The role of work-related personal projects during two burnout interventions: a longitudinal study

Burnout is nowadays a common problem among employees, and a new approach to reduce its extent is needed. This study looked at burnout interventions in terms of personal goals and/or projects. These represent what individuals are striving to achieve, and include work-related goals. Our aim was to examine the extent to which two kinds of burnout intervention, in the form of different types of psychotherapy, influence employees' personal projects. The two types of therapy were psychoanalytic and experiential, both in the form of group therapy. To determine the extent, 62 employees who had contacted the Helsinki Occupational Health Services suffering from severe burnout participated, in the course of a single year, in 16 sessions of either analytic or experiential group psychotherapy. In addition, 28 employees suffering from severe burnout served as controls. All the participants filled in Little's Personal Project Analysis and the Bergen Burnout Indicator one month before the intervention, in the middle of the intervention and one month after the intervention. The results showed that among participants in the intervention groups the level of burnout decreased. Further, the number of work-related personal projects, project-related negative emotions, and tendencies towards negative action, decreased among those in the intervention groups compared to the control group. Moreover, project-related progress, social support and managing project-related emotions increased during the intervention. Finally, the results showed that when the negative emotions related to personal projects decreased during intervention, the level of burnout also decreased.     

How Do Efforts to Enhance Career Preparation Affect Peer Groups?

The present study investigated how efforts to enhance career preparation affect peer groups. The participants were 710 9th graders who were randomized into control and intervention groups and assessed 3 times during 1 academic year: at baseline (T1, Fall), immediately after the career preparation intervention (T2, 3 months after baseline), and 5 months after the intervention (T3, Spring). The results showed, first, that maintenance of a stable clique was more likely when most clique members participated in the intervention. Second, it was found that the members of adolescents' cliques resembled each other in respect of the strength of the intervention effect. Finally, the results showed that the similarity of the clique members in career choice preparedness first decreased as a result of the short‐term impact of the intervention but then increased after the intervention was over, suggesting that peer groups were partly responsible for weakening the effect of the intervention. These results have important implications for understanding how peer groups moderate external influences on their members and how the stability of peer groups is affected by these influences.     

Sources of Job and Worker Flows: Evidence from a Panel of Regions

Abstract. This study explores the structure and the dynamics of regional job and worker flows. The measures of job and worker flows are related to economic fluctuations, demographic factors and industry structure by employing the data of 85 Finnish regions over the period 1988–97. It is shown that labour market dynamics differ markedly between regions. As in previous analyses of linked employer–employee data, job and worker flows are shown to behave cyclically. In addition, the results indicate that observable differences in regional productivity, in‐migration, demographics and industry structure help to explain the prevailing disparities in regional labour markets.     

Elusive Effects of Unemployment on Happiness

This paper explores the connection between unemployment and subjective well-being in Finland using cross-sections for the years 1990, 1996 and 2000 from World Values Surveys. Interestingly, an unprecedented increase in the national unemployment rate (from 3 to 17%) did not produce a drop in the mean level of subjective well-being. Personally experiencing unemployment reduces life satisfaction, but does not have a significant effect on happiness in ordered logit estimation. However, generalized ordered logit estimation reveals that being unemployed has a negative effect on happiness at lower happiness scores, but no significant effect at high happiness levels.     

Educational attainment and employment of young adults ageing out of care: A registry study based on the Finnish birth cohort 1987

Adolescents growing up outside their birth homes are at major risk for multiple adversities in early adulthood, including low education and unemployment. The transition from out-of-home placement to independent living overlaps with the transition from school to work and higher education. However, the support during this critical phase is often inadequate. Adolescents ageing out of care are also more likely to have faced adversities in their birth families. Yet, the interplay between different risk factors and having aged out of care has gained little attention. This study aimed to assess known risk factors for low education and unstable employment and their interaction with ageing out of care, controlling for birth-home-related adversities. We assessed this topic using logistic and linear regression modelling based on the Finnish birth cohort 1987 (n = 59 476) registry. Our analysis showed that obtaining upper secondary and higher education was much less likely among those ageing out of care, and they had spent 52–80 fewer days annually in employment after graduation. Few interactions with other risk factors were, however, found. Efforts are needed to prevent inequalities in education and employment for those ageing out of care in the transition phase from school to work.     

Intelligent Public Organisations

The article explores the nature of the intelligence and organisational learning of public sector organisations with regard to both individual organisations and multiple organisational ecosystems. The main ideas behind modern systems theory (MST) and the logic developed by the MST theorists in the domain of organisational intelligence are pinpointed in the paper. The article presupposes that the basic structure of the organisational features of intelligence consists of leadership, strategy and foresight, people, partnerships and resources, and organisational processes, and the intelligence builds on these features. The article concludes with an explicit definition of the organisational activities that generate organisational intelligence, putting forward best practice examples with regard to these activities while also presenting scientific evidence to back up these claims.     

Precarious workers' choices about unemployment insurance membership after the Ghent system reform: The Finnish experience

The literature on the Ghent system has focused on the link between voluntary unemployment insurance and union membership in terms of industrial relations. Less attention has been paid to unemployment benefits and employees' decision‐making concerning unemployment insurance, even though the core function of the Ghent system is to provide unemployment insurance. This paper examines both of the options that precarious workers (i.e., part‐timers, temporary employees, and low‐skilled service employees) choose regarding unemployment insurance membership and the change in union density after the Ghent system reform in Finland. First, the results show that the growth of the independent unemployment insurance fund was the main reason for declining union density in the 2000s and early 2010s. Second, in terms of precarious workers, we find that the emergence of the independent fund has affected their choices about unemployment insurance membership and that their choices depend on the type of precarious employment they have. Moreover, part‐timers and temporary employees younger than 35 years of age are much less likely to enroll in unemployment insurance than older employees who have the same types of employment contracts.     

The Mirror to Our Soul? Comparisons of Spontaneous and Posed Vocal Expression of Emotion

It has been the subject of much debate in the study of vocal expression of emotions whether posed expressions (e.g., actor portrayals) are different from spontaneous expressions. In the present investigation, we assembled a new database consisting of 1877 voice clips from 23 datasets, and used it to systematically compare spontaneous and posed expressions across 3 experiments. Results showed that (a) spontaneous expressions were generally rated as more genuinely emotional than were posed expressions, even when controlling for differences in emotion intensity, (b) there were differences between the two stimulus types with regard to their acoustic characteristics, and (c) spontaneous expressions with a high emotion intensity conveyed discrete emotions to listeners to a similar degree as has previously been found for posed expressions, supporting a dose–response relationship between intensity of expression and discreteness in perceived emotions. Our conclusion is that there are reliable differences between spontaneous and posed expressions, though not necessarily in the ways commonly assumed. Implications for emotion theories and the use of emotion portrayals in studies of vocal expression are discussed.