Browsing by Author "Lumivaara, Salla"

Objective. The context of this thesis is working life and personnel training, to be more specific managerial and leadership work and management training as a framework of learning and identity construction. The objective of this study is to investigate meanings that examinees give to the management training they participated in and meanings that that training has had concerning developing their leader identities. An also how do they perceive and experience the everyday work of a manager. The management training in question is part of personnel training and the participants are persons that are starting their managerial and leadership careers. The approach in this study was narrative in which narratives of the examinees are examined as intermediator and constructor of knowledge and meanings. The fundamental assumption was that identity is personally and socially determined, constructed and told by people themselves. Methods. At the first stage of collecting research material a questionnaire was used to reach the examinees for interviews. Ten persons who participated in management trainings were interviewed. They were all working in the same Finnish commercial company. Interviews were conducted as focused interviews and the material was analyzed using inductive content analysis with narrative methods. Outcomes and conclusions. The results show that the management training help to improve overall conception, develop competencies, increase professional self-confidence and networking. The training also increased understanding towards managerial and leadership work particularly what comes to roles and responsibilities as well as everyone´s own conception of self as a manager. The results show that the interviewees experienced that the training offered them concretes benefits for everyday managerial and leadership work as well as support for developing a leadership identity and strengthen professional agency.