Latest Publications by Taina Savolainen
Working Meetings: A Tool for Building or Destroying Trust in knowledge Creation and Sharing
This paper discusses and examines the role of working meetings as a tool for building and destroy... more This paper discusses and examines the role of working meetings as a tool for building and destroying trust in knowledge sharing and creation. Working meetings are one of the basic tools in organizations for collaboration and group cohesion, and a significant vehicle for communication. They play an important role in information and knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, coordination, decision making, problem solving and strengthening of group relationships inside and outside the organization, and contribute to build or destroy trust. Trust is manifested in commitment, open communication, ethical behaviour, predictability and doing the best in any activity. It creates openness and freedom at the individual and group level, so it plays an important role in knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. But as necessary and important working meetings are, they are also very costly and frequently unproductive. Unless properly managed, they can be a waste of valuable financial and emotional resources, with negative impact on organizational performance, culture, innovativeness and overall competitiveness. Good meeting planning, preparation, realization, assessment and follow-up are needed to achieve meeting effectiveness. Meeting facilitators, as "leaders", play a critical role to create a positive-trustworthy atmosphere and conduct and manage the meetings with effectiveness. The main point of discussion is crystallized in the suggestion that meetings have an impact in integrative group behaviour, cooperation and knowledge sharing and creation. Building and maintaining trust are of utmost importance in it, to develop human capital for sustaining vitality and competitiveness in organizations. Originality of the paper is based on exploring the role of working meetings in relation to trust building for knowledge creation and sharing. Implications are made of how to increase working meetings effectiveness .
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Trust and resilience both belong to human intangible resources in entrepreneurship. This paper fo... more Trust and resilience both belong to human intangible resources in entrepreneurship. This paper focuses on exploring their development and interrelation in the nascent entrepreneurial process of becoming an entrepreneur. Becoming describes a processual nature and pervasiveness of growth and change in human growth, development and action. While the research on entrepreneurial processes recognizes trust and resilience independently, their interrelation and dynamics are scarcely examined in the pre-start-up process. The purpose of the paper is to explore how trust and resilience, their interrelation and dynamics emerge in the individual’s growth process into self-employed. The study fills in the existing research gap in the nascent phase of entrepreneurship by studying the development and exploitation process of both trust and resilience. A qualitative life history approach is applied. The study reveals the interrelation and dynamics between trust and resilience illustrating a two-way t...
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Trust is emerging as a more and more important intangible asset and required skill in workplaces ... more Trust is emerging as a more and more important intangible asset and required skill in workplaces and for leadership enabling organizational change and improving performance. Trust forms a foundation for cooperation in workplace relationships. This paper discusses and examines trust development within the relational context in workplaces and leadership during change. We study and analyze trust development at different levels of organizations, i.e., organizational, team, dyadic and individual levels, and explore the dynamics between levels. The qualitative, narrative study aims to present findings for increasing understanding of how interpersonal trust develops during change in work relationships including leaders, followers and team members from different organizations. In the paper, trust development means exploring how trust is built, sustained, deteriorated, broken and possibly restored. The dynamics between different levels is also examined. Studies analyzing multi-level trust are scarce. Thus, the paper aims to add to scientific knowledge by providing insights and implications for workplaces, leadership practices, and human capital development. The findings benefit workplace practices through the implications inferred from this more in-depth, qualitative research. Further, this paper adopts a relational and resource-based view of trust, meaning that trust is seen as intellectual capital built through interactions and reciprocal activity between people. Empirical narrative data disclose leaders' and employees' narratives on trust development during change. The findings show that the passage of time from the episodes of change seems to affect how trust development is perceived during change. Findings and implications are discussed in more detail in the paper. For practice, the paper implies that management should look after the building and sustaining of a trustful climate and relations in and between all levels in an organization.
