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Kirjoittajakollektiivi: Caterina Bettin; Päivi Eriksson; Kaijus Ervasti; Katariina Hakala; Outi Hietala; Päivi Honkatukia; Hanna-Kaisa Hoppania; Meri Kulmala; Marjukka Laiho; Reetta Mietola; Saana Raittila-Salo; Tiina Rättilä; Tiina Sotkasiira; Sanna Spišák; Nina Tokola; Mari Turja; Satu Venäläinen

Doctoral employment outside universities has been increasing, as universities cannot employ all doctorate holders. Nevertheless, it has been argued that the shift from doctoral programs to the non-academic labour market has been limited. In this qualitative study, more than 800 verbal answers given by doctorate holders to a pair of open-ended questions were content-analysed to explore doctorate holders’ perceptions of the non-academic labour market and the reputational problems they relate to their employment. The study identifies four reputational problems which doctorate holders relate to their employment: the oversupply problem, the overeducation problem, the consistency problem and the communication problem. By identifying potential reputational problems on the doctorate holders level, this research contributes novel information in terms of both theory development and practitioner insights.

Cross-national comparisons are a common instrument of epistemic governance in national parliaments. Their prevalence could be seen as a consequence of the emergence of the ‘competition state’ and t...

International organisations’ importance in education policy has been growing in recent years. They have been able to promote their role by providing data and interpreting it through international a...

Is Europe headed towards nonpolarity? What would that entail for the future stability and security of the continent? Taking its cue from IR debates about the effects of polarity on international order, the article develops conceptual tools and an analytical narrative concerning Europe during the post-Cold War era. It refines the concept of a Great Power by suggesting the notion of ‘ordering agents’ and ponders whether Europe is in danger of drifting towards a period of nonpolarity with no power being able to shoulder the responsibility of ordering and providing good stewardship over Europe.

This paper measures both individual- and contextual effects of generalised trust on Europeans’ attitudes towards immigration. Our data come from round 7 of the European Social Survey (ESS) with whi...

The article analyzes (i) how the increasing demand for empirical evidence about the economic impacts of gender equality transforms expert knowledge about gender equality in the European Union (EU) and (ii) the implications of these transformations. The article argues that the much-debated discursive economization of gender equality in the EU context is underpinned by the economization of expert knowledge about gender equality—the increasing reliance on mainstream economics to support gender equality claims. This has increased the influence of gender-biased economics knowledge and its modes of knowledge production in EU gender equality policy.

The academic career stories and trajectories of PhD holders have been widely studied in the context of economic austerity and an oversupply of doctors. However, few studies have investigated career building among ex-academics and how a doctoral degree and university work might affect their career possibilities outside academia. This paper explores the trajectories of ex-academics: PhDs with university work experience who have left academia to pursue non-academic careers. Based on 40 qualitative interviews with ex-academics, their employers and senior university leaders, the study employs a narrative approach to construct five career stories: the Theoretical Endangered Nerd, the Practical Geek, the Chic Hybrid, the Pristine Novice and the Odd Elite. This varied picture of career sensemaking provides new insights into career building among ex-academics.

As recent debates about climate change indicate, public policy-making is often criticised as being predominantly reactive, with politicians responding in piece-meal fashion to current problems. How...

Final disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from nuclear power plants (NPPs) is an ethical issue with implications within and across generations. We address this issue from the perspective of nuclear communities that host nuclear waste disposal sites. These are primarily the communities that face injustice due to the potential radiological risks. A resident survey (n = 454) was conducted in two Finnish nuclear communities, i.e. Eurajoki and Pyhäjoki, that are being considered as alternative sites for a second repository for SNF. The nuclear waste management (NWM) company Posiva is already building a repository in Eurajoki, the first in Finland. These communities are in different stages of their lifecycles as nuclear communities. We investigated the residents’ conceptions of justice and trust regarding the repository SNF management and its main actors, and how these conceptions related to acceptance of the repository. The main findings show that residents of both communities perceived intragenerational and intergenerational injustices to be important in the procedures and the distribution of risks and benefits of the proposed repository. Claims regarding justice and trust were related to the acceptance of the repository. The community with the longer history with NWM expressed greater mistrust and perceived greater procedural injustice than the community with less earlier experience, which – in turn – expressed more concern over intragenerational distributive justice than the former community. Moreover, having longer history with NWM did not lead to a different understanding regarding responsibility toward future generations as resident’s in both communities expressed similar concern over intergenerational justice. Moreover, having more experience of NWM did not enhance local acceptance. We emphasize that these results should be understood in the light of the prevailing situation in Finland, where the planning of the second repository is at a very early stage. peerReviewed

