Browsing by Subject "johtaminen"

This present study analyses quantitatively and qualitatively supervisors’ perceptions and experiences of age management in a metal industry organization in Finland. The study aims to describe supervisors’ thoughts about age management and its implementation in practice: how do they take into consideration different-aged team members in their leadership practices, do they feel they have the necessary skills to support different-aged team members’ working ability, and do they experience the age management as part of organizational culture and strategy. Furthermore, the target of the study is to describe supervisors’ experience of need for an additional support regarding age management. The study is part of an internal career path model –project in the case organization, which emphasizes the diverse expectations that employees representing different age groups have on different stages in their career path. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the concepts of management in matrix organizations, age management, diversity in organizations, working ability, burnout and work engagement, as well as, transitions in career path. The study material consisted of an online survey, which included both open questions and multiple-choice questions. Quantitative data was analyzed with SPSS-program by parametric methods and the content based analyze of qualitative data was carried out according to the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition based on the theory. According to quantitative data, the participants felt that they take well into consideration different aged employees, their competence development and working ability in practical supervisory work. The supervisors experienced the age management quite strongly as part of the organization's culture and strategy, although the qualitative data indicated that the concept of age management was unknown, and more introduction was hoped. In addition, according to the quantitative and qualitative data, taking into consideration the physical nature of the work appeared as a development area; supervisors experienced that they need practical examples concerning how to use career flexibilities. The descriptions of supervisors also highlighted the fact that supporting the younger team members’ working ability has also been challenging. In addition, less experienced supervisors are more likely to evaluate their skills and resources weaker than those who have more experience from supervisory work and thus, age management themes were hoped to be part of the orientation for supervisors. Furthermore, older supervisors did not experience age management that strongly as part of organization’s culture and strategy.

Learning agility is a concept that arose around the year 2000 as a reaction to changing challenges of work-life. Learning agility is usually defined as willingness and ability to learn from experiences in order to perform successfully in difficult situations. However, there has been criticism against this definition saying that it is rather imprecise and complex. The definition combines too many different elements of learning. This study aims to clarify the context of learning agility by defining learning agility as ability to learn quickly and flexibly. The study examines how learning agility is related to managers' attributions of their own managerial competences and goal orientations. Goal orientations are individual tendencies that affect how people set their goals under performance conditions. In addition, it is investigated if goal orientations act as mediator between learning agility and managerial competencies, which would mean that learning agility is related to managerial competencies through goal orientations. Research environment is Finland's Slot Machine Association (RAY), and the goal of this study is to provide new perspectives for RAY about how RAY can develop its leaders and supervisors. Sample consisted of RAY's supervisors and leaders. Data was collected with electronic survey during May and June of 2015. Total of 63 supervisors and leaders answered to survey and 32 of those were male and 31 were female. Data was analyzed by using statistical methods. Analyses that were primarily used were t-test, Pearson correlation and regression analysis. In order to test the mediation 12 regression analyses were performed. Results showed that learning agility was statistically significantly related to both learning orientation and the way managers feel about their own managerial capabilities. Learning orientation was more strongly related to managerial capabilities than learning agility. Performance orientations were negatively related to both learning agility and the way manager's feel about their managerial capabilities. Based on mediation analysis there were found three mediations of which two were partial mediations and one was full mediation. Mediators were learning orientation and performance-avoidance orientation. Results indicate that willingness to learn is at least as important as the ability to learn. Developing leadership competencies and learning should focus more on supporting learning orientation than enhancing the learning abilities. Moreover, results address a question if learning agility is in fact a combination of other learning-associated concepts such as cognitive capability and goal orientation rather than separate and independent concept.

