullying and other forms of inappropriate treatment in the workplace. These measures include anti-bullying policies, training and information, appropriate job designs, active monitoring, and early intervention. As for intervention, both informal and formal strategies are discussed. Furthermore, the paper reports findings from a study among Finnish municipalities on the extent to which these measures are actually used in Finland, a country that has fairly recently introduced anti-bullying legislation.
  • Hearn, Jeff; Kovalainen, Anne; Tallberg, Teemu (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2002)
    Research Reports
    The expansion of transnational corporations is a fundamental part of contemporary globalising processes. Through their activities, transnational corporations also have impacts on national and cultural gender relations, thus highlighting that gender relations are indeed amenable, to some extent, to social change. Accordingly, large transnational corporations have many effects and implications for gender relations in society, as well as having their own gender relations within them, characteristically in the form of men’s far greater presence in management than women’s. A key aspect in the functioning of transnational corporations is thus the way they organise and restructure gender relations within their own activities. The research presented here on gender divisions and gender policies in largest Finnish multinational and national corporations is part of a longer-term examination of the relations of gender relations in transnational corporations. It sets out the results of a survey of the largest 100 Finnish corporations with regard to the following main kinds of question: · general information on the corporation’s size, sector and economic activities; · the gender composition of their employment, middle management, top management, and board; · their gender equality plans and related policies. The human resources manager or their equivalent or delegate of 62 corporations responded to the survey. The general analysis of the data obtained from the survey is presented in this research report. Special attention is given to relations between the gender divisions and the gender policies of corporations. Interpretations of the data and more general theoretical implications are discussed in the report, with special attention to theoretical ways forward.
  • Husu, Liisa; Hearn, Jeff; Lämsä, Anna-Maija; Vanhala, Sinikka (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2010)
    Research Reports
    Leadership and management remain highly gendered. Recent decades have seen a major international growth of studies on gender relations in leadership, organisations and management, in both empirical research and theoretical analysis. The differential relations of women and men to leadership and management are a key question for both theory and practice. Recent research and discussion on the gendering of leadership have been influenced by and have addressed: feminism; recognition of women and women’s situations, experiences and voices in leadership; organisational culture; communication; divisions of labour, hierarchy, power and authority; imagery and symbolism; information technology; sexuality, harassment, bullying and violence in organisations; home-work relations; men and masculinities in leadership; globalisation, transnationalism, intersectionality and post¬¬colonialism – amongst other issues. Having said that, the vast majority of mainstream work on leadership retains little or no gender analysis. In most business schools and other universities the position of gender-explicit work on leadership is still not well established. Leadership through the Gender Lens brings together critical analyses and debates on gender, leadership and management with contributions from 13 countries and five continents. How leadership and management are gendered can mean more gender equal or more gender unequal conditions for women and men. This includes how education and training can contribute to gendered leadership and management. The volume is organised in three main sections, on: careers and leadership; management, hierarchy and leadership: and interventions in leadership.
  • Sorsa, Virpi; Pälli, Pekka; Vaara, Eero; Peltola, Katja (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2010)
    Research Reports
    Strategisen johtamisen oppi on tunkeutunut nykyään lähes kaikenlaisiin organisaatioihin suuryrityksistä julkisorganisaatioihin ja kolmannelle sektorille. Siitä on muodostunut suosittu johtamiskäytäntö, jota pidetään yleisesti jopa välttämättömyytenä ja itsestään selvänä tapana johtaa ja tehdä päätöksiä. Tässä kirjassa tuodaan esille, miten strategiapuhe ei kuitenkaan ole mikään viaton tai neutraali tapa tuottaa todellisuuttamme; se pitää sisällään erilaisia valtarakennelmia ja vaihtoehdottomuutta. Tutkimus antaa myös mielenkiintoisen näkökulman erityisesti isossa kaupunkiorganisaatiossa tehtävään strategiatyöhön. Kirja tarjoaa näköaloja ja tutkimuksellisia avauksia erityisesti strategian retoriikkaan, keskustelukäytäntöihin, strategian kääntämisen ilmiöön, osallistumisen problematiikkaan sekä strategian ja maineenhallinnan yhteyteen.