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of budgetary biasing in the context of public hospitals. Design/methodology/approach The study applies theories of accounting and budgeting behaviors in the specific institutional context of health care systems. Based on the theoretical framework, data from interviews with hospital budget officers were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Findings A typology of biases is provided. It proved to be useful and highlighted the central empirical assumptions and preliminary results of biasing dynamics. Practical implications Understanding the logic of budgeting actors and the drivers of bias may help explain why bias so often appears in health care budgeting. It further contributes to understanding whether the bias is functional or dysfunctional. Originality/value The concepts of budgetary bias are rarely used in the context of health care budgeting, so the study fills a gap in research knowledge.

In this theoretical article, the vital role of conflicts in knowledge creation is foregrounded, and the concept of conflict is reimagined using a metaphor of music. Theoretically, knowledge...

Military applications of technologies for enhancing or producing vision play a key role in composing contemporary security, as such technologies are deployed to make security sense of everyday sociality, of battlefields, and of much in between these extremes. In this article, I set out to recompose militarised techno-vision through the public detritus left by its heterogenous development, use, and appropriation. I argue that as an heterogenous and amalgamated object, military techno-vision can be composed by speaking the stories of its leftovers, and that this composition is characterised by and in turn characterises a longstanding dilemma between fact and vision – between the ambiguity that is constitutive of the human practices of visual perception and image-making, and the desire for machines that can produce visual ‘actionable intelligence’ that can underpin security decisions. Discourses, practices, and regimes of visibility are deployed alongside technologies to occlude the ambiguity of technological vision and sustain the imaginary of technologically altered vision as neutral production of military or security facts.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine deliberation in the context of organizational change and introduce an organizational jury as a change facilitator. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on an empirical study of four organizational juries that were organized by a non-profit organization in Finland. The main data of the study consist of a survey that the juries’ participants filled in. The data are triangulated with observations of jury meetings and relevant documents including pre-jury information package, jury presentations and juries’ proposals. In the analysis, the paper adopts deliberative democracy criteria to assess the inclusiveness, authenticity and consequentiality of the deliberative process. Findings The research findings suggest that the juries increased the inclusiveness of decision making and the quality of deliberation about the changes among the employees. The results indicate that juries facilitated the change process by providing a means for information sharing and building a shared understanding among the stakeholders. The main weakness of the juries was their low consequentiality. Originality/value Deliberative jury method provides a participative way to build and preserve socially shared meanings in an organizational change context. However, the studies on the use of deliberative forums in the organizational context are still scarce. Thus, the study provides an important addition to the existing research literature.

Literature on performance management in hybrid organisations remains lacking, even though they increasingly are providing public services. This study created new knowledge on performance management in hybrid organisations by answering a question that addressed what kinds of challenges are in hybrid organisation’s boundary-crossing performance dialogues. Boundary-crossing performance dialogues here refer to performance management discussions between representatives of public and private sector organisations forming the hybrid. To answer the proposed question, a case study approach based on interviews and documents was chosen. Using inductive content analysis, the study identified several challenges that occurred during the boundary-crossing dialogues. This contributes to existing research on performance management in hybrid organisations. For practitioners, the results provide insights for tackling the specific problems of performance management in hybrid organisations.

