Forskningssamverkan och nya former av kunskapsbildning Nordisk vetenskaplig konferens på Högskolan I Halmstad 9-11 maj 2001

Concept-driven Development Network at Finnish Sawmills Anneli Pulkkis Laboratory of Work Psychology and Leadership Helsinki University of Technology

Abstract Automated information and production technology has been implemented widely at sawmills during the last 5-8 years. Sawmills have become information-intensive companies. The interest of the author is, how does the concept driven communicative development meet the technical rationality of a modern enterprise. In the project ‘Development network at sawmills’1 we used the communicative action research and democratic dialogue as the method. Development initiatives have been made in a development network, parallel to an operative organization. The aim was to develop communicative and collaborative team organization.

‘Team’ was a central concept and issue in the network development project. The object of the sawmill company was to introduce teamwork in the whole organization. It was a strategic goal as a motive to support the process management, the quality of work life and productivity.

There were three leading elements in the project: 1. ‘Team’ concept and the development process are closely linked to the strategic vision and the goals of the company.

2. The development organization with development groups, workplace meetings and search conferences 3. Development network with key actors, inner developers to organize development activities at the own sawmill

The collaboration in the local developing proved to be a critical point in the development process to create communication-based organization model. There were interest thinking and anxiety but also confidence in the process and creativity. The content of the concept ’team’ and the introduced changes were varying from a sawmill to another. The elements in the organizational structure were 1) The functioning model of the strategic thinking (Different local models about how the strategic thinking is linked in a communicative way to the operative organization), 2) The functioning model for leadership and coaching, 3) The functioning model for competence and knowledge promoting and 4) local cooperative patterns concerning team work at the sawmill. The changes realized in the network suggest that communicative development produces communicative organizational structures if there is enough situations and willingness to communicate for the whole organization. The world ‘enough’ is important in this context. It is linked to the strategical thinking of the organization.

1. Introduction Knowledge has become an important source of competitive advantage for enterprises especially in the search for innovative activities. People are producing knowledge at the workplace by observing, studying and communicating with each another. The nature of a human being’s communication is self-motivating and voluntary, mental processes can not be 1

The project is financed by the National Workplace Development Programme

enforced. The world of a modern operative organization consists of systems and systemic control. The functions of management, leadership, marketing, training, production control and calculating are organized as systems with systemic control e.g. in the form of operative and financial measures. One can say that the more automated are the information and production systems of the enterprise, the more advanced systemic control is available and is applied in the operative processes. The interest of the author is, how does the concept driven communicative development meet the technical rationality of a modern enterprise. In the project ‘Development network at sawmills’2 we used the communicative action research and democratic dialogue as the method in the forms of search conferences and development groups. Development initiatives have been made in a development network, parallel to an operative organization. The aim was to develop communicative and collaborative team organization communicative development as a method . V. Beinum (1993) is writing, “ The communicative action research is a method to look at the same time the process and the content. Content and process are different perspectives of the same phenomenon. One cannot have one without the other. The content is in a process”.

2. Finnish sawmill industry and the motives for the transformation of work life Forest industry is important in Finland from the economical, ecological and cultural viewpoints. Forest products make up almost 30 % of export and 14 % of these are products of sawmill industry. Forest industry is important as an employer. It brings work and cultural continuity to areas of high unemployment in small countryside towns and villages near the big forests and watercourses. Wood belongs to regenerating natural resources.

The initiations for the transformation of the working life at sawmills are linked to the actual 2

The project is financed by the National Workplace Development Programme

trends in the structure of production and the economy. Alasoini (2000) has described these trends as follows: -

Knowledge is becoming an increasingly important factor of production and the most sustainable source of competitive advantage for enterprises.

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The capacity of quick learning and continuous development is becoming an increasingly important success factor for individuals, for enterprises and even for entire societies.

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New information and communication technologies constitute the technological basis of the growing knowledge-intensity of goods and services and they are an important enabler of the improved learning capacity of individuals, enterprises and entire societies.

The wood products industry has been subject to turbulent business cycles. Market shares fluctuate depending on the phase of the cycles in Finland and export countries. The market and customer strategy, the prize and the quality of the wood products are of great importance. (Klaus, Hirvensalo 1997). In order to meet the competitive markets the sawmills have on the first hand invested in the automation of the information and the central production processes and been striving for flexibility. New automated information and production line technology has been implemented widely at sawmills during the last 5-8 years.

