Concept-driven Development Network at Finnish Sawmills

Automated information and production technology has been implemented widely at sawmills during the last 5-8 years. Sawmills have become information-intensive companies. The interest of the author is, how does the concept driven communicative development meet the technical rationality of a modern enterprise. In the project ‘Development network at sawmills’ we used the communicative action research and democratic dialogue as the method. Development initiatives have been made in a development network, parallel to an operative organization. The aim was to develop communicative and collaborative team organization. ‘Team’ was a central concept and issue in the network development project. The object of the sawmill company was to introduce teamwork in the whole organization. It was a strategic goal as a motive to support the process management, the quality of work life and productivity. There were three leading elements in the project: 1. ‘Team’ concept and the development process are closely linked to the strategic vision and the goals of the company. 2. The development organization with development groups, workplace meetings and search conferences 3. Development network with key actors, inner developers to organize development activities at the own sawmill The collaboration in the local developing proved to be a critical point in the development process to create communication-based organization model. There were interest thinking and anxiety but also confidence in the process and creativity. The content of the concept ’team’ and the introduced changes were varying from a sawmill to another. The elements in the organizational structure were 1) The functioning model of the strategic thinking (Different local models about how the strategic thinking is linked in a communicative way to the operative organization), 2) The functioning model for leadership and coaching, 3) The functioning model for competence and knowledge promoting and 4) local cooperative patterns concerning team work at the sawmill. The changes realized in the network suggest that communicative development produces communicative organizational structures if there is enough situations and willingness to communicate for the whole organization. The world ‘enough’ is important in this context. It is linked to the strategical thinking of the organization.