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Published. Proceedings of ECKM 2018 Conference, Vol 2, pp.765-772. Academic Int. Conferences, ACPI Publishing Ltd., 2018
The paper discusses and explores trust development focusing on restoration of trust after trust v... more The paper discusses and explores trust development focusing on restoration of trust after trust violations or breaches within leader-follower relationship and focusing on the follower's view in the empirical qualitative study. Trust is an important intangible asset, knowledge resource growing or diminishing in organizations and their leadership. Trust is a multi-level, dynamic and complex concept in nature embedded in abilities, skills, knowhow, insights and relations enabling human capital growth and improved performance. In the trust research within managerial context, trust forms a foundation for cooperation in workplace relations. Knowing and sharing knowledge play a role in trust and its restoration. The paper aims to increase understanding of trust restoration in workplaces searching for decisive incidents, moments and phases in the process, and followers' perceptions of the most significant issues. The purpose of the paper is twofold ; first, to produce new empirical findings from trust restoration in workplace relationships that are still scarcely studied empirically, and second, provide insights into current and further research, and implications to practice. A need for studying and understanding trust and trust restoration more in-depth is well grounded, as the prior studies show that trust development process appears rather complex, multi-form and unpredictable boosting even unintentionally " the dynamics of evil ". Trusting in workplace resource and activity is largely about communication and sharing knowledge by multi-channel and presently more and more technology-mediated, which may lead to misunderstandings and even violations of trust. The empirical qualitative data consists of interviews and written accounts of followers' experiences of trust restoration in leader-follower relationship. The findings reveal three phases within the trust restoration process discussed in more detail in the paper. Implications are made to avoiding mistrust development and trust breaches highlighting e.g., trustworthiness and communication.
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Proceedings of 22nd European Conference of Knowledge Management, ECKM 9/21, 2021
This paper discusses and examines trust building in the remote-digital negotiations. More specifi... more This paper discusses and examines trust building in the remote-digital negotiations. More specifically, the paper focuses on international trade negotiations aimed at being integrative, and how the Covid-19 pandemic affected the way they have been conducted over the years, mainly relying in face-to-face meetings. Information exchange and knowledge sharing is essential part of negotiations, occurring in interactive processes between actors involved. Trust is a prerequisite for effective information exchange and knowledge sharing and creation. Trust creates openness, willingness to collaborate, and freedom to be productive, and is a foundation for integrative negotiations. Trust manifests in different ways, affecting time, intensity, process, and results of the overall negotiation process. Remote working and remote-digital meetings have become prevalent these days, especially due to the disruption caused by Covid-19. Remote communication necessarily carries inescapable restrictions compared to face-to-face encountering and discussion. Therefore, the technology mediated (TM) remote context highlights the meaning of trust, as interaction and collaboration emerge more restricted than in face-to-face contacts. This paper builds on previous research on integrative negotiations, role of trust, and meetings. By analysing and discussing the academic literature, the purpose of the paper is to provide theoretical views and insights for further research, and practical implications for negotiators and professionals in general. The exploratory research questions are: i) what challenges did the Covid-19 pandemic pose to international trade negotiations? ii) how do virtual-TM meetings may affect trust building for integrative negotiations? iii) how does country culture and technology mediate the impact of virtual meetings in trade negotiations? By responding to these research questions, the paper focuses on intangible factors that may contribute to trust building or trust destroying in virtual meetings and how they may affect information exchange, knowledge sharing and knowledge dynamics leading to successful integrative negotiations.
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ECKM2019. Published Paper. LopezFresnoP, SavolainenT In Proceed.Vol2, pp.691-699, ACPI Ltd., 2019
This paper discusses the socialising function of training meetings and the role it may play in tr... more This paper discusses the socialising function of training meetings and the role it may play in trust development, as intangible resource within and inter-organisations. As part of a broader empirical research to explore the functions meetings may play for the participants, based on 978 meetings hold in the context of a project implemented in six countries, 106 training meetings were analysed to respond to the research question “What meanings do participants attribute to the training meetings they attend?”. Data collected were analysed with graph-network analysis and exploratory statistics. Results show that the function of socialising (social dimension of meetings) appeared as significantly relevant in training meetings, as perceived by the participants. The contribution of this research is to bring this dimension to the fore and explore its role in knowledge sharing/creation and trust development for enhancing intellectual capital (IC). The findings have implications for researchers and practitioners. The effectiveness of training meetings in terms of the time invested, or the achievement of objectives in knowledge transfer, are important, but may not be the only factors to be considered when organising a training meeting. Further research should be conducted on what factors influence the perceived meanings-functions of training meetings, also related to trust, considering different organizational and cultural environments.
