Review of Regional Workplace Development Cases

Abstract

The labour-intensive manufacturing industry faces many working-life challenges in the rural, sparsely populated northern areas of Finland at both operational and strategic levels. These challenges vary, being in interaction with both technical and social systems and their combinations. In this paper, the authors review and evaluate needs, actions and results carried out to improve work and productivity in three regional industrial development cases. The actions discussed in this paper, such as work environment management, change management in general and the sociotechnical approach, are essential for the success of enterprises. Using the results of this research as a basis for developing design knowledge, two guidelines for strategic management purposes are proposed. These guidelines implement sociotechnical aspects into the work environment and its management, and recognise that it is important to focus on human and organisational factors in addition to technical end environmental aspects. A proposal for a specific, unique self-assessment tool for evaluating the level of the quality of the work environment in SMEs is also suggested.