Recreating innovative and meaningful workplaces
Eskola, Anne; Hakola, Liinamaaria (2016)
Lataukset:
Eskola, Anne
Hakola, Liinamaaria
Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited
2016
Copyright The Authors, 2016. All Rights Reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2017081714412
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2017081714412
Tiivistelmä
This study is about organizations that have been able to combine high job satisfaction with good productivity and profitability, i.e., they are able to operate profitably while being recognized as the best work places in Finland. These organizations are called alternative organizations. They have consciously rejected many traditional organizational practices like rigid hierarchies, administration, order and control. The ways of working lean on continuous learning and improvement, customer orientation and collaborative development. These companies continuously ensure that they are on the right track in customer projects and they let employees take initiative and responsibility. The importance of shared objectives is recognized and people are brought together to figure out the shared purpose. Usually the work happens in self-organized teams. Findings from alternative organizations have raised a lot of interest also in traditional companies, which are interested in questions such as what ultimately can be learned from alternative organizations and how to increase self-organization? This study aims at describing how a traditional company can recreate its structures to become a more innovative and meaningful workplace. The alternative organization in this study is in the information technology business. The data was collected from three theme interviews. The analysis produced a description of an organization which has abandoned traditional organizational and management practices. Then, a survey was conducted for a more traditional company in which the personnel evaluated their working environment. The researchers then analysed how alternative and traditional companies differ in various aspects and how the traditional company could develop in those aspects.