Keywords: human resources, intellectual capital, knowledge, meanings, socialization, training meetings, trust.
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Journal of Global Business Issues, 2014, Vol 8., Iss. 2 (Fall/Winter), pp. 45-56
This paper discusses and examines e-leadership practices, more specifically, what skills leaders ... more This paper discusses and examines e-leadership practices, more specifically, what skills leaders need and what challenges they encounter in the new e-context of business management. Digitalized business world transforms remarkably the context of leading where e-relationships become more and more common in technology-aided management. This change challenges daily leadership work as to social skills and forms of interaction. Trust and trust-building is a necessary resource, intangible asset and skill as a foundation for collaborative actions in organizations and their leadership. Trust is needed even more when e-relationships become more common and traditional f-to-f interaction decreases. This article is about studying e-leaders’ views of the new e-leadership context focusing especially on trust-building in followers. Therefore, the study is not about leadership as such but a contextual study of the daily work practices of e-leaders in the view of trust-building in specific. In rapidly expanding technology-mediated management (TMM) in the past decade, daily leadership practices have undergone changes in the forms of interacting into the extensive use of technological devices in leader-follower realtionships. Although e-leadership has arouse scientific discussion since the turn of the millennium empirical studies and especially of e-leaders point of view are sparse. Yet, e-era reshapes managerial leadership work and skills in traditional leader-follower relationships which deserves more attention in the research. The purpose of this paper is to increase our understanding of e-leaders work situations and practices, more specifically, how leaders build trust in their followers through technology-mediated interaction (TMI). Originality of the paper is in examining the new work context of leaders through e-leaders’ views of trust-building in their followers. The paper presents new findings from qualitative study not explicitly reported in the prior empirical studies of e-leaders. A case study was made interviewing leaders from five large organizations in Finland. The findings show that the e-leaders’ changing work context is not yet well recognized and is poorly understood and supported by supervisors and managers in the organizations involved in the study. Key findings are discussed more widely and implications made to practicing leaders in today’s e-world.
Keywords: daily leadership work, e-leadership, Finland, leader-follower relationships, skills, technology-mediated work, trust-building, qualitative case study
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Papers by Taina Savolainen
Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 2018
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Open Source Business Resource, 2011
Leaders trustworthiness
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Routledge eBooks, May 21, 2020
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Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Jun 1, 2004
Aims to explore the Six Sigma methodology as a method for developing CI capability. More specific... more Aims to explore the Six Sigma methodology as a method for developing CI capability. More specifically, the focus is on the role of management in the improvement of processes. Any type of organizational improvement process requires visible leadership and effective management to be successful. In high‐performance organizations, in particular, in which the Six Sigma methodology is currently gaining ground, managers allocate resources to the improvement activities they regard as crucial for the organization's success. Six Sigma is an improvement methodology that aims to increase business performance through a solid and accurate business focus. As the adoption of the Six Sigma methodology is still at an early stage in Finnish business life, presents preliminary case study findings. The findings imply that managers should adopt and internalize the Six Sigma philosophy first to give sufficient support to the implementation process. Furthermore, additional attention should be paid to the development of measurement systems and real time reporting systems, which is initially a managerial responsibility.
