Working Life Barometer in the Baltic Countries 2002 (pdf) - mol.fi

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DEVELOPMENT OF WORK ORGANISATIONS
This chapter will discuss work organisation activities and changes occurring in
them. Working people were asked, among other things, about teamwork and
changes in workplace organisation. They were also asked about different development
projects at the workplace. The motivation for this topic arises because
so many studies emphasise that the ways of working and choices made
within the workplaces are very important for their competitiveness. (Cf. Antila
& Ylöstalo 2002, Womack et al. 1990, Appelbaum et al. 2000, Arnal et al.
2001, Flexibility Matters 1999).
Companies, or more generally workplaces, are not ’black boxes’ whose operational
efficiency or quality are defined mechanically according to quantitative
or qualitative investments that they make in various production factors
(e.g. purchase of new machines or equipment, or personnel training). The
process by which the investments are transformed into a yield such as products
or services, can be implemented in many alternative ways. Factors like process
control mechanisms, forms of working, management methods, or interactive
relationships within and between companies, have key significance in determining
how the companies are able to make use of the production factors at
their disposal (Alasoini 2000).
The following graph examines the incidence of several aspects connected with
the everyday activities of work organisations in the Baltic countries and in
Finland. The graph shows that group work or teamwork has gained very great
popularity. Of the Finnish working people, as many as three-quarters said that
at their workplace, work was done in teams. This proportion is larger than in
any of the Baltic countries. Also in these, however, teamwork is usual nowadays.
In Latvia, two out of three working people stated that work was done in
teams at their workplace. Slightly more than half in Lithuania, and half in Estonia,
answered that way.
In Lithuania, teamwork takes place considerably more often in the public than
in the private sector. In Latvia and Estonia, the situation is the opposite - that
is, teamwork is more common in the private sector; in actual fact, the differ-