  • Söderqvist, Anette; Wägar, Karolina (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2010)
    Working Papers
    Purpose: This study investigates boards of directors in small firms and explores the link between board effectiveness and the composition, roles and working styles of the boards. Design/methodology/approach: The study analyses data from a telephone survey of boards in 45 small firms. The survey included both the CEO and the chairperson of the board. Findings: The study identifies three groups of small firms: ‘paperboards’, ‘professional boards’, and ‘management lead’ boards. Results show that board composition, board roles and board working style influence board effectiveness in small firms. Research limitations/implications: Although the present study has found a link between board effectiveness and the role, composition and working style of boards of small firms, other potentially influential factors are also worthy of investigation; for example, the personal characteristics of the individuals involved, generational factors in family firms, and the situational circumstances of various firms. Practical implications: The study reveals that, in practice, the management team and the board are substantially intertwined in small firms. Originality/value: The main contributions are that the study explores how boards in small firms actually function and gives a detailed account of their composition and roles.More insight into this issue is important given the overemphasis within the governance literature on input-output studies using samples of large publiclylisted firms.
  • Hearn, Jeff; Piekkari, Rebecca; Jyrkinen, Marjut (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2009)
    Research Reports
    Mainstream research on management generally continues to ignore gender relations. Even so, over recent years there has been a major growth of international research on gender relations in organizations. Yet, most of this has focused on gender relations in lower or middle levels rather than at the apex of the organization. This book draws on research on gender policies, structures and practices of management in large Finnish corporations. It builds on earlier survey work of gender policies in the 100 largest corporations in Finland, to examine, through qualitative interviews, more detailed gendered processes in seven selected corporations. These represent corporations that are ‘relatively active’, ‘moderately active’, and ‘not active’ in relation to gender equality. Key issues include contrasts between formal policies and organizational practices; different corporate contexts and individual managers’ views; definition and scope of gender policy; and the relation of gender policies and diversity policy. This focus on gender policies is understood and located within organizational structures, most obviously gendered corporate hierarchies. Important structures include national context in relation to transnationalization, relations of headquarters and subsidiaries, and interrelations of management, policy development and policy implementation. Gender relations in practice and gender practices are considered in more detail. These women and men managers operate at the intersections of gendered transnational managerial work, careers and family-type relations, including marriage and children, or lack thereof. Women and men managers may be part of the same management levels or management teams, but have totally different family-type situations and gendered experiences. Interconnections of management, domestic life and transnationalizations are intensely gendered matters. The debate on the public/private continues to be important for both gender relations and organizational relations, but complicated through transnationalizations. The modern transnational corporation is considered in terms of gender divisions and gender power, with particular reference to top management. The concluding discussion notes implications for research and policy.
  • Barner-Rasmussen, Wilhelm; Björkman, Ingmar; Ehrnrooth, Mats; Koveshnikov, Alexei; Mäkelä, Kristiina; Vaara, Eero; Zhang, Ling (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2009)
    Research Reports
    This book is on cross-border competence management in Russia and China. Corporations are facing a number of problems and challenges in their international operations, to which there typically are no simple solutions. For instance, they need to understand and respond to cultural and institutional diversity and ascertain that their foreign units are integrated with the rest of the corporation. Throughout this report we will discuss a range of challenges confronting firms as they seek to develop their capabilities to operate internationally. Some of the challenges are clearly case specific, and although this book aims to offer research-based advice to practicing managers there is a potential danger in applying lessons from other companies to the own firm. Our hope is that our analyses of the challenges facing Finnish corporations in China and Russia reported together with extensive quotes from our interviews and insights from other recent studies will help readers draw their own conclusions as to how to deal with issues related to competence management across borders. With this book we also aspire to contribute to the academic literature by providing new insights into cross-border competence management in general and the operations of Finnish corporations in Russia and China in particular.