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The TQM magazine, Jan 16, 2007
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Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, 1999
INTRODUCTION This paper suggests that "the history is not just an event in the past but is a... more INTRODUCTION This paper suggests that "the history is not just an event in the past but is alive in the present and may shape the future" (Pettigrew 1990:270). The paper focuses on how the successors or actual founders hold on to the beliefs that have worked in the company's history and have remained relatively stable for several decades affecting the current managerial decision making processes. Implications are made in the context of how the organization is renewed by embedding a new managerial ideology, more specifically, total quality ideology (Savolainen 1997). Empirical findings from two Finnish family-owned companies provide needed empirical evidence on the long term effects of managerial values on current managerial practices. Ideologies and their component systems of beliefs can play a significant role in the processes of organizational creation and renewal because they have a potential to link attitude and action (Pettigrew 1979; Savolainen 1997). The potency of organizational ideologies depends on how they are maintained and kept alive, and transferred. Successful ideological change is more deeply associated with organizational culture and values that favor change. It is more commonly found in the entrepreneurial firm which is characterized by developmental orientation, openness to new ideas, and proactiveness in competition (Kanter 1983). Founders' impact on the maintenance and change of ideologies is not very well understood and we need further empirical research to gain a deeper understanding of this matter. HISTORY OF ORGANIZATION AND MANAGERIAL BELIEFS The founders' personal belief systems lay at the heart of the organizational and managerial belief systems that direct and facilitate managerial decision making. The personal values of the founding "fathers" may form an integral part of the present-day belief systems (Donaldson and Lorsch 1983). The current ideologies can be traced back to the founders' beliefs because they lay down the foundation (Schein, 1985). In the course of time the underlying values lead successors (and managers) to make choices and commitments that confirm the founders' belief system and make it effective in the current managerial practices. The basic fabric of the belief system may endure for a long time because managers are emotionally committed to the fundamental principles. But we can ask why managers become so committed to the existing belief system. One of the fundamental reasons is that it works which strengthens managers' emotional commitment to the principles that have worked for the organization in the past. Then another question arises, how willing are managers to alter practices that have been successful in the past? As long as no major external changes occur in the business environment the decision making within the existing belief systems tend to go forward. But these beliefs are not unchangeable. As the company undergoes changes, the experiences of the founders and their successors lead them to modify the belief system (Fritzsche 1997). In this process the earlier history of the company plays a role. Managerial belief systems change incrementally as a result of successes and failures. The history of the organization leads and sometimes compel managers to act in a certain, history-bound way, and depending on the situation, this turns out to be advantageous or disadvantageous. This view implies that the past may become a powerful force in the present and, therefore, the legacy of the past is worth preserving. This concerns, in particular, cultural beliefs, assumptions, and moral values. CREATION AND RENEWAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL IDEOLOGIES The purpose of the organization is generated through the feelings and actions of its founder who develops and maintains organizational culture (Pettigrew 1979; Fritzsche 1997; Schein 1985). Ideologies play a significant role in the creation and renewal of the organization. …
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Nang Yan Business Journal, Nov 20, 2014
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Baltic Journal of Management, Nov 28, 2022
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Referee-artikkel
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Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, Dec 1, 2014
Trust has become an important intangible asset in organizations as a foundation for cooperation i... more Trust has become an important intangible asset in organizations as a foundation for cooperation in workplace relationships. The paper discusses and examines development of trust in relation to communication within work relationships. More specifically, the dynamics of trust deterioration and trust breach is studied empirically. The paper examines the interplay between communication and trust and how building, violation, breaches and restoration of trust develop in inter-personal workplace relationships. The aim of the paper is to provide new knowledge and insights of the dynamics between communication and trust and make practical implications to leadership and HRM for human capital development. By presenting the empirical findings from a qualitative case study with other complementing data the paper also aims to shed more light on how poor communication, in particular, affects trust development between actors involved. The paper advocates the importance of developing trust and communication for intangible intellectual asset in workplaces and their management. Originality of the paper is based on the idea of exploring the relation between trust and communication, specifically in the situation of trust violation and breach. The paper provides a still under researched issue of intangible assets, since relational resources such as trust and communication have not been widely examined in the context of trust breach, in specific. In the theoretical discussion, trust and communication are seen interwoven in interpersonal work relationships. Trust is looked as intangible asset and skill and communication a means and antecedent for trust. The findings show that poor communication plays an important role in deterioration and breaches of trust. Distrust may permeate widely within the organization and beyond the original parties involved. If space is left to the low trust climate to develop the consequences may be unfavorable, harmful and even damaging to the organization. Trust violation and breaches seem to be connected with workplace bullying with harmful consequences.
