Dissemination of management into politics: Michael Porter and the political uses of management consulting

The article contributes to the literature on management dissemination by looking at how management fashions are diffused into and circulated in politics. The ideas of management have been increasingly disseminated into the realm of politics during recent decades. To illustrate how this takes place, this article examines the spread of Michael Porter’s ideas on national politics. Porter’s work is considered a management fashion that has been skilfully packaged; a new form of the 20th-century tradition of state-led social engineering which takes the form of management fashion-style packaging. For this he is seen as a global guru in national politics, and this development is regarded as a new form of consultocracy in the realm of democracies. In consultocracy, the ideas of management consulting are often adopted into politics as a common justifying rationality of power for the political elites. Thus we call for further research on the underlying dynamics of the power involved as management fashions are disseminated into the realm of politics

The role of professional elites in shaping management practice: how the old mentalities condition the adoption of new management ideas

This study explores how the adoption of management ideas is conditioned by wider macro-level mentalities that are not company based but that instead reflect professionally or nationally rooted ways of managing. Drawing from studies on professional mentalities and practices, we study Finnish top executives working in globally operating multinational corporations in the metal and forestry industries, showing how, starting in the 1980s, they adopted new management practices during the rise of globalisation, market liberalisation and post-Fordism. Altogether, a traditional engineering mentality strongly conditioned the dissemination of new management ideas, which needed to adapt with the existing mentality. As a result, we find three ways of management idea dissemination: (a) new ideas had to fit in with the old business elite mentality, (b) new ideas were side-lined and belittled by the old mentality and (c) new ideas were smuggled into management by reframing and widening the old mentality. By extending Guillén’s work on elite mentalities, the study contributes to the research on management ideas by exploring the role of societal macro-level mentalities in management learning, highlighting their role in times of societal transformation

Multilevel and multisite leadership development from a leadership-as-practice perspective : an integrative literature review

http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-09-2021-0135Purpose This paper reviews what has been written on leadership development from the leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) perspective, which views leadership as emerging in everyday activities and interactions of a collective in a specific context. This paper aims to deepen the theoretical understanding of how leadership can be learned and developed from the L-A-P perspective. Design/methodology/approach An integrative literature review was undertaken to review and synthesise what has been written on the topic in journal articles and scholarly books. Findings The importance of the context and the practices that are embedded in it is the most central aspect affecting leadership development from the L-A-P perspective. This places workplace leadership development centre stage, but several papers also showed that leadership programmes have an important role. Not only collective capacity building is emphasised in the papers, but the importance of individual-level leader development is also recognised. Originality/value The contribution of this study is twofold: First, it brings the currently fractured information on L-A-P development together to enhance theory building by providing a synthesis of the literature. Second, a conceptual framework is constructed to show how the L-A-P perspective on leadership development can take both leadership development at the collective and individual levels into account, as well as the learning that takes place either inside or outside the workplace. This study's results and framework show that the development has its own specific purpose and suggested methods in both levels, in both learning sites.Peer reviewe

Valtionhallinnon viestintä Suomessa – byrokraattista tiedonsiirtoa vai jälkibyrokraattista viestintää?

Artikkelissa pohditaan, miten viestinnän toimijat itse arvioivat organisaationsa viestintään, ja millaisena he näkevät viestinnän roolin organisaatiossaan. Aineisto koostuu viidessä eri ministeriössä tehdyistä 16 tiedottajan ja neljän ministerin erityisavustajan haastatteluista. Haastattelut olivat osa Valtionhallinnon viestintä 2007 -hanketta. Tulokset osoittavat, että toimijat ovat kiinnostuneita ensisijaisesti tiedottamisen tehokkuuden mittaamisesta ja toisarvoisesti vuorovaikutteisen viestinnän toteutumisen arvioimisesta. Ulkoisesta viestinnästä ja arviointitarpeista kysyttäessä vastaukset kääntyvät systemaattisesti organisaation sisäisiin muutoksiin ja muutostarpeisiin. Toistuviksi teemoiksi nousevat viestintätoiminnan roolin muutos sekä kaivattu asennemuutos viestintätoimintaan omassa organisaatiossa. Tekstissä pohditaan, osoittavatko tulokset käännekohtaa byrokraattisesta tiedonsiirrosta jälkibyrokraattiseen viestintään. Tuloksia tulkitaan sekä konstruktionistisesta että foucault’laisesta näkökulmasta