  • McKie, Linda; Hearn, Jeff; Bowlby, Sophie; Smith, Andrew; Hogg, Gill (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2008)
    Working Papers
    This working paper develops an approach to the analysis of care as it is evident in the policies and practices of employing organisations. We identify how notions of care are incorporated in myriad and multi-faceted ways that may support, survey and control workers, as well as having implications for employers, managers, employees and workers. Aspects of care can be found in a range of statutory duties, policies and related activities, including: health and safety, equality and diversity, parental leave, religious observance, bullying and harassment, personal development, voluntary redundancy, early retirement, employer pension schemes, grievance procedures, and dismissal. The conceptual framework of organisation carescapes is offered as an aid to the analysis of employee policies and services. These policies and services are transformed by shifts in supranational and national policies such as European Union (EU) economic strategies and national legislation on disability rights legislation, age discrimination and flexible working, and changes in labour market competitiveness. In conclusion, we consider how the framework of organisation carescapes is informing research design in our and our colleagues’ ongoing programme of research.
  • Ahonen, Guy; Näsman, Ove (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2008)
    Research Reports
    Under åren 2002-2005 förverkligades Druvan-projektet i Dragsfjärds kommun, vilket innebar en dramatisk ökning av företagshälsovårdsinsatserna. Företagshälsovårdsutgifterna ökade från 20 € per anställd till över 400 €. Den totala satsningen på personalens hälsa ökade ännu mer. Innehållet i Druvan baserade sig på den s.k. Metal Age-metoden. Metoden går ut på att arbetsgemenskapen tillsammans identifierar utvecklingsbehov och –åtgärder. Projektet ledde till en stor mängd utvecklingsåtgärder och därpå följande effekter på personalens hälsa, trivsel och samarbete. Som en del av åtgärderna utarbetade kommunen en personalrapport för de aktuella åren. Under projekttiden utvecklades personalens arbetsförmåga betydligt gynnsammare än förväntat. Den ekonomiska analysen visade att det investerade kapitalet gav en avkastning på 46%. Nyttan uppkom som resultat av minskad sjukfrånvaro och färre förtidspensioneringar. Druvan-projektet stöder de tidigare bedömningarna, enligt vilka det finns ett klart utrymme för att öka satsningarna på företagshälsovård i vårt land. Detta gäller speciellt arbetsplatser vars satsningar på företagshälsovård är betydligt under genomsnittet. Dragsfjärds kommun har beslutat göra Druvan till en bestående struktur inom kommunen. Guy Ahonen är professor i Knowledge Management, speciellt personalekonomi vid institutionen för företagsledning och organisation vid Hanken. Ove Näsman är ledande företagsläkare vid Dalmed OyAb i Dalsbruk i sydvästra Finland. Båda har forskat i årtionden kring effekterna av ökat välbefinnande i arbetet.
  • Bairoh, Susanna (Svenska handelshögskolan, 2008)
    Working Papers
    This paper discusses various theoretical approaches to diversity management, analysing their similarities and differences. I start with a review of certain previously presented classifications, and then proceed to describing the different approaches in more detail. In this paper, I propose that the various viewpoints can be categorized into three groups: 1) practitioner/consultant approach, 2) mainstream approach, and 3) critical approaches. Although there are differences within these groups, in particular regarding the critical approaches, these differences appear less significant than those between the groups. Those representing the first group are mainly interested in how to get most out of a diverse workforce, while those in the second group focus on the effects of diversity on performance or work group functioning. While some of the mainstream writers can be rather critical towards earlier research, they hardly ever discuss or even recognize the wide ranging criticism put forward by critical scholars. The critical researchers, then, remain a rather scattered group who do not always share much more than a conviction that the mainstream research keeps missing highly significant issues. Nonetheless, in order to increase our understanding of how different persons can and do work together, more dialogue is required between the varying standpoints.