In recent higher education research, quality in education export action has been explored from the perspective of traditional education export countries such as the UK and USA. However, less attention is given to novice education export providers that rely on different educational traditions. In this article, we explore quality of education as it is done in one exported Finnish master’s degree programme in teacher education in Indonesia. Our theoretical premise is based on the convention theory that relies on pragmatic sociology. The empirical data consist of 16 semi-structured students’ and staff members’ interviews gathered between the years 2016 and 2017 in Finland and in Indonesia. The results of this study stress the plurality of the quality factors that indicate the expectations by the students and the staff members, but also the priorities of the providers as to what is essential in exported degree-based education. From the perspective of convention theory, these considerations emphasize that the successful implementation of the exported master’s degree programme in teacher education is based on the professional-academic convention (as research-based teacher education) that together with the civic-domestic convention (as societal impact, local traditions and Finnish approach to pedagogy) influenced the content of the educational programme through personal interaction.

The Green League approached the April 2019 election to the Eduskunta, Finland’s unicameral national legislature, with a mixture of high hopes and cautious optimism. Finland had been governed since ...

This article explores parallels between the ‘shunning’ and ‘seeking’ of membership of the EU in the context of Brexit and stalled enlargement in south-east Europe, via a focus on the partial, fragmentary and contested governance of citizenship. The case studies place Union citizenship into a wider political and socio-economic context, demonstrating its central importance as an enabler of personal freedom. At the same time, they highlight how the denial or removal of Union citizenship can engender individual strategies to recover lost or denied benefits. From the analysis, parallels emerge between Union citizenship and national citizenship; both offer a promise of equality, but a reality of differentiation and inequality. At the same time, by delving deep into the case studies, it proves possible to illuminate the complex and often ‘messy’ constitutional edifice of the European Union, involving sometimes contradictory processes of Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation affecting citizenship regimes at all levels.

This article addresses the question of how the Crimean case relates to Russia’s general understanding of territorial questions and border regimes. We examine the historical evolution of Russian discourse on borders and territorial questions and investigate to what extent they can explain Russia’s decision to annex Crimea. We will look into the principles of inviolability of borders and territorial integrity that sustain the status quo, and how this has been challenged by three partly interlinked doctrines: national self-determination, geopolitics, and historical rights. We argue that the discourse on territorial integrity and the status quo has predominated in Russia since the Cold War, and that this has not changed fundamentally, either before or after the annexation of Crimea. Russia does not seem to want to abolish the existing norms altogether or to advocate any clearly articulated reformist agenda. Rather, it picks and chooses arguments on an ad hoc basis, imitating Western positions in some other cases when departing from the basic norm of the status quo. Hence, we claim that Russia’s territorial revisionism is reactive, self-serving, and constrained by the desire to avoid changing the status quo doctrine to any great extent.

International organisations are key actors in global governance. Among them is a growing group of international meta-organisations (IMOs) – organisations whose members are themselves organisations....

Research on how performance-based funding influences the behaviour and performance of academics is limited in Europe. In this study, we investigate the changing publication patterns among Finnish academics associated with the introduction of awarding funding for publications within specific journals in the national performance-based funding model. We find evidence, particularly in the social sciences, and to a lesser extent humanities, that Finnish academics increasingly target international (English-language) publication outlets and lower-tiered journals. We conclude discussing the possible long-term implications of the current funding formula for both Finnish academia and society.

European Parliament's (EP) party groups are crucial to democratic representation in the EU. Much of the academic research about party groups has been gender‐blind. This article draws on qualitative methods to undertake a gender analysis of EP party groups. The article analyses the gendered experiences of women MEPs from two Nordic countries, Denmark and Finland, and draws on interview data with 18 women MEPs from these two member states to explore their perceptions of gender equality in the political groups. The findings illustrate that party groups exhibit some shared and some diversified gendered norms as well as concrete practices for advancing the position of women, including informal women's networks. We draw attention to the shortcomings in m/paternity leave rights in the EP and the lack of political will within the party groups to tackle this, which is further cementing exclusionary practices of the institution.

This article draws on critical feminist theorising and post-colonial theories of the body, relatedness, vulnerability and the everyday to offer an alternative framing of peace and suggest a new res...

