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The context of this study is the nation-wide reform of local government in Finland, focusing on line managers and their scope of agency. Our data comprise two large-scale surveys of 40 municipalities in 2009 and 38 in 2011. The respondents were line managers from different levels of the hierarchy and, for comparative purposes, staff from the same units. Resources and constraints of agency were studied both in relation to the immediate work of the respondents and to the broader issues of municipality reform. Broad-scale reforms proceed in stages that require different forms of agency. Predominantly, a higher position in the hierarchy seemed to give better conditions for agency, but this was not always the case. Notable were the high values for intrinsic rewards of work given by all groups, indicating the existence of conditions that enable new cognitive and learning challenges to be met. It seems that this potential was not actualized satisfactorily in the accomplishment of development activities. The supervisor?s influence on the social climate of the units was evident in the longitudinal setting. From the perspective of distributed agency, this result is highly significant when one considers that the social environment is the immediate context of agency.

The context of this study is the nation-wide reform of local government in Finland, focusing on line managers and their scope of agency. Our data comprise two large-scale surveys of 40 municipalities in 2009 and 38 in 2011. The respondents were line managers from different levels of the hierarchy and, for comparative purposes, staff from the same units. Resources and constraints of agency were studied both in relation to the immediate work of the respondents and to the broader issues of municipality reform. Broad-scale reforms proceed in stages that require different forms of agency. Predominantly, a higher position in the hierarchy seemed to give better conditions for agency, but this was not always the case. Notable were the high values for intrinsic rewards of work given by all groups, indicating the existence of conditions that enable new cognitive and learning challenges to be met. It seems that this potential was not actualized satisfactorily in the accomplishment of development activities. The supervisor's influence on the social climate of the units was evident in the longitudinal setting. From the perspective of distributed agency, this result is highly significant when one considers that the social environment is the immediate context of agency.

The context of this study is the nation-wide reform of local government in Finland, focusing on line managers and their scope of agency. Our data comprise two large-scale surveys of 40 municipalities in 2009 and 38 in 2011. The respondents were line managers from different levels of the hierarchy and, for comparative purposes, staff from the same units. Resources and constraints of agency were studied both in relation to the immediate work of the respondents and to the broader issues of municipality reform. Broad-scale reforms proceed in stages that require different forms of agency. Predominantly, a higher position in the hierarchy seemed to give better conditions for agency, but this was not always the case. Notable were the high values for intrinsic rewards of work given by all groups, indicating the existence of conditions that enable new cognitive and learning challenges to be met. It seems that this potential was not actualized satisfactorily in the accomplishment of development activities. The supervisor's influence on the social climate of the units was evident in the longitudinal setting. From the perspective of distributed agency, this result is highly significant when one considers that the social environment is the immediate context of agency.

Local government in Finland has undergone considerable restructuring since 2005 as a number of new larger municipalities (mergers) and partnership areas between social and health sector service producers have been formed. Employees and the quality of their working life have not been among the main issues in this government-driven restructuring process. The article focuses on the observed changes in the quality of working life in Finnish municipalities. The data consist of two comprehensive surveys carried out in 2009 (N=3,710) and 2011 (N=4,618) for employees in the social and health sector and the education sector, and in 2011 also for employees in the administration sector, and of comparison data from the years 1995, 1999 and 2003. Quality of working life (QWL) consists of five sum variables: open ways to solve work conflicts, work influence, supervisory work, social openness at workplace, and intrinsic rewards of work. The measures proved to reflect in context-specific ways situations and conditions of work. The results imply that QWL is quite a slowly changing phenomenon, which is revealed here through a long-term research period and statistical comparisons. On the level of daily work, the widescale reform seemed more incremental than radical. As a positive sign, it is noteworthy that the intrinsic rewards of work have remained on a relatively high level through the years. There are some cases in which QWL has changed more radically. It is obvious that the reform context has increased awareness of human resource issues in these cases, which is visible in the improved QWL. It is also possible that the improvement in the supervisory role as reflected in increased satisfaction with supervisors and the relatively high level of social capital in most of the municipalities have played a buffering role against the confusion and strains related to the reform.

In this edited book, the authors seek answers to the question "What is the future of working life?" with research-based approaches. The state of working life and its changes and development are affected by many factors starting from global phenomena to workplace level events, actions and procedures. The book examines working life trends on multiple levels covering structural development paths, the role of labor policy, organizational practices and subjective experiences of individuals. Working life research produces valuable information which is beneficial both at workplace level and at the use of decision-makers who regulate working life matters. - Artikkelikokoelmassa etsitään vastausta kysymykseen "Mihin työelämä on menossa?" lujasti tutkimuksiin tukeutuen. Työelämän tilaan, muutoksiin ja kehittymiseen vaikuttavat monet tekijät lähtien globaaleista ilmiöistä työpaikkakohtaisiin tapahtumiin ja toimenpiteisiin. Kirja tarkastelee työelämän kehitysilmiöitä monitasoisesti kattaen niin muutoksen rakenteelliset kehityskulut, työvoimapolitiikan roolin, organisaatiokohtaiset käytännöt kuin yksilöiden kokemuksetkin. Kirjassa on vahvasti mukana hyödyntämisnäkökulma. Työelämän tutkimus tuottaa arvokasta tietoa niin työpaikoille kuin työelämäasioita käsitteleville päätöksentekijöille.

As the global world produces new social problems and the continuously changing environment of work organizations calls for new modes of operation, there emerges a need for discussion forums to analyze and find practical solutions, involving the people concerned. This article examines, within the framework of realist evaluation, the potential of democratic dialogue, a Nordic method of workplace development, to generate outcomes that are put into practice in work organizations. Democratic dialogue is seen as a social program that, by providing the participants with new resources and new reasoning in work conferences and other dialogue forums, enables them to make new choices. The focus is on three Finnish action research networks applying democratic dialogue, and the recompilation of these cases along the Context-Mechanism-Outcomes formula of realist evaluation. Changes in the organizational patterns of communication, linked to the criteria of democratic dialogue and the design of work conferences, are identified and examined through the lenses of varied organizational concepts that elaborate the underlying processes generating change. The article suggests further research to compare cases with the same starting points but differing outcomes to trace the finer distinctions in the preconditions for accomplishing the desired objectives.

Purpose
– Addressing the challenges expressed by organization researchers and Leslie McCall with her conceptual framework of intercategorical analysis, this paper contributes to the methodological debate on intersectionality. The purpose of this paper is to explore intersectionality on the organizational level in the Finnish defence forces (FDF). In the paper, the authors explore how the interactions between categories of gender, age, and position in the organization explain the concerns of employees in the changing military organization. Furthermore, the authors also investigate the types of intersectional mechanisms behind the empirical observations.


Design/methodology/approach
– The logistic regression analysis is based on a survey addressed to the whole salaried personnel in the FDF in 2011 (n=8,093, response rate being 54 per cent).


Findings
– In line with McCall's (2005) intercategorical approach, the analysis shows that the plain examination of main effects of the variables will not suffice, but the interaction effects of the variables must also be examined. The analysis indicates that even though women in general experienced more concerns, gender does not alone explain the concerns expressed by the members of the FDF, but age and especially personnel group are significant in understanding configurations of positions in relation to the organizational change process.


Research limitations/implications
– The methodological limitation of the study is that although the data were large, it was not possible to conduct three-ways analysis, because of the size of some groups.


Originality/value
– The study offers a noteworthy addition to the rare research of practising intersectionality in the conceptual framework using quantitative methods.