As the strategic thinking at the sawmill companies concerns operating with turbulent business cycles, people in the operative organization are living these business cycles in the saw mill environment: they operate with planning and controlling the production and keeping the high standard of quality in varying situations. High quality collaborative performance in information and knowledge exchange is needed in order to succeed at sawmills, where the physical distances are long: in the sawmill process and the process and the saw mill office and where shift work is done. A comment in the interviews by a blue-collar worker is

describing the situation: ”It is all the time great hurry. There are too few people working in the process and the job demands are high. White collar workers are not seen in the production process.” And a manager was saying that “ we are not running the production, the production is running us”.

2. ‘The team’ concept as a driven force in the project ‘Team’ was a central concept and issue in the network development project. The object of the Sawmill Company was to introduce teamwork in the whole organization. It was a strategic goal as a motive to support the process management, the quality of work life and productivity. The development network consisted of the company’s operative sawmills, a training and consulting institute and the laboratories of work psychology and leadership and wood technology at the Helsinki University of technology.

In the development network there were various thinking and concepts on teamwork and the development process on the basis of the organizational concepts on groups and teamwork by Smith and Katzenbach and continuous improvement etc. The concept of ’semi-autonomous work group’ has dominated earlier experiences on groupwork in the change projects at some of the company’s sawmills. People felt some failure in the introduction of the work groups in the production process, which came out from the interviews made by the researcher. The change process had concerned only people working in the production process, not in the office. People did not see the difference in their daily work before and after the change. Because of the high automation of information and production processes and the measuring systems they were self-managing their job. The concept ’semi-autonomous groups’ gave the name to the state of affairs: the new complicated production control systems keep the foremen at the computer display the self-managing work groups were ’a social order’. There

had been a bit of frustration to discuss on ’the rules of the workgroup’. At some sawmills there had been done ’team work contract’, where the different interest groups, trade union and company representatives had undersigned a document for ’the conditions of the teamwork’. These experiences had brought into the discussion the concepts of self-managing group/team’, ‘rules of the game’, ’job rotation’ and ’job satisfaction’. These concepts were firmly anchored in the organizational development language. In the four search conferences this language belonging to the ’old organization’ paradigm was dominating and the concepts which would have described a new understanding were hard to find. The new understanding had to do with the strategic thinking of the company and the local concepts of collaborative work and teams. Gustavsen (1996) describes this thinking in the following way: “Conceptdriven change is built around concepts, or ideas, often with strong element of communication as well as design thinking. It bears a strong relationship to e.g. business process reengineering and vision driven management.

3. The elements in the development network There were three leading elements in the project: 1. ‘Team’ concept and the development process are closely linked to the strategic vision and the goals of the company. There were matching thinking with the concept driven development by Gustavsen et al. (1993). 2. The development organization. A development network was established parallel to the work organization. The core elements that were to give a direction to the process were the concepts round the key-concept ‘team’. The organizational development was regarded as an activity that needs a specific role and organizational elements. Gustavsen (1995) writes. "It

seems reasonable to make a more fundamental distinction between two aspects of a workplace of enterprise organization: -

The work organization, which is the framework in which the 'ordinary' work is done.

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The development organization, which is the framework that involves everything necessary to do with change and development and where it is done, development groups, workplace meetings." Search conferences belong as an important development tool to this category.

3. Development network. The development project was functioning more as a network than as a project. In the development network there was key actors, inner developers or coaches, at least one in every sawmill. The developers of the sawmills were supported to organize development groups consisting of people from sawmills who have interests and willingness to take also a developer’s role besides the professional role. The development groups were responsible for the development activities at their own sawmill and besides that the development network was open for operating.

To create a development network with special roles, the role of inner developer, coaches and network structure was an initiative from a preparing project group. The primary task of the inner developers was to keep the development in operation. The purpose of the network structure was to build space, resources and negotiated legitimization for development activities. The development method were communicative action research, search conferences, development groups and special cooperative methods with democratic dialogue as a leading thought.

COMPANY AND THE SAWMILLS (S)

SDT SDT S DT

S

S

HUT CDT

S

SDT

SDT S

S

SDT

S

Cons. LS S

S

The company organization

SDT

The development network

Picture 1. A schematic picture of the development network. The circles represent development teams. S = sawmill belonging to the company. SDT= Development group at the sawmill., CDT= development group at the company level, HUT= Helsinki University of Technology, Cons= Consulting firm and LS= local consulting/training institut. The local development groups are linked to each another and to the company’s development group as well as to the university and consulting firms via the development network. The company’s development group consisted of the inner developers from the sawmills. It had a special concerning the strategic thinking in the project.

