Management practices, economic performance, innovation and well-being at work (MEADOW II)

(2015-2016)

Koordinaattori: Simo Aho
Rahoittaja: Tekes

 

The relationship between the quality of work – including the well-being of the employees – and good economic performance has constantly generated discussion both among working life researchers and policy makers. In broad terms, the possibility and the pre-conditions of the win-win situation have been in the focus. However, our earlier results indicate that innovation and work engagement do not covariate strongly. The co-incidence of both is predicted by e.g. involvement of employees in teams for development and employee influence on their tasks. The present study continues this discussion. Based on the Finnish data, our aim is to clarify the links between the managerial practices, economic performance and well-being of the employees. Special attention is paid on the role of innovativeness (the ability of the organisation to create and develop new products or services) in this process.

The study is a part of the MEADOW (Measuring the Dynamics of Organisation and Work) project. Its aim is to gather information on organisational and management practices, their change, and their economic and social impacts. The leading idea is to combine interview data from both employers and employees of the same firms and organisations. The basic data from Finland consist of 1531 employer and 1711 employee interviews. The sample represents companies and public organisations that employed at least 10 persons. In addition to this, register based indicators, including the trend of turnover has been attached to the interview data. The turnover data cover only the private employer units (n= 1139).

MEADOW is an EU-wide project, thus the data sets constructed under its guidelines offer remarkable prospects for cross-national comparisons. At first, a comparative analysis of Finnish and Danish data is being planned (partner: Peter Nielsen / University of Aalborg).

Team: Simo Aho, Laura Peutere, Antti Saloniemi, Jouko Nätti

Funding: Tekes 2015-16