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Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning, Apr 11, 2023
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Baltic Journal of Management
PurposeAlthough previous studies have addressed the positive relationship between trust and perfo... more PurposeAlthough previous studies have addressed the positive relationship between trust and performance, existing research has paid limited attention to management that shapes valued organisation behaviours important for effectiveness and wellbeing. This paper examines how organisational trust and performance unfold in the context of one private and one public sector case organisation in management change.Design/methodology/approachA multiple case study design using qualitative methods is applied to analyse textual data gathered from management and employee perspectives, juxtaposing private and public organisations.FindingsManagement change renewed decision-making in both organisations through role clarification. Through clearer roles, expectations were better managed in the collaborating units of a private organisation case and of the employees in a public organisation case impacting on organisational ability and predictability. Along with organisational communication, these develo...
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Latest Publications by Taina Savolainen
Keywords: human resources, intellectual capital, knowledge, meanings, socialization, training meetings, trust.
Keywords: daily leadership work, e-leadership, Finland, leader-follower relationships, skills, technology-mediated work, trust-building, qualitative case study
Papers by Taina Savolainen
Keywords: human resources, intellectual capital, knowledge, meanings, socialization, training meetings, trust.
Keywords: daily leadership work, e-leadership, Finland, leader-follower relationships, skills, technology-mediated work, trust-building, qualitative case study
In the past decade, e-leadership has become a new and expanding context of organizational management. Trust in leadership has also gained increasing attention in organizational practice and research. Trust building is listed as one of the key leadership skills for the new millennium. It is an important topic studied extensively in the management and organization research field over the last three decades or so. There is no doubt that the e-era presents new challenges to the context of leadership and skills needed in IT-dominated environment and technology-mediated management (TMM). The paper aims to identify the specific characteristics of e-leadership and how they appear in and influence trust-building in the new context of technology-mediated interaction (TMI) between leaders and followers. Theoretical discussion focuses on leadership characteristics and skills in distance context and in e-context, specifically, and trust-building within e-leader-follower relationship. A qualitative study was conducted in Finland. The data was gathered in large organizations by interviewing e-leaders who mainly lead by TMI. The purpose of employing a qualitative methodological approach was to increase understanding of the phenomenon still scarcely studied. In data handling, content analysis, categorizing, and abstracting were used. The key findings show that business environment and challenges in e-leadership differ from those in traditional leadership. TMI changes the context of leader-follower relationship, forms and nature of interaction and, hence, trust-building in leader-follower relationship. This paper presents a few findings not explicitly presented in prior studies of e-leadership. In conclusion, e-leadership seems still a new concept in organizations and, therefore, is not supported and understood adequately in business practice. Organizations should invest in supporting e-leaders more strongly in the future. New leadership skills are needed, since fast-developing technology may still transform the ways of interaction in leadership.
Key words: e-leadership, trust-building, leader-follower relationship, leaders’ view, technology-mediated interaction, qualitative study, Finland
Focus on just one every week and your organization will see great improvements in employee engagement, innovation, speed of decision-making and profitability. Many of the entries link to additional resources.
2013 Trust Across America-Trust Around the World published the first in a planned series of award-winning books. TRUST INC., Strategies for Building Your Company’s Most Valuable Asset brings together the wisdom of 32 experts.
Throughout the month of August 2014, 31 essays from the second book have been featured. Each stands alone as an excellent resource in guiding Boards and C-Suites on driving a trust agenda at the highest level in the organization, and provides tools for those who choose to implement trust-building programs in their organization.
