Introducing Self-Organization to Finnish Home Care Teams: Expectations and Outcomes

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand better what kinds of expectations Finnish home care workers have about self-organizing teams and what kinds of outcomes Finnish early adopters have experienced after self-organizing principles have been introduced to their organization. To this end, we share results from two research projects that have coached Finnish home care and assisted living teams towards self-organizing team practices. We will identify expectations about self-organization by interviewing and gathering information from home care workers who will soon be coached toward self-organizing practices. We will then evaluate outcomes of self-organization by comparing personnel survey results between teams working in home care and assisted living facilities that have and have not been coached towards self-organizing work practices. Our findings reveal that, although management and team members perceive their current organizational environment differently, both parties share the will to evolve towards self-organizing work practices. The early results of coaching home care teams towards self-organization suggest that achieving change is likely to be a slow process.