The collaboration in the local developing groups was demanding and proved to be a critical point in the development process. There were sawmill professionals and trade unionists representing different interests and motives. In three cases emotional reactions interrupted for few months the rational group working. There were also positive cases where the group learned how to solve conflicts and were creating solutions. The question of “the silent

forces” which form a psychological hindrance for the rational development work, is a difficult one: there are silent assumptions of the identification, the role, the leadership and the primary task (comp. Bion (1961). It is of great importance that the process of change from the bureaucratic to the democratic structure should be developed and management in such a way that the various psychological conditions can receive the space and attention they require. This means generally that it should be a process in which people feel safe and can be in control. (V. Beinum 1993)

The researcher is working in the development organization through three kinds of relations: 1. a pair relationship between the researcher and the inner developer, 2. a membership in the development group on the company level 3. a membership in different workgroups established by the development group

Examples of the themes the development groups were working with: -

We were analyzing the systems of the sawmills and forming a common understanding of the functioning, e.g. by drawing the information and production processes,

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Members of developing groups at one hand at the separate sawmills and the other hand at the company’s level are discussing with their reference co-workers and strategic managers form a common understanding of the goals of the sawmill, most meaningful functioning and characteristics of the systems to be developed. (Developing themes)

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The developing groups are working (gathered data, discussing) with the themes and finding out developing steps.(Working with the themes and action plan)

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Developing groups and the strategic managing of the sawmills are working in a search conference with the themes from the viewpoints of the vision of the sawmills, analysis of

the systems and developing steps. The sawmills are planning the developing steps on the basis of the conference discussions. (The search conference)

4. The change process at the sawmills and the development network The motive to use the development network in the project was to create a communicative team organization. The content of the concept ’team’ and the introduced changes were varying from a sawmill to another. Some common organizational structures were agreed by the participants in the last search conference, which was held two years from the beginning of the development network. The elements in the organizational structure were 1) The functioning model of the strategic thinking (Different local models about how the strategic thinking is linked in a communicative way to the operative organization), 2) The functioning model for leadership and coaching, 3) The functioning model for competence and knowledge promoting and 4) local cooperative patterns concerning team work at the whole sawmill. All these four elements contain communicative patterns for actions. In this kind of organizational functioning we can refer Schall who argues that organizations are ”Entities developed and maintained only through continuous communication activityexchange and interpretations among its participants…. As interacting participants organize by communicating, they evolve shared understanding around issues of common interest, and so develop a sense of the collective ”we”… ” (Schall 1983 in Weick 1996). The shared understanding can be reached by communication which is self-motivated and voluntary (comp. ”silent forces” in the development groups). At least at one of the sawmills there was created an organizational structure which consisted of the organizational elements, functioning models, which supported creation of communicative actions on the voluntary base. At the sawmills there is the development process still going on.

References Alasoini, T (2000) Modernisation of Organisational Practices and Industrial Relations in Northen Europe. INDICT: Seminar:”globalisation, Competitivity and Collective bargaining” 8.-9- 11.2000. v. Beinum, H. (1993) The Kaleidoscope of Workplace Reform. Kirjassa Naschold, F, Cole, R., Gustavsen, B, Beinum, H. Constructing the New Industrial Society. Social science for social action. Vol 3. Bion, W. R (1961) Experiences on groups. Tavistock Publications. London Gustavsen, B. (1992) Dialogue and Develoment. Social Science for Social Action: Toward Organizational Renewal. Volume 1. Stockholm: Arbetslivscentrum & Assen: Van Gorcum. Gustavsen, B., Wikman,A., Ekman,M. ja Hofmaier, B. (1996): Concept driven Change: The Core Element in a National Workplace Development Program. Concept and Transformation, Vol 1, No 2/3, John Benjamins Publishing Company. Amsterdam/Philadelphia Klaus, J., P., Hirvensalo, R(1997) The Mechanical Wood Processing and Wood-Based Panels. Technology Programmes 1992-1996. Schall, M. S. (1983) A communication-rules approach to organizational culture. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, pp 557-581. Weick, K., E. (1995): Sensemaking in Organizations. Foundation for Organization Science. A Sage Publications Series. SAGE Publications. London Background referencies: Kajanoja, J. (1996): Kommunikatiivinen yhteiskunta. Puheenvuoro hyvinvointivaltiosta. Hanki ja Jää. Tammi. In Finnish (Communicative society. A speech on the wellfare state) Outhwaite, W. (1996) ed. The Habermas reader. Polity Press. Cambridge. UK