This research was interested in early childhood education managers' professional agency in context of pedagogical and human resources leadership. In addition, the early childhood managers’ pedagogical as well as human resources leadership experiences were studied. There is still very little previous research done in terms of early childhood managers’ professional agency but studying it could help in developing the early childhood educational field because according to previous professional agency studies, managers’ professional agency is linked to the personnel. Among other things innovating, developing and taking care of the well-being of staff are part of leadership agency. The data of this Master’s Thesis is based on nine early chilhood education managers' telephone interview transcripts. The telephone interviews, that lasted approximately 30 minutes each, were executed during the autumn of 2021. Transcripts from telephone interviews were analysed using content analysis and narrative analysis. Content analysis of the data identified five categories in early childhood education managers’ experiences in pedagogical leadership (central mission, common goal, consistency, job relevancy and practice in reality) as well as in human resources leadership (service management, presence, ensemble control, discretion and responsibility). Each of the categories had professional agency in early childhood managers’ experiences which was analysed narratively. Early chilhood education managers' experienced pedagogical leadership as important part of the job and they mentioned pedagogy being close to their hearts. Managers described experiences in human resources leadership as serving others but also working under pressure. The experiences of early childhood education managers in pedagogical and human resources leadership included plenty of traits of professional agency. The traits of professional agency adapt to all key moments of previous research theory which are: 1) respecting employee views, 2) drawing conclusions through dialogue, 3) bringing up own expertise, 4) learning and 5) speaking directly. Based on this study, professional agency was an important tool in pedagogical leadership and human resources leadership. Early childhood managers’ professional agency is shown through the decisions the manager is able to make under the sociocultural circumstances at the work place and within their own personal abilities.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the experiences of ECEC center leaders about the unprofessionalism of educational interaction and the challenges it brings. In addition, the study examines the experience of tackling unprofessionalism and experiences related to managing the phenomenon. The aim is to analyze and describe the perceptions and experiences of managers, as well as their variation. The theoretical framework of the study consists of an examination of educational interaction, unprofessionalism and leadership, as well as a description in the context of early childhood education. The theory takes into account the paucity of previous research on early childhood professionalism and therefore the framework has been partially extended to look at professionalism in other fields as well, such as nursing and medicine. The starting points of the study were a multi-method and phenomenographic study, the data of which were obtained with a semi-structured e-questionnaire. The survey was addressed to municipal ECEC center leaders on the basis of the OAJ member register. In the analysis of qualitative data, context analysis was typically used for phenomenography, and the results of multiple-choice questions (Likert) are pre-sented as percentage distributions. Combining the acquisition and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data aims at a better understanding of a diverse and little-studied phenomenon. Leaders ’experiences of the unprofessional nature of educational interaction varied. However, most situ-ations were interpreted as completely unprofessional. All respondents reported unprofessionalism in their workplace and there was variation in its prevalence. Intervention in the unprofessional profession was generally perceived negatively by managers, although the task could still be perceived as important, co-ercive or obligatory. There were five experiences describing the management of challenging situations: the relationship between the manager and the employee, self-management, pedagogical management, professionalism as a phenomenon, and client work. Unprofessionalism is a multidimensional phenome-non challenging leadership and its definition and identification is important for developing the quality of early childhood education. The key tasks of a leader in terms of shared pedagogical leadership are to address unprofessional situations and to implement ethical reflection and moral decision-making in the work community.

The increase in changes and demands related to the management of the education sector during the last decades has clearly correlated with an increased workload for the principal's profession. The work is diversified and fragmented into a wide range of areas. With this, it has become clear that the principal is not able to lead an educational institution alone and management practices have had to be developed in such a way that they better serve the needs of educational institutions and communities. The aim of this study has been to find out how the principals experience and understand the concept of shared leadership in practice and what kind of shared leadership models they have in use in educational institutions, as well as what possible obstacles they see to the implementation of shared leadership in the school. There are some similar studies on principals' views on shared leadership. In general, principals' perceptions of shared leadership are mainly related to the division and delegation of work tasks. However, according to the theoretical background, the deeper idea of shared leadership is related to interactive leadership. Previous studies have found that principals' views on shared leadership as delegation become stronger when interaction decreases in leadership situations. Correspondingly, when the view of shared leadership as delegation decreases, the view of shared leadership as interaction in situations becomes stronger. In a broader sense, management is an interpersonal activity that arises in interaction between individuals. This is how management develops and takes shape during the interaction, and the parties can influence its development. In this study, the research method was qualitative, and the material of the thesis consisted of interviews with seven principals. The data was collected with a semi-structured thematic interview and analyzed with a theory-driven content analysis. The results section of the thesis is based on the theme classifications created in the analysis. As a conclusion of the results of the study, it could be stated that the principals felt that shared leadership was mainly about dividing and delegating tasks, although shared leadership structures aimed at both formal and informal interaction were in use in all schools. All principals considered interactive management to be important and desirable. The principals also strongly connected trust and sharing of expertise and know-how to shared management. Team organization models were used the most as models of shared leadership, of which management teams were used in all schools, in some schools various development teams and grade level groups were used. Six of the organizations that participated in the study used an assistant principal or a vice principal system. The principals saw factors related to the working culture as obstacles to the implementation of shared management, such as not getting used to the operating model of shared management, resource, and human factors, as well as the increase in the workload of the employees and thus the deterioration of work well-being.