Aug, 11, eleventh essay in series brings advice from Finland. Taina Savolainen is a Professor of Management and Leadership at the University of Eastern Finland, Business School and leader of the research group of Trust within Organizations. She is a trust trainer and educator focusing on inter-personal trust building skills.
Definition of trust (Savolainen, 2013);
“Trust is essential intangible asset and skill in organizations and leadership. It creates and facilitates cooperation in workplaces. Trust forms intellectual resource and influential force for leaders and enables them to build trustful workplace relationships and organizational climate.
Leadership by trust is an invaluable skill and tool to develop and sustain human intellectual capital for the vitality, innovativeness and competitiveness of organizations. Through openness and mutual interaction individuals may build stable relationships and bonds which cannot be easily broken.
In the e-era trust building creates added value benefiting the entire organization, as competitive advantages strongly rest on creating and sharing knowledge.
Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan henkilöstön kokemuksia ja käsityksiä luottamuksesta organisaation ylintä johtoa kohtaan. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää ja tuoda lisää ymmärrystä siihen, mihin osatekijöihin luottamuksen rakentuminen organisaation ylintä johtoa kohtaan perustuu ja mikä merkitys luottamuksella on strategian implementoinnissa. Lisäksi tutkittiin, miten ylin johto käsitteenä identifioituu tässä kontekstissa. Tutkimuksen taustalla oli oletus että, organisaation sisäinen luottamus vaikuttaa strategian implementointiin. Luottamustutkimus on keskittynyt organisaatioiden sisäisen luottamuksen ja organisaatioiden välisen luottamuksen tutkimiseen. Strategian implementointi on tunnistettu vähintään yhtä merkittäväksi organisaation menestymisen kannalta, kuin strategian suunnittelu. Siitä huolimatta, strategian implementointiin liittyvää tutkimusta on tällä hetkellä vähemmän. Organisaation sisäisen luottamuksen ja strategian implementoinnin yhteyttä on tutkittu akateemisesti vähän, mikä tekee tästä aihealueesta mielenkiintoisen.
Tutkimus toteutettiin kvalitatiivisena tutkimuksena ja tutkimusmenetelmänä käytettiin teemahaastattelua. Tutkimusaineisto koostuu kahdeksan kohdeorganisaation asiakaskontakteissa töissä olevan henkilön yksilöhaastatteluista. Tutkimuksen aineistoanalyysi toteutettiin sisältöanalyysiä hyödyntäen ja analyysi on teoriaohjaavaa. Tutkimuksen viitekehys perustuu organisaation sisäisen luottamuksen ja strategian implementoinnin teorioihin. Tulokset raportoitiin viitekehyksen perusteella muodostettujen tutkimuskysymysten perusteella.
Tutkimustulosten perusteella luottamus kohdeorganisaation ylintä johtoa kohtaan perustuu sekä persoonattomiin, että henkilöityviin tekijöihin. Tämän tutkimuksen keskeinen tutkimustulos on, että viestinnällä on keskeinen merkitys luottamuksen rakentumisessa organisaation johdon ja työntekijöiden välille. Kun ylintä johtoa ei tunneta tai ylimpään johtoon ei ole henkilökohtaista kontaktia, asiakaskontaktihenkilöstön luottamus perustuu persoonattomiin tekijöihin eli ylimmän johdon päätösten ja toimenpiteiden tuloksiin.
Akateemisen tutkimuksen kannalta tämän tutkimuksen arvokkain tulos on, että tässä kontekstissa luottamus ylintä johtoa kohtaan vähentää strategiaan kohdistuvaa kritiikkiä ja edistää näin ollen organisaatiotasoisten muutosten jalkauttamista käytäntöön. Tutkimustulokset saavat tukea sekä organisaation sisäistä luottamusta, että strategian implementointia käsittelevästä kirjallisuudesta. Tämän tutkimuksen tulosten valossa voidaan todeta, että luottamuksen ja strategian onnistuneen implementoinnin yhteyttä on tärkeää tutkia enemmän, koska organisaation sisäisellä luottamuksella näyttäisi olevan yhteys strategian implementointiin.