"It's the work climate that keeps me here": the interplay between the HRM process and emergent factors in the construction of employee experiences

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay between human resource management (HRM) and emergent factors in constructing a strong HRM climate. Specifically, the paper aims to shed light on how employee perceptions of the HRM process and emergent factors together construct a strong HRM climate, i.e. employees' shared perceptions of HRM. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses qualitative interview data (managers and employees) from two organisations operating in Finland. The data are analysed based on a systematic data analysis and gives an illustration of the interplay between high-performance work system and the emergent factors. Findings The findings illustrate the three types of interplay between HPWS and emergent factors – supplementation, substitution and suffocation – that construct employee experience. Originality/value The paper extends earlier discussions on the relationship between HRM and employee experience by empirically examining how the HRM process – together with emergent factors – constructs a strong HRM climate. The present study contributes to further theorising and increasing our understanding of the creation of employee experience.©2022 Emerald Publishing Limited. This manuscript version is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY–NC 4.0) license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Embracing relational vulnerabilities at the top: a study of managerial identity work amidst the insecurities of the self

This study aims to revitalise the concept of relational vulnerability in advancing the theory of managerial identity work. Drawing on 35 semi-structured interviews and 12 podcast interviews with top managers in Finland, we identify two entwined themes through which top managers practise identity work by negotiating their vulnerabilities in the workplace. Our study illustrates the embodied subtlety of relational vulnerabilities in top managers’ identity negotiations by showing they can function as a tool for the managers’ professional development. Our study contributes to the broader discussion on a more humane working life by investigating the ways in which top managers can foster workplaces in which vulnerabilities are used as a starting point for improvement rather than as a tool for disparaging the self and the others. This is an aspect of managerial identity work that deserves to be more profoundly considered in both academic debate and managerial practice

Multilevel and multisite leadership development from a leadership-as-practice perspective: an integrative literature review

Purpose This paper reviews what has been written on leadership development from the leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) perspective, which views leadership as emerging in everyday activities and interactions of a collective in a specific context. This paper aims to deepen the theoretical understanding of how leadership can be learned and developed from the L-A-P perspective. Design/methodology/approach An integrative literature review was undertaken to review and synthesise what has been written on the topic in journal articles and scholarly books. Findings The importance of the context and the practices that are embedded in it is the most central aspect affecting leadership development from the L-A-P perspective. This places workplace leadership development centre stage, but several papers also showed that leadership programmes have an important role. Not only collective capacity building is emphasised in the papers, but the importance of individual-level leader development is also recognised. Originality/value The contribution of this study is twofold: First, it brings the currently fractured information on L-A-P development together to enhance theory building by providing a synthesis of the literature. Second, a conceptual framework is constructed to show how the L-A-P perspective on leadership development can take both leadership development at the collective and individual levels into account, as well as the learning that takes place either inside or outside the workplace. This study's results and framework show that the development has its own specific purpose and suggested methods in both levels, in both learning sites.</p

Comparing the adoption and legacy of the human relations school in Finland and Japan

This article examines the legacy of the seminal human relations school theorists, their major works in particular, to scientific discussion in international journals, and compares the adoption of these ideas in Finland and Japan. We first examine how often the human relations school’s theorists and their books have been cited in academic discussion, by conducting systematic searches on the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). We then look at how these theories have been discussed and adopted in Finland and Japan by carrying out bibliometric analysis and literature research. We find it interesting to compare the adoption of the human relations school in these particular countries, as the developments of Finland and Japan in the 1900s resemble each other in many respects. The findings indicate that both countries adopted the human relations paradigm as a complementary paradigm to scientific management. Bibliometric analysis of the SSCI database indicates that the seminal theorists of the human relations school have not lost their topicality, and that the importance and seminal works of the paradigm seem to be most influential in the field of organizational sciences