The aim of this study was to investigate kindergarten leaders' and kindergartenteachers' perceptions of group situations, successes and failures, as well as the cracks and the factors affecting them. The survey asks 1.) How subjects describe functional group situations? 2.) How they describe cracks in a group situations? 3.) How does the cracks in the interaction and group situations are reacted? 4.) What group situations, successes and failures are related to? The starting point for making the thesis were the thoughts associated with the concept of mentalization Fonagy (2009), Allen (2003, 2006) and Lyutenin (2009), Sajaniemi's and Mäkelä's (2013) ideas of group activities, and Fonsén's (2014) research related to the pedagogical management. Mentalisation is a prerequisite for the educator pedagogical sensitivity. Mentalisation is shown as a reflective activity, in which case the educator is able to describe the activities of another mental terms. (Larmo 2010) Pedagogically sensitive educator is able to meet a group of children and individual children's needs in a flexible way and to manage group situations for success. Mari Nislin (2016) reclaims in her study that pedagogical quality requires pedagogical sensitivity and also groupsensitivity. The other kindergarten team members, team culture and management together create a whole system, which will affect the quality of early childhood education. The data were collected in the autumn of 2014 and spring of 2015 by theme interviewing kindergarten leaders and kindergartenteachers. The research data analysis were applied phenomenographic approach. The material was processed with Atlas.ti program. This study found that kindergarten's leaders and kindergartenteachers description in group situations, successes and possible cracks and failures contributed to the same based on the material broken down into three categories significance of factors. These factors were the factors associated with the educator's mind and activities, operational culture of the team, and factors related to leadership. On the basis of the research material educators' ability to keep the group and its children in their own minds, helped the group situation became a success. In this case, the educator kept his group in control and was able to react flexibly to the surprising events in group situations. Successful group situation also required operating team member's ability to cooperate, to anticipate situations and good planning and commitment. Day care center director was seen to play an important role in the creation of these structures, together with the team employees.

The aim of the study: Every organization learns through either motivated employees or a strategically learning-oriented vision. If organizational learning depends on motivated employees, employees and teams might learn things and skills that are contrary to organizational goals. That is why it is important for organizations to lead and manage workplace learning strategically and foster a positive organizational learning culture. Methods: The data of this research consisted of eight individual interviews. All the data were collected from one organization, and all the participants worked in a same team. The participants were asked to review a situational description of workplace learning that had been important to them some way. The data were collected using Critical Incident method and analyzed using an abductive strategy. Results and conclusions: The results suggested that workplace learning mostly occurs while working. Most of the participants had learned by doing themselves or through interactions with others. Additionally, the results suggested that the workplace is both promoted and disturbed by various factors. The factors can be divided into six categories: personal factors, leadership, teamwork, situational factors, work organization and feedback. In the category of work organization, most of the disruptive factors influencing workplace learning appeared, with the most common one being lack of time. However, an organization might have positive organizational learning culture despite disturbed factors that influence workplace learning. Positive organizational learning culture depends on employees’ personal experiences. Organization can influence these personal experiences by strategically leading workplace learning and organizational learning culture toward positive learning attitudes.