Kestävyyssiirtymän edistäminen työvoimaa kouluttamalla – Kestävyysosaamisen kehittämisen tuotteistaminen
Year: 2024
Type: dissertation
Abstract: There is a need for organisations to become more sustainable and account for their impact on the environment and the society. Thus, organisations are seeking to develop their sustainability competences. However, there is a gap in current research as much of it focuses on academic education and research on educating employees in organisations is limited. This thesis addresses the gap by focusing on developing sustainability competences within the workforce. The thesis explores how productising sustainability competence development could enable organisations to navigate the sustainability transformation. Utilising design science research methodology, the primary data for the study was collected through two workshops and 14 interviews. The findings emphasise that sustainability competence development is most effective when embedded within everyday operations, rather than presented as isolated educational efforts. The most effective sustainability competence development programs are those that tailor content to organisational contexts and provide hands-on, engaging learning. It is imperative to tailor competence development according to the organisation. The productisation process therefore involves developing a core set of modular training components that can be easily adapted to specific organisational contexts. This approach emphasises coordinating the selection of thematic content and learning format with the intended learning outcomes. Furthermore, this thesis acknowledges the need to reframe sustainability competence development. Rather than fixating on topical knowledge, this thesis argues that the emphasis should be on promoting competences that enable readiness to handle transformations and find opportunities within them that will help the organisation, the society as well as the environment overall. This thesis recommends exploring ways to balance between material topics organisations are required to know and the competences that enable integrating sustainability thinking into all strategic activities and future planning. Practically, this thesis provides a framework for developing scalable and impactful sustainability competence development products. Theoretically, it extends the literature on organisational learning and sustainability education by integrating competence development with productisation strategies.
Source: Aaltodoc (Aalto University)
Author: Saaristomaa, Iida
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6992038836