This article addresses the role of immigration regulations as a frame of reference for migrant employment before obtaining permanent residency status. Drawing on interviews with non-EU migrants and service sector employers in the Helsinki area, the article examines how immigration regulations inform migrant employment and contribute to the hierarchisation of labour markets. The analysis focuses on the legal significance of employment for migrants during the immigration process, which is related to the financial requirements for residence permits and manifested in the work permit process in particular. Immigration regulations increase migrants’ dependency on paid employment, consequently decreasing their bargaining power in the labour market. The findings demonstrate the changing dynamics of the supply and demand of labour in the low-paid service sector, where employers prefer to recruit migrants in temporary legal positions over local workers and ‘labour migrants’, resulting in what the author calls the juridical division of labour.

In this article we sketch out a geography of hope in Palestine. We focus on ‘hyperprecarious’ sites, exactly those where exposure to harm is heightened and where thus reasons not to hope seem plentiful. Focusing on fieldwork at such sites, we examine hope as a temporal practice of waiting, attending especially to how a ‘moment to come’ (kairos) constitutes and affirms anti-colonial practices and topologies of everyday Palestinian life. Hope in the cases we discuss is not simply a positive orientation to the future, but an experience of kairo-logical time that ties hopeful waiting to topo-logical practices that disrupt the space-times of the Israeli occupation, and the horizon of hopelessness it creates for Palestinians. We propose that attending to kairos and topos can therefore reveal the ways that together they can operate as conditions of possibility, as a ‘moment’ and ‘place’, for time-spaces to come forth anew, and so as structuring conditions for everyday Palestinian hope for life that is irreducible to the systematic subjugation and violence of the occupation.

In the West Bank, hundreds of non-Palestinian women who are married to Palestinian men have recently been issued shortened visas with tightened restrictions. This means they are often prevented from working, their mobilities are severely reduced and they are placed in extremely precarious bureaucratic and procedural positions. The research in this article draws from fieldwork interviews with women affected by such restrictions to show how politically induced precarities produce gendered effects towards specific ends of the occupation of Palestine. We thus frame a discussion of the women’s experiences of visa regulations through precarity before giving an account of the profound effects on women’s roles in family and political life. We then broaden the focus to consider Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the demographic implications of the gendered effects of visa precarity. In doing so we make the argument that Israel’s spousal visa regulations contribute to the (re)production of uneven gender relations and the demographic objective of emptying out the West Bank.

Expertise in the preparation of the committee model in Kempele municipality This article deals with reforms in local government and it focuses on determining the kind of expertise used and required in reforms. The research is empirical and focuses on one particular case: the preparation of the committee model in Kempele municipality. The research reveals that the interaction between officials and politicians is the core of reform processes, where the new information and collective expertise is created. The importance of cooperation with different sector actors is recognized and the use of the local stakeholders expertise might be more important in the future. The New Public Governance procedures are seen in the reforms, but also the traditional public administration structures still have an impact on reform work.

Strategic legitimation of state shipping subsidies Our purpose was to identify strategies through which different actors construct the legitimacy of state subsidies to shipping. To this end, we analysed documents and interviews using Critical Discourse Analysis. Five discourses were identified as legitimating state shipping subsidies: preventing outflagging, securing employment, maintaining logistical routes and security of supply, promoting tourism, and guaranteeing conformity among EU countries. To conclude, shipping subsidies have a legitimate position among the most important decision-making stakeholder groups in Finland, which ensures the stability and continuity of the subsidizing.

Alongside the emergence of the new mobility paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006), especially in the social sciences, the security paradigm has gained importance as well. It is said that “the security paradigm is now becoming so ingrained that it is impossible to ignore the impact of security concerns on the development of migration policy” (Collyer 2006, 255). The mobility of people is shaped by a variety of formal and informal institutions, such as laws and policies that influence which groups have the right to travel to and reside in a certain country. This article is concerned with Finnish border and immigration regimes and the interplay between mobility and security within law and policy. The paper offers a historical account on the way in which security has been involved in the governance of immigration in Finland. We analyze policy reports, legal texts, case law, parliamentary plenary debates, and minutes of committee hearings that shape and define mobility. By combining political history with legal analysis, the article takes a transdisciplinary approach to mobility and its limits and sheds new light into the discussion of the mobility paradigm. Our analysis provides empirical evidence that there has been a clear movement toward increased securitization over time. In political speech, restrictive measures are justified by a presumed threat to Finland's national security. The individual rights of migrants and notions of the human security of migrants appear in these debates on the other end of the spectrum.

