Renewing occupational cultures—Bridging boundaries in learning spaces

Abstract

Professional bureaucracies of the Finnish municipal services are challenged by many modernization pressures manifested currently in the form of New Public Management. Along with efficiency demands the new emphasis is on the provision of client-oriented services by the means of multi-professional teamwork crossing the traditional sector boundaries. This paper analyzes the learning processes needed when representatives of different professional and other occupational cultures start cooperation. The participants of the research are professionals taking care of the elderly: in a small rural municipality the social and health care staff plan joint home care services and in a city, where a joint home care unit is already established, the professional collaboration is extended towards theatre, art exhibitions and other cultural services. In both cases the researchers invited the professionals to have future-oriented discussions on joint dialogue forums. In the analysis of the proceedings the forums were conceptualized as ‘learning spaces’ and the differences in professional cultures as ‘thresholds’. The results of the analysis point out how the professional cultural confrontation between the social and health sector was more severe, the thresholds were higher, than between the home care staff and the cultural sector professionals. The paper suggests that the dialogue method facilitates learning and crossing the professional cultural boundaries if all participants themselves let this happen and secure that the results of the dialogues will be turned into concrete actions.