Browsing by Author "Kopio, Laura Julia"

The objective of the reform of social welfare and health care services is to reduce inequalities in well-being and health, and to manage costs and simplify the complex system. The reform is revolutionary organization change which affects in all levels of the organization and has effects on every citizen in Finland. Media has been interested about the reform and it has been in newspapers almost every day. Nevertheless it is important to notice in which way the reform has been reported in the media. It is not simple and free of values how the reform is represented. Some aspects of the reform seem to be more important as the others stay in the background. The aim of this study is to describe how the reform of the Finnish social welfare and healthcare services is reported in media as an organization change. The aim is to find out do these newspaper articles about the reform cover all the aspects of an organization change. The study is conducted by revisiting articles in the main Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat for a year-long period. The data collected has been qualitatively analyzed using thematic content analysis. The hypothesis that all the aspects of the organization change has not been covered equally in the writings about the reform of social welfare and healthcare services was confirmed in the study. Writings about politics were over presented when compared to the other themes. Also the hypothesis that human aspects of the organization change were on the background in the writings in the collected data was confirmed. Themes concerning employees, clients and organization culture were not covered as fully as themes such as politics, finance and constructions. The aim of this study was also to reflect what kind of effects certain kind of media reporting has on the impressions citizens have about the reform of social welfare and healthcare services. It seems that in media reporting the reform has been distanced from the practice and average citizen. This may have effects on how citizens feel about the reform. When considering organization theory this might cause challenges in adaption the reform.