Universities are increasingly engaged in marketization and are also expected to transform into more sustainable institutions and be change-agents pushing forward the movement of sustainable development. This article introduces an analytical framework originated by Hahn et al. (2015) for understanding tensions concerning corporate sustainability to the context of the Finnish university system in order to answer the following questions: What are the tensions relating to Finnish universities&rsquo, social and economic sustainability, and what strategies might universities use to cope with these tensions? Through analyzing interviews with university managers and officials from the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland, we find that Hahn et al.&rsquo, s framework is generally applicable in analyzing tensions of sustainability in universities, and we identify six tensions relating to the sustainability of Finnish universities. The tensions are related to 1) academic leadership and management legitimacy, 2) regional political tensions and university profiling, 3) political power over the university system, 4) changing academic work and profession, 5) academic autonomy and the role of the state, and 6) the future role of the university institution. Moreover, the article discusses issues regarding how to adapt the framework of corporate sustainability to the context of higher education.

Why is it that when debating the economic crisis, actors in the Portuguese parliament invoke more frequently countries affected by the crisis, whereas actors in the Spanish parliament invoke econom...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to test citizens’ attitudes on political involvement in energy policy-making that has generally seen to be dominated by experts and business interests and been relatively closed to citizen involvement. The study asks whether citizens are willing to participate politically more through political consumerism (i.e., consumption choices) or through representative democracy and if citizens are willing to assign decision-making to the experts representing public administration and business, as stealth democracy asserts. Design/methodology/approach Methodologically, the study is based on postal surveys conducted in 2007 and 2016 among a random sample representing Finns who were 18-75 years of age. Findings Political consumerism and stealth democracy were not considered as alternative and detached modes for electoral participation but rather as complementary. However, adherence to stealth democracy was a reaction of people who feel powerlessness in the face of the regime, while the supporters of political consumerism had a higher trust in their ability to influence. Originality/value The study is the first one which empirically compares citizens’ support for these three modes of involvement, and it generates new knowledge for the scholars and decision-makers when planning citizen role in (energy) policy-making.

Purpose This paper aims to understand performance management as a social phenomenon by investigating the challenges of performance dialogue, a phenomenon where participants jointly interpret performance information and discuss it while identifying the actions needed to manage the performance according to this information. Design/methodology/approach The research aim is achieved by conducting an interview study. Empirical data were collected by interviewing 30 public managers in three Finnish municipalities and subjecting it to content analysis using inductive category development. Findings The research provides empirical evidence from challenges in engaging in performance dialogue. It moreover derives a comprehensive conceptual model categorizing factors inhibiting performance dialogue. Practical implications Difficulties in conducting organizational performance dialogues are better explained. The findings support the management of performance dialogue by helping practitioners to identify challenges associated to these dialogues. Originality/value This study contributes to current conversations on performance management by showing that performance dialogues are no miracle cure for problems in performance information use. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that complications in performance information use are intertwined in many ways.

Many European nations share a political challenge: the ageing population and recessionary economics lead to dwindling resources for welfare services, while scandals and reports of unacceptable deficits in particular in care services for older people arise. In Finland this situation was responded to with a new Care Act for Older People that was passed in 2013. This article tracks the legislative process of the law and demonstrates how this issue of fundamental values and resources was turned into a question of apolitical governance and expert management, resulting in a dubious, status-quo supporting law. It presents a case of how the subsumption of homo politicus in the neoliberal era in practice can happen, and how depoliticisation can function in a context with which neoliberalism is not often associated: namely the care policy of a traditionally social-democratic Nordic welfare state.

The study of political leadership in Lebanon has most often revolved around the questions of the attributes and networks of leaders commonly considered within the frame of patron–client rel...