Browsing by Subject "työkyvyn tuen toimintamalli"

The importance of work ability management is increasingly recognized in different organizations. This is the result of legislative reform and a systematic investment in work ability research. Work ability is understood as a systemic which includes the constant search for balance. According to the work ability house model the individual's resources are in relation to work, the work environment and the social relationship and eventually society (Ilmarinen, 2006, pp. 20, 23). The research questions were (1) which kind of discourses work ability and work ability support models are based on and (2) how the goals of work ability support are authorized and justified discursively. The material consisted of ten (10) written documents, which were the work ability support models used by working life organizations. The material was analyzed as part of the social reality they produced. The aim of the research was to describe how the perceptions of work ability, work ability support and the goals of work ability management have been discursively constructed and to mirror them in previous work ability research. The written material was analyzed by discourse analysis. The analysis focused on how work ability and work ability support models are understood in different workplaces and how work ability measures are justified discursively. For the first research question, discourses describing work ability support were located in the material: intervention, caring, project and continuous negotiation. For the second research question, the goals of work ability support, the discourses were constructed using the repertoires of productivity, cost, humanism, social responsibility and legal. The main result is the localization of the hegemonic discourse of individualization and individual responsibility. The problematic nature of the hegemonic discourse appears on the basis of previous research results, as the factors found behind the effectiveness of work ability management are located in the community and structures instead of the individual. The results can be applied as a part of developing work ability management.