Learning Networks as a Means for Work Organization Development

The relatively favourable overall growth of productivity in Finnish economy in recentyears conceals the fact that there are remarkable sectoral differences in productivitydevelopment. The rapid productivity growth in sectors which produce information andcommunications technologies (ICT), such as the electrical and electronics industry, iscontrasted with slackened growth in most other industries. Finnish companies’ overall recordin turning the new technological opportunities permitted by advanced ICT into gains inproductivity has been relatively poor. This indicates that many companies have not managedto implement sufficient improvements in their work and human resource management (HRM)practices to achieve synergistic effects of combined use of ICT and new......
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Learning Networks as a Means for Work Organization Development Learning Networks as a Means for Work Organization Development Recent Finnish Experiences Tuomo Alasoini Finnish Workplace Development Programme Ministry of Labour tuomo.alasoini@mol.fiPaper prepared for the Nordic R&D Conference on University and Society Cooperation,Ronneby, 14-16 May 2003 1IntroductionFinland is now considered one of the most competitive industrial nations in internationalcomparison. Finland’s performance in innovation also enjoys a high reputation. According tothe EU Innovation Scoreboard 2002, Sweden and Finland are the two innovation leadersamong the EU Member States (www.trendchart.cordis.lu/Scoreboard2002/index.html). By acloser look, however, Finland’s good performance is mainly based on achievements in thearea of technological development and innovation. This is one of the main conclusions of theScience and Technology Policy Council of Finland (2003) in its newest triennial review. Thereview examines the main challenges facing research and innovation funding and it contains alist of policy recommendations for the future. It states, “Technological development andtechnological innovations are generally considered the strongest area of Finnish innovation./…/ Well-deserved attention has begun to be paid to the relative weakness of socialinnovation in the entity of innovation. Its development alongside technology is a majorchallenge for society and for the economy. As yet Finland has no clear development strategyfor social innovation. The challenge concerns both the organizations responsible for socialdevelopment, the development of working life, and the safeguarding of individualdevelopment and opportunities by means of research-based innovations.”From the point of view of work organization development policy the unbalanced developmentof technological and social innovation can be seen as follows:(1) The relatively favourable overall growth of productivity in Finnish economy in recentyears conceals the fact that there are remarkable sectoral differences in productivitydevelopment. The rapid productivity growth in sectors which produce information andcommunications technologies (ICT), such as the electrical and electronics industry, iscontrasted with slackened growth in most other industries. Finnish companies’ overall recordin turning the new technological opportunities permitted by advanced ICT into gains inproductivity has been relatively poor. This indicates that many companies have not managedto implement sufficient improvements in their work and human resource management (HRM)practices to achieve synergistic effects of combined use of ICT and new forms of workorganization.(2) There is no clear evidence indicating of a positive association between the extent of theuse of ICT and the improvement of the quality of working life (QWL) at company orworkplace level in Finland. The new technological opportunities have been so farinsufficiently utilized as a means to deliberately improve work processes, work organizationand work designs from the QWL point of view.Finland is not alone among the industrial nations with these problems. Though industry- andplant-level survey data from various sources indicate that superior productivity gains usuallyare a combined effect of new technologies and supplementary management and workorganization innovations (e.g. Antila and Ylöstalo 1999; Breshanan et al. 2002; Gjerding1999; Kumar 2000; Lewis et al. 2002), work organization development as such has so farplayed only a minor role in public-policy decision-making, especially when compared to thedevelopment of new product and production technologies. For instance, Brödner and Latniak(2002) found out that only seven of the 15 EU Member States had ongoing public-supportedwork organization development programmes in 2002. 2This paper outlines a fresh approach to work organization development which utilizeslearning networks as a means for disseminating and generating knowledge of new practices,and examines opportunities for this approach in Finland by looking at university-industrycooperation. University-industry cooperation in Finland is analysed with the help ofexperiences of the Finnish Workplace Development Programme (1996-2003). The last part ofthe paper examines learning networks as a model for interaction and cooperation at fourdifferent levels.Towards a New Approach in Work Organization DevelopmentBases for Innovation-Promoting Work Organization DevelopmentTypical goals of the ‘first-generation’ of work organization development programmes datingfrom